Print It

A friend (h/t M. Cheslik) shared a video with me recently that explained in amazing detail what goes in to creating a U.S. Passport. It's a detailed little booklet, but diving into the specifics, you learn that the process encompasses far more than a layout, special paper, and extra-small fonts to make it hard to forge.

The video was shared on YouTube from the Beyond Facts channel, and is entitled "How U.S. Passports Are Made - Inside a Government Security Printing Facility." It begins with the statement: "...they're actually one of the most sophisticated security devices in the world."

They're made to enable international travel, keeping track of citizens' whereabouts, but they're also designed to stop criminals engaged in things like smuggling, identity theft, trafficking, and financial wrong-doings.

What I learned from watching the eleven-minute video was that, among other things, the passport booklets aren't paper - they're plastic polycarbonate. And they don't use just tiny and hard-to-replicate fonts, they use nano-printing technology!

More about that in a moment. The video got me started down a Blonde and the Rabbit Hole dive into the whole technology of printing. 

Print, as we've mentioned in this column before, has spawned more than one major revolution, including, according to at least a few historians, the Protestant Reformation, allowing the Bible and other spiritual and religious texts to go directly into the hands of the people, by-passing the of the Church, and thus allowing other points of view to emerge.

The intent of printing is to create a "master," which contains words and/or images that are then reproduced faithfully, and can be sent, sold, and shared among many. Unlike the old copying system, in which a document is hand-copied from one "original," printing techniques can be copied multiple times in a single session, preserving the exact text and images of that original.

From exploring sources like Wikipedia, I learned that the earliest forms of printing date far back into the "B.C" range, and took the form of seals and cylinders. A cylinder was just that, a (typically) clay cylinder with inscription cut into it. It could then be rolled over a surface that would accept the imprint, like another wet clay tablet. They were used for signatures, symbols, and even story telling. It was akin to the more modern signet ring or seal, which contained a one-of-a-kind symbol used to seal letters and authenticate a law or proclamation with ink or wet wax.

Wood blocks and ink furthered the same idea, and eventually was set up for more lengthy text on paper using a mechanical system. The technique was used extensively in Central and East Asia.

Block printing on cloth was used in Europe quite commonly by about 1300 AD, and another hundred years later the same method was used to print on paper, spawning such things as holy cards and playing cards. 

Books were creating using block printing, and began to replace handwritten manuscripts (literally, manu/hand  script/written).

Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the first movable type printing system in Europe.

And eventually, by about 1450 AD, Johannes Gutenberg introduced movable type to Europe. This technique had been in use in China and Korea for a time, and involved individual words and letters being cast in a hard substance, then laid out on a flat surface according to a text. The "type" was inked, paper was laid on it, and that paper was then pressed onto the surface. This process could be repeated again and again until the desired number of "copies" were produced.

The process was eventually mechanized so that it could be done far more quickly, and about 200 years from the hand-operated press of 1600, 200 years later the possible output hand increased by about 100-fold.

The process of inking-and-pressing to print is commonly referred to as letterpress, and was largely replaced with "offset" printing, among other things - and today, a number of techniques can be used depending on the surface, including t-shirts and corrugated boxes and many other possible end products. 

Three-dimensional printing was introduced in the late 2000's, and today a home version of such a printer is not uncommon.

Back to the inspiration for this investigation - the story about the passports includes the use of such truly "modern" technologies as the "paper" noted earlier, a plastic polycarbonate, made by mixing some chemicals to create a "solid polymer," essentially a substance consisting of very large molecules. But in that polymer are mixed fibers. The fibers are part of the security. Such a "paperish" substance isn't easy to reproduce, and no two pages of a passport will have the same pattern of distribution of these fibers, making it very difficult to replicate.

But wait - there's more! The polycarbonate is heat treated, and several other steps are required to get the booklet to its final shape and size, but while the printing is "offset" printing, using metal plates covered in ink to transfer an image, and not only is that ink special - such that it changes perceivable color when held at certain angles and under certain lights - but special characters and information can only be perceived when seen under infra-red and ultra-violet light, again, a challenge for fraud.

The type is also special, containing small bleeds and imperfections that make it extremely difficult to reproduce, and in the background are "printed" characters that aren't just "micro-print," but "nano-print." In other words, and here's the current stage of printing sophistication: nano-print characters are smaller than a human cell. According to one source, blog.quatumgroup.com, "Nanographic printing — also referred to as nanography — is a digital print technology developed by Landa Digital Printing. Designed using the principles of nanotechnology, nanographic printing uses ultra-small particles of ink to consistently produce extremely round dots with super-sharp edges, high optical uniformity, and consistent density.

"During printing, ultra-small particles of wet ink are jetted onto a conveyor blanket. The ink droplets are then dried on that blanket, and the dry image is then transferred to the paper."

This nano-printed information is so minuscule, it can only be seen with a microscope. 

If you're interested in the video - and it truly is fascinating - you can find it at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKyw5-_E6o