On this closing day of the year 1467 was published the first book to be printed within the confines of the city of Rome. While the monastery town of Subiaco near Rome was the scene of the earliest printing to be produced in Italy two years previously, the press there—operated by Sweynheim and Pannartz—removed to [...]

“My Dear Sir: I am very desirous of obtaining one of the duplicate copies of the old Bay Psalm Book belonging to the Old South Church Library, having a strong veneration for the old volume. I think I have books in my library, such as would not only be appropriate for the Library of the [...]

“The death of Daniel Berkeley Updike removed the last and the most widely influential of the notable group of Victorian writers, learned in both the practice and the history of the printing and allied trades, who, together, contributed a body of archeological research and industrial application whose richness and quality must arouse the admiration of [...]

On this day in 1879 the eminent English printer and bibliophile William Blades received from a bookbinder of Northampton a “fat little worm” which had been discovered in his shop in the binding of a very old book. Blades wrote about the creature with the enthusiasm of an entomologist: “He bore his journey extremely well, [...]

On this day in the year 1900, the most respected printer in America, the scholarly Theodore Low De Vinne, wrote a letter to his employees, thanking them for the Testimonial Dinner which they had tendered Mrs. De Vinne and himself upon the occasion of their fiftieth wedding anniversary and his own seventy-second birthday, on December [...]

Any former employees, who for nostalgic reasons entered the cavernous but empty premises of the Chicago firm of typefounders, Barnhart Brothers & Spindler, on this day in 1933, would have felt a touch of sadness. Gone were the rows of typecasting machines which had produced so many of the popular types of American printers over [...]

On this day in 1828 was born the first of America’s great scholar-printers, Theodore L. De Vinne, in Stamford, Connecticut. De Vinne’s father, a Methodist minister, had six sons, four of whom became printers. The other two became bookbinders. De Vinne first visited a printing office when he was seven years of age, the occasion [...]

On this day in 1572 a printer named Jacques Sabon became the owner of a in Frankfurt for the sum of 425 gulden. This business had originally been set up by Christian Egenolff in 1530. It had been operated successfully until his death in 1555, when it was continued by his widow under the name [...]

The third book produced by The Typophiles, published on this day in 1936, represented a happy occasion for all typophiles, not just the capitalized variety which has contributed so much to the literature of typography in our time. In his introduction to Diggings from Many Ampersandhogs, Paul A. Bennett, guiding star of the organization, “Why [...]

Edmund Fry, M. D., and typefounder, died on this day in 1835, honored as the most learned member of his craft. A son of another medical man, Joseph Fry, who had left his profession to establish the Fry and Pine foundry in Bristol in 1764, Edmund Fry had been educated in medicine, but his vast [...]

On this great day in American history a weary shipload of travelers thankfully disembarked upon these shores in the year 1620. Among them were two printers, William Brewster and Edward Winslow, both of whom were to become leaders of the Plymouth Colony and who are recorded as the first members of their craft to set [...]

Appearing far down in the obituary page of The Boston Sunday Herald for December 21, 1958 was a short notice stating that George Trenholm, type designer, had died the previous day in his home in Weston. An eight-line paragraph covered his career, which is probably just the way he would have wished it. One feature [...]

“I began to set type when I was twelve years old, and have ‘stuck’ type in nearly every state in the Union.” So began a letter written on this date in 1885 by Amos J. Cummings to the New York Journalist. Cummings, as remarkable a man as the industry has ever produced, is now completely [...]

On this day in 1858 two printer-newsmen, W.L. Jernegan and Alfred James, set up a printing press in the village of Genoa in the Utah Territory and produced the first issue of a sheet which they called the Territorial Enterprise. The town was but a freighter’s way-station between California and Deseret. The paper managed to [...]

“Messrs. L. Johnson & Company had some time previously started The Typographic Advertiser, and the idea suggested itself to us that Western printers also should have an organ or trade paper. Well do we remember the evening on which the idea assumed definite form and the bantling was named. It was in our counting room [...]

