A Little Known History on Screen Printing

Anyone that works in screen printing for as long as I have would appreciate the history of it. I work at a custom Tulsa screen printing company and I just came across this little factoid. I did know that screen printing began in the early 1900’s for printing on industrial equipment, long before it ever hit a t-shirt. I did not know Andy Warhol was the one that pretty much put the art form on the map. I figured surely there were a few others before him. Nope! After Warhol became popular, so did the art of screen printing and not long after, it was primarily used on custom t-shirts. Around 1969 the first widely used screen printing machine made specifically for t-shirts was officially patented and put into production. Without Warhol, it is not known if t-shirts would look like how they do today.