You might not think about it on the pages of your books, or newspapers, but without the ink, there wouldn’t be anything but blank sheets of paper. Ink can be taken for granted, but its value is beyond question, and sometimes very evident.
The original inks in the dawn of what we know as ‘printing’ were composed of simple elements. Natural products like nut shell oils and the defensive liquid of the squid made useful dyes that were funneled into the old ‘nib’ tips of pens long before the ball-point and felt tip revolutionized handwriting. These days, inks have chemical additives meant to protect the ink from smearing or fading away, as technology aids the printing process. From the gigantic volume of glossy advertising reaching your mailbox, it seems that ink is being poured onto reams of paper each day in vivid, eye-catching combinations, and in recent times people have begun to see ink prices climb.
Did the ancient traders of the natural inks and dyes charge an arm and a leg for those useful fluids? In any case, the problem of affordable ink is growing, particularly since household printers became common. It seems like every house...