According to Wikipedia, ink is a liquid dye designed to create images using various tools. They came up with the idea of ​​using ink for writing a very long time ago, although they differed significantly from modern ones created using advanced technologies.

What people just didn’t use for writing: coal, graphite, and finally, ink, thanks to which we are able to read ancient manuscripts. Unfortunately, it is now impossible to know exactly what recipes were used to make ancient ink. It is only clear that their basis was vegetable.

Ancient ink, starting from the 15th century, is divided into boiled and iron. Both one and the second were made from plants rich in tannins. The raw materials were alder and oak bark, blueberries, and ink nuts. Surely everyone has seen these same ink nuts (galls), but few people know that they are called that. These are spherical outgrowths on oak leaves. To prepare iron ink, galls or oak bark were infused in an acidic solution in a warm place. Iron filings were added to the solution. The infusion process was lengthy, up to 30 days. For density, gum (cherry resin) was added to the ink.

And boiled ink really boiled. By boiling, an extract was obtained from the bark, which was mixed with buckthorn berry juice. These inks were inferior to iron ones, they were less resistant and not as bright, while iron ones were not afraid of moisture and faded little. Sometimes these inks were mixed.

In addition to the same ink, mushroom ink was also used for writing. Mushroom koprinus grows on wasteland, on manure, on soil rich in nitrogen. Aging, this mushroom does not dry out, like all other mushrooms, but spreads into a watery mass of saturated black color. This mass was used as ink. Even 200 years ago they were used in France.

Modern inks are complex in composition and include from 4 to 16 components, depending on the type of ink. It is impossible to imagine the modern world without a ballpoint pen and without a printer. There are two main types of ink for my inkjet printer: water ink and pigment ink. The quality of the ink used in printing determines not only the clarity and color of photographs or documents, but also the durability of the printing device itself.