On this day in 1816 the third Earl Stanhope died. Friend of the younger William Pitt and an outspoken critic of the war with the American colonies as a member of Parliament, Stanhope was also an indefatigable experimenter in the sciences, producing among other things a fire-proof stucco, a calculating machine, and optical lenses. His [...]

Alexander Duguid, who proved himself to be the fastest compositor in the United States, was born this day in 1856 in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. A little more than twenty-nine years later, in the second National Typesetting Tournament, staged in Philadelphia in 1886, Duguid matched himself against the great professional speed typesetters and beat them all, with [...]

It was upon this date in the year 1497 that Fra Luca de Pacioli of the Seraphic Order of St. Francis, completed the text of the work by which he is best known to printers—De Divina Proportione, a treatise on the proportion of Roman letters. The original book was concerned purely with mathematical proportion and [...]

Under the heading of “A Year’s Work,” the Troy, New York Daily Press published on December 13, 1873 the following item: “Fred W. Schneider, a compositor employed on this paper, in the year ending today set and distributed, in 312 days, 10 hours per day, 3,234,203 ems, an average of 10,366 ems per day; highest [...]

In his eighty-sixth year, John Boydell—engraver, publisher, and former Lord Mayor of London—died on December 12, 1804, having spent a good deal of his life in the service of the arts and leaving as a lasting memorial a magnificent edition of the works of William Shakespeare. As a youth Boydell had learned surveying, but when [...]

Writing in bed at No. 7 Hammersmith Terrace on Sunday, this day in 1898, Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson stated in his journal, “I must, before I die, create the type for to-day of ‘the Book Beautiful,’ and actualize it—paper, ink, writing, printing, ornament and binding. I will learn to write, to print and to decorate.” Thus, [...]

Between this date in the year 112 A.D. and December 9, 113 A.D. was cut the inscription which appears at the base of the majestic column erected in Rome to perpetuate an account of the Dacian wars of 101–06. The shaft of the monument rises 97½ feet, and is surmounted bv a statue of St. [...]

Oz Cooper the fine Chicago artist and type designer, wrote on December 9, 1927, to Richard N. McArthur, then advertising manager of the typefoundry, Barnhart Brothers & Spindler: “Dwiggins should be seduced, and I was thinking that I might write him some day and try to get him interested. Not with any definite proposal, you [...]

A professor of English achieved on this day in 1920 a certain kind of immortality not usual to his profession. He read a paper before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York, which bore the title, Printing and the Renaissance. John Rothwell Slater was of course not an ordinary English professor as the content of [...]

The last letter personally written by Samuel Johnson was composed this day in 1784 and addressed to William Strahan, his friend and the printer of a number of his works, including the Dictionary: “Sir, I was not sure that I read your figures right, and therefore must trouble YOU to set down in words how [...]

William Shakespeare built his King Henry VI trilogy upon the life of that most unfortunate of English Kings, who was born upon this day in 1421. During Henry’s lifetime, the art of printing was established, but he was murdered in the Tower of London before it was brought to English soil. Shakespeare, however, in the [...]

William Blades, printer, bibliographer, and typographic historian, was born this day in the year 1824, in the London suburb of Clapham. A leading master printer and author of a number of books about printing, Blades is best known for his lifetime efforts to promote interest in the life of William Caxton, the first English printer. [...]

Timothy Alden, of the sixth generation in direct descent from John Alden of Plymouth Colony and Courtship of Miles Standish fame, died on this day in 1858 in his thirty-ninth year, worn out from his endeavors in the creation of a typesetting machine. Born in Yarmouth, Massachusetts, he was apprenticed at the age of sixteen [...]

The December 3rd issue of Publisher’s Weekly in 1881 recorded the fact that a new book, entitled Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings—The Folklore of the Old Plantation was ready for publication. Written by a Georgia printer-journalist named Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus struck such a responsive chord that it quickly became a best [...]

Dedicated to His Britannic Majesty, George III, on this day in 1783 was a curious pamphlet written by John Walter, former coal merchant and bankrupt insurance underwriter, who requested the royal patronage for a revolutionary scheme of typesetting. The title page of this pamphlet read: “An Introduction to the Art of Logography, or the Art [...]

From Boylston Street in Boston, Massachusetts there was published on this day in 1919 an outrageous pamphlet which purported be “Extracts from an investigation into the physical properties of books as they are at present published, undertaken by the Society of Calligraphers.” A note explained: ‘The accompanying extracts from the Transactions of the Society of [...]

On this day in 1874 was born a man who never became a printer but whose life was devoted to the maintenance of the freedom of the printed word. Indeed, Winston Spencer Churchill may be credited as being one of the men of our times most responsible for our continued enjoyment of that freedom. As [...]

The Weekly Register of Baltimore, published on this day in 1817, the first account to receive national publicity of the operation of the premier American papermaking machine, at a paper mill situated on Brandywine Creek, about two miles north of Wilmington, Delaware: “We have lately visited the paper mills of Thomas Gilpin & Co. on [...]

Rummaging through a shelf-full of books in an open air church sale in a small Vermont village, the writer came across a rather plain little red book bearing a pasted-on label with the unmistakable stamp of the Merrymount Press. Furthermore, its title, A Plan of Printing Instruction for the Public Schools, related it to the [...]

On this day in 1518 in the city of Venice, there issued from the press of Daniel Bomberg his first Great Rabbinical Bible. It established his reputation as a scholarly printer of Hebrew, possibly the most eminent of them all, even to the point of his being termed “the Hebrew Aldus.” Bomberg, a native of [...]

“Where Liberty dwells, there is my country.” So read the motto, attributed to Benjamin Franklin, which appeared at the masthead of the first newspaper to be printed in the city of Chicago upon this date in 1833. Six columns of type spread over four fifteen-by-twenty inch pages formed the Chicago Democrat, printed upon one of [...]

The irrepressible inventive spirit of the American male during the 19th century is evident in the hundreds of patents filed in the Patent Office describing devices by which the laborious operation of setting type by hand might be automated, and as a byproduct the pockets of the inventor might be suitably garnished. One such patent, [...]

Published on this day in 1644, the tract entitled, Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, to the Parliament of England, is one of the noblest statements ever written concerning freedom of the press. This pamphlet, the finest prose work of one of the great poets of the language, [...]

It’s not often that a contemporary typographer has the opportunity to practice paleontology and to experience the excitement enjoyed by the first translators of the Rosetta Stone. It was therefore with a spirit of adventure that our compositor picked up a copy of a fifty-cent Penguin book on this day in 1962, having read that [...]

The tragic death of the young 35th President of the United States on this day in Dallas in 1963 reminded printers of the statement written by Mr. Kennedy in January of that year. In it he paid tribute to the printer’s craft: “Thomas Carlyle once said that the man who invented the art of printing [...]

Under the enthusiastic direction of the Chicago members of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the “Fifty Books of 1923″ Exhibition opened on this date at the Newberry Library. Excitement was generated by the idea of selecting fifty books out of the thousands published, as being outstanding examples of the printer’s craft. A receptive audience [...]

A Harvard man who for thirty years was notably connected with Yale University died upon this day in 1960 at the age of 80. Carl Purington Rollins, one of the very fine printers of our time, served as Printer to Yale from 1920 to his retirement in 1948, when he was named Printer Emeritus. A [...]

On this day in 1937 the New York Club of Printing House Craftsmen met and honored as its guest of the evening the type designer, Frederic W. Goudy. A veteran of the lecture platform after countless appearances all over the United States, the seventy-two year old Goudy was completely at his ease. As the unquestioned [...]

Mr. William Bowyer, printer of London, died upon this day in 1777in his 78th year. An extract from his will follows: “And now I hope I may be allowed to leave somewhat for the benefit of printing. To this end I give to the master and keepers, or wardens and commonalty, of the mystery or [...]

In a paper read at the annual Henrietta Hertz Lecture on Aspects of Art before the British Academy in London on November 17, 1937, the typographic historian, Stanley Morison, discoursed upon the art of printing, attempting to apply his logical reasoning to just why and under what conditions printing could aspire to be an art. [...]

A printer from Princeton, Indiana, named Donald McDowell Keys, wrote in a letter under this date in 1891 saying in part: “I am an ardent admirer of typographical beauty and excellence wherever seen, and especially so in newspaper work, because of its comparative variety in this line. There may be handsomer sheets than the great [...]

“Let’s make a new fount of type.” With that statement was born on November 15, 1888 that unique creation known as the Kelmscott Press. The speaker was William Morris, craftsman in design, poet, painter, essayist, who was walking home with his friend Emery Walker following the latter’s address before the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. [...]

The Senate of Venice upon this day in the year 1502 granted to the publisher, Aldus Manutius, the exclusive privilege of the use of a new type introduced in April of the previous year. This type was a letter which the Italians called Aldino. but which in France became known as Italic, a subterfuge based [...]

In a letter dated this day in 1946 and addressed to a firm of Edinburgh printers, George Bernard Shaw said, in part: “So the great firm of R. & R. Clark is 100 years old; and I am only 90! It seems to me to have been ordained by Providence to be ready for me [...]

On or about this day in 1739 a distinguished English master printer in his fiftieth year named Samuel Richardson reached into a new medium and began to write a novel. It was completed the following year and was published under the title of Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. It became an immediate and resounding success. Richardson [...]

The dedication of the Public Library of Haverhill, Massachusetts on November 11, 1875 was the occasion for the writing of a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier in which the printers craft was noted, making it one of the very few such references in the works of any ranking poet. Entitled The Library, the poem first [...]

The townsfolk of Haarlem, in Holland, celebrated with considerable pride on this date in 1923 the fifth centenary of the invention of printing by a native of the town, Laurens Janszoon Coster. Of all the claimants to the place of Johann Gutenberg of Mainz, Germany as the first printer, Coster has survived the longest. It [...]

On this day in 1964 is recorded the death of Thomas Maitland Cleland in his eighty-fourth year. One of the great graphic artists of our time, he was not at all widely known during the last twenty years of his life, at least to the younger group of typographers. His insistence upon fundamental training in [...]

“Born in Nurnberg on 8 November, 1918, I spent my childhood in that factory town. My parents lived in a small settlement in the city’s southern section, and I roved the bordering woods with my schoolmates and was seldom to be found at home. I chased butterflies, caught salamanders and gathered flowers and stones.” So [...]

Eric Gill, printer, type designer, engraver, and long-established critic of the machine in the affairs of mankind, wrote to G.K’s Weekly on this date in 1925: “Sir: With reference to the letter of M.W.S. Roe in your issue of October 17. The matter of machinery is one to which you will be giving your official [...]

“In God’s name, amen. Be it known to all who see or hear read this public document that in the year counted after the birth of Christ our Lord, one thousand four hundred and fifty five, in the third indiction, on thursday which was the sixth day of the month called Latin November, in the [...]

Upon this day in 1733 appeared the first number of The New York Weekly Journal, published by a printer of the town named John Peter Zenger, who had been petitioned by a group of citizens opposed to the policies of Colonel William Cosby, Governor of the Colony. Zenger, a German immigrant, had been apprenticed to [...]

In a preface to a type specimen book dated this day at the French town of Sedan in the year 1621, a master printer named Jean Jannon wrote: “So, seeing that for some time many persons have had to do with the art who have greatly lowered it (so far doth ignorance and the lack [...]

The revenge of a reigning Queen of England, Elizabeth I, was requited this day in the year 1579 upon William Page, publisher, and John Stubbs. Their crime was to write and print what the good Queen considered to be traitorous propaganda. In August the pair had combined with Hugh Singleton, a printer, in producing a [...]

In a letter to Horace Walpole, M.P., addressed from Easy Hill, Birmingham on this day in 1762, John Baskerville wrote: “As the Patron and Encourager of Arts, and particularly that of Printing, I have taken the liberty of sending you a Specimen of mine, begun ten years ago at the age of forty-seven, and prosecuted [...]

The first entry in the account book of Messrs. Binny & Ronaldson, typefounders of Philadelphia, is dated November 1, 1796 and lists one “John Scull of Pittsburg—$9.00.” And so began the first permanent and successful typefoundry in the United States. Archibald Binny, printer, and James Ronaldson, baker, had come from Edinburgh, Scotland, had renewed an [...]

“Cut up and salt away beef. Take proof of 1st form.” Thus reads the entry for this date in 1835 in the journal of the Rev. Jotham Meeker, printer to the Baptist mission at Shawanoe in the Indian Territory, in what later became the state of Kansas. Jotham Meeker was apprenticed to the trade in [...]

On this day in 1804 a young printer named James D. Bemis purchased half ownership of the Western Repository in Canandaigua, New York, the pioneer newspaper of Western New York. Just twenty-one years of age at the time, Bemis had already demonstrated the necessary acumen to become a driving force in the western expansion of [...]

“What do we mean by ‘printing’?” The question was asked by Bruce Rogers in a letter written this day in 1927 to the editor of The Saturday Review of Literature. Rogers was attempting to clarify what he believed to be obscure terminology in discussions concerning the craft of printing. The distinguished typographer went on to [...]

One of the rarest of the imprints of Colonial America was produced on this day in the year 1778 in Boston Harbor. Entitled Déclaration addressee, au nom du Roi, à tous les anciens François de l’Amérique Septentrionale, it issued from the press carried on board Languedoc, ship of the line in the fleet of Vice [...]

Those printers who are interested in the equipment of a printing office in the American colonies during the 18th century are indebted to Benjamin Franklin for a concise list of materials which he helped to secure for the establishment of such an office. In a letter posted from Philadelphia on this date in 1753, Franklin [...]

In a letter addressed to Robert Frost on this day in 1912, Mrs. M.L. Nutt, an English publisher, wrote: “I have looked through your MS and I am personally interested in the treatment of your theme. I am therefore disposing to bring out your poems if the proposal I can put before you and which [...]

“To the Editor of the Providence Gazette, and Country Journal. Sir, I am one of your Country Subscribers, and although I have no Learning myself, more than what I obtained by my own Industry, without Instruction, I value it in others.” So began a letter, addressed this day in 1762 by a newspaper subscriber who [...]

Writing from his home in New Fairfield, Connecticut on October 24, 1931, Bruce Rogers explained his attitude upon judging exhibitions to Thomas Wood Stevens: “Regarding your very complimentary offer, of the principal jurorship for the Fifty Book Show:—I am sorry to disappoint you, or to seem indifferent to your kindness in thinking of me in [...]

If ever an opportunity was missed to engage in a bit of promotion, the fact has gone unrecorded in the long career of Duff Green, a Kentucky politician who parlayed a chance meeting on an Ohio River keelboat with Andrew Jackson into a long series of spectacular schemes from most of which he emerged successful. [...]

“You owe nothing to books; but books will give you, in the future, a lasting glory.” So wrote Erasmus of Rotterdam to Jean Grolier, Knight, Lord Viscount of Aguisy, who died this day in 1565. The truth of the statement by the great humanist has been borne out in the four hundred years since Grolier’s [...]

On this day in 1948 Alfred A. Knopf, the publisher, addressed the members of the Grolier Club in a little talk which he titled “Random Recollections.” It can be said of Knopf that he has more than any other American publisher consistently applied the highest manufacturing standards. The list for which he has been responsible [...]

Although the great Italian printer, Giambattista Bodoni, died in 1813, his native city of Suluzzo waited fifty-nine years before honoring him with a statue, unveiled upon this day in 1872. The inscription upon this statue, unfortunately, was most carefully composed in old style letters! To a craftsman of the stature of Bodoni this was indeed [...]

The New York printer, Hugh Gaine, advertised in the pages of The New York Mercury, dated this day in 1772: “Wanted an Apprentice to the Printing Business and a Journey Man Printer, that is a good Press Man, at which Branch he will only be employed. Such a Person will meet with employ for a [...]

Alexander Wilson, who combined the craft of typefounding with the discipline of astronomy—a unique admixture of talents—died upon this day in 1786. Prior to the establishment of Wilson’s typefoundry, there had been no typefounding in Scotland. Through his efforts the craft attained notable success in supplying types for both Scottish and English printers and also [...]

“I have struck off 250 copies of the hymn beginning ‘Behold the Saviour of Mankind,’ with a chorus for occasional use. My press is very rude, but I am anticipating better days.” Thus reads the Journal kept by the Reverend James Evans, for this day in 1840. Many years later, the naturalist and author, Ernest [...]

John Luther Ringwalt was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on this day in 1828. He became a printer’s apprentice in West Chester, Pennsylvania and at the age of seventeen was appointed the editor of the Monroe Democrat in Stroudsburg. For the next twenty-five years he worked in the Philadelphia area, performing editorial tasks and becoming a [...]

In a report read before the full Faculty of the University of Paris, on October 15, 1532 the censors discussed the bible printed by Robert Estienne in “round character,” i.e. roman type, and stated that they “did not observe that anything had been altered in the text used by the Church.” Estienne was therefore allowed [...]

Just three years prior to his death, Benjamin Franklin took the trouble to write to Signor Giambattista Bodoni of Parma, Italy. Under the date, October 14, 1787, Franklin wrote: “I have had the very great pleasure of receiving and perusing your excellent Essai des Caractères de l’Imprimerie. It is one of the most beautiful that [...]

Bibliophiles, and particularly collectors of Poe, undoubtedly noted with chagrin the letter written upon this date in 1893 by Francis A. Teall, a retired proofreader of Bloomfield, New Jersey. “Being on a visit to my son, F. Horace Teall, I came across a paragraph in your September number containing a statement that calls for explanation, [...]

In the city of Chicago the American Newspaper Publishers Association conducted on this day in 1891 a test to determine whether or not typesetting by machine was really efficient and practicable and to find which of the machines then under development was the best for newspaper purposes. The machines pitted against one another in this [...]

The journal kept by Benjamin Franklin Bache records for this day in 1784: “Began to cast a fount of St. Augustine.” The senior Benjamin Franklin had brought his two grandsons, Temple and Benjamin, to Europe when he was appointed Ambassador to France. Towards the end of his stay there, he was determined to teach Benjamin [...]

In a letter written from the Massachusetts Bay Colony at Salem to a friend in Bermuda on October 10, 1638, the Rev. Hugh Peter said: “Wee have a printery here and think to goe to worke with some special things, and if you have anything you may send it safely by these [Captain of the [...]

At one of the sessions of the third annual meeting of the United Typothetae of America, on October 9, 1889, Andrew McNally, the president of the employers’ association, harangued his audience with an account of the problems facing the members of the group. The probability of national acceptance of the eight-hour day was an important [...]

At about nine o’clock in the evening of this day in 1871 a fire began which engulfed three and a half miles of the city of Chicago and destroyed 17,000 buildings. Legend has it that printers in the United States owe to this disaster their present method of type measurement, the American Point System. The [...]

Daniel Fowle, a printer from Boston, printed the New Hampshire Gazette at Portsmouth on this day in 1756—the first newspaper to appear in that state. Just two years previously Printer Fowle had been jailed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in an early case of freedom of the press. From his Anne Street shop in Boston [...]

Under this date in 1868 The Printer’s Register, a British periodical, published the following note: “A Buffalo American Exchange says:—There is no typefoundry in the world superior—either in beauty or durability of its wares—to the famous Johnson Foundry of Philadelphia, now worthily carried on by Messrs. MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, the successors of the lamented [...]

Of the making of alphabetic sentences there is no end, but it must be admitted that it all started with printers. No doubt the first printer’s devil hit upon the scheme in order to learn better the unique arrangement of the earliest type case. The practice was continued with the development of the keyboard operated [...]

On or about this day in 1796,William Henry Ireland published in London An Authentic Account of the Shakspeare Manuscripts, in which he confessed the sensational forgery of several Shakespeare manuscripts. Ireland wrote: “I solemnly declare first, that my father was perfectly unacquainted with the whole affair, believing the papers most firmly the productions of Shakspeare. [...]

On the tombstone of one Adam Williamson, a pressman printer who died in Edinburgh, Scotland on this date in 1832, is inscribed: All my stays are loosed; my cap is thrown off; my head is worn out my box is broken; my spindle and bar have lost their power; my till is laid aside; both [...]

By decree of the English Parliament, from this day in 1543, it was enacted that no person or persons “should take upon him, or them, to read, openly, to other, in any church, or open assembly, within any of the king’s dominions, the Bible, or any part of Scripture, in English, unless he was so [...]

On this date in 1961, the late Rachel Hunt—one-time apprentice bookbinder to Cobden-Sanderson at the Doves Press and later patron to Porter Garnett at the Laboratory Press at Carnegie Institute of Technology—initialed and okayed a sheet of letters titled “Trial Letters for Hunt Roman.” The letters were from the drawing board of the accomplished type [...]

The Rev. Charles Henry Olive Daniel, Provost of Worchester College, Oxford, was born on the last day of September in 1836. One of the beloved teachers of his period and a scholar of note, he yet was able to devote much of his leisure to the operation of a press which he had begun as [...]

Typical of the doggerel written by printers who fancied themselves as poets, and commonly seen in trade periodicals and even in the public prints up to a few generations ago, is The Merits of Printing, A Song anonymously contributed to the New York Public Advertiser in its issue of September 29, 1808. “When Learning and [...]

On this day in 1651, it is recorded that William Pynchon deeded his property to his son John and made preparations to return to England. One of the original patentees of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Pynchon was a wealthy Englishman who had arrived in the Colony in 1630. He had helped to found the town [...]

“In the seventh year of Henry VIII. September the 27th (1509). The King gives to Richard Pynson Esquire, our Printer, Four Pounds annually, to be paid from the receipts of the Exchequer during life.” Thus honored by royal decree, Richard Pynson, one of the great triumvirate of early English printers, which included William Caxton, and [...]

Writing on notepaper bearing the imprint, “at the Fleuron, 10 Adam Street, Adelphi, w.c.” Holbrook Jackson addressed himself to Oliver Simon Esq., at the Curwen Press, on this date in 1922: “Dear Simon, Thanks for yours of the 19th. I have spoken to Morison and he agrees with you and me that The Fleuron Society [...]

“It is designed, that the Countrey shall be furnished once a moneth (or if any Glut of Occurrences happen, oftener,) with an Account of such considerable thaings as have arrived unto our Notice.” Thus, bravely, did Numb. 1 of Publick Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic, appear on the streets of Boston on Thursday, September 25th [...]

On this day in 1905 one L.E. Cassatt, foreman of the Idaho Springs Gazette, took pen in hand to inform the Queen City Printing Ink Company of Cincinnati about a job of printing he had produced using the firm’s ink. “Dear Sirs,” wrote Mr. Cassatt, a compositor and pressman of forty years’ experience, ‘Today I [...]

Benjamin Franklin, in his role as entrepreneur, inserted in the columns of his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, on this day in 1742 an advertisement on behalf of his friend William Parks, the pioneer printer of Virginia: “An honest and diligent Person, that is capable of building a good Paper-mill, and another that understands the Making [...]

The present writer has discovered, inserted in a copy of the famous specimen book issued by American Type Founders Company in 1892 (the first to include the offerings of the various foundries which had amalgamated in 1892), a printer’s billhead for the sale of one thousand letterheads in two colors. The invoice was dated this [...]

On the evening of September 21, 1899, Edward Johnston stood up and faced the seven students who represented his first class in writing and lettering at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. At that point Johnston placed himself among those who were solidly responsible for the revival of interest in fine printing [...]

On this day in 1900 was born the charming lady who made her reputation as a man. Well! Who ever heard of a woman who knew anything about type? So it was quite natural that when Beatrice Warde completed her research which proved that Garamond type was not originally designed by Claude Garamond, she could [...]

The Council of Venice, on this day in 1492, appointed Giovanantonio Tagliente as writing-master in the Chancery of the Council. The appointment was over a year late, as Tagliente had addressed to the Council a Supplication for employment in May, 1491: “Most Illustrious and Excellent Prince, pious and glorious council! Humbly and devotedly sheweth for [...]

The art of printing came to Venice this day in 1469 upon the granting of a privilege to print to a Bavarian printer, Johannes da Spira, by the Senate of the city. The privilege gave Da Spira the exclusive right to print for a period of five years, a practice which became quite common in [...]

“This cannot be an easy life. We shall have a rugged time of it to keep our minds open and to keep them deep, to keep our sense of beauty and our ability to make it, and our occasional ability to see it, in places remote and strange and unfamiliar; . . .” This quotation, [...]

With Thomas MacKellar in the chair, a meeting of the typefounders of the United States began on this day in 1886, in the Spencer House at Niagara Falls, New York. The press release stated: ‘The representatives of twenty of the largest and best foundries in the United States were present, and never was there a [...]

In the city of Paris on this day in 1712 was born into the family of the printer and typefounder Jean Claude Fournier, a son—Simon Pierre or as he is more commonly known, Pierre Simon. The younger Fournier made a unique contribution to typefounding, both in theory and practice, by inventing a system of type [...]

“The Typophiles of New York greet you, Sjoerd Hendrik de Roos, on this your seventieth birthday, & wish you a long continuance of health and years in which to minister to the arts of the book. May your dedicated craftsmanship in type design, in printing and in binding inspire in the rising generation of bookmakers [...]

On September 13, 1587 the Italian language was first printed in England, with the august permission of John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury. The vehicle for this initial publication was, surprisingly, The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. Whitgift certainly did not have the reputation of admiring light literature, but Timperley reports that permission was granted primarily because [...]

Born in Baltimore, Maryland on September 12, 1880 was Henry Louis Mencken, one of the great American men of letters of our time. No matter how fine a reputation Mencken enjoyed as a writer, critic, philologist, he was most content to consider himself a newspaperman. As such he always had an affinity for printers, particularly [...]

“To bring together the posies of other men bound by a thread of one’s own choosing is the simple plan of the editor of the Bibelot. “In this way those exotics of Literature that might not immediately find a way to wider reading, are here reprinted, and, so to speak, resown in fields their authors [...]

The life of a proofreader in France was made more carefree this day in 1572 when a royal edict was published, saying, “The master printers shall deliver to compositors only copy which has been revised, edited, and put in proper form, to the end that the labor of typesetting shall not be slowed down by [...]

William Bulmer, English printer, died upon this day in 1830 in his seventy-fourth year. His name would appear prominently upon any list compiled of the great English printers of all periods, and he fully deserves this recognition. After serving a Newcastle apprenticeship, Bulmer journeyed to London, where he was employed by John Bell, one of [...]

“The British compositor is wedded to a very unhealthy practice,” stated a memorandum of the British Master Printers’ Federation, dated this day in 1907, “and with few exceptions, in nearly every office, one of the boxes in the upper case is filled with snuff from which frequent pinches are taken. Lately a feeling has arisen [...]

“September the seventh, 1480, thirteenth indiction. The most honorable tradesman, Nicolas Jenson, alien and printer of books, dwelling at Venice in the Parish of Saint Cancianus, being, by the grace of God, sound in mind and understanding though infirm of body, did send for me, Hieronymo Bonycardi, Public Notary under imperial license, and did seek [...]

George Clymer, teacher, carpenter, cabinet-maker, and indefatigable inventor, received on September 6, 1827 a patent for a platen press capable of printing, as the specification read in part, “two forms of double royal paper at one time, being a surface of four feet six inches by three feet three inches, which is twice the size [...]

A great and controversial historical figure was this day born in France in the year 1585. Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu lived to be a Prince of the Church and First Statesman of France under Louis XIII. Cast as a sinister character by many novelists and not a few historians, Richelieu thought first of [...]

As part of a four or five day visit to the Italian city of Turin on September 4, 1506, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, a few weeks prior to his forty-first birthday, received the degree of Doctor of Theology. Erasmus had received his bachelor’s degree in Paris in 1498 and had hoped to secure the doctorate at [...]

When compositors first became automated, they were anxious to exhibit their prowess in the operation of Mergenthaler’s Linotype machine by competing with one another in contests of speed typesetting, much as they had done when the hand type-stickers ruled the composing rooms. The machine-age swifts made appearances at county and state fairs and of course [...]

The Troy Budget, an upstate New York weekly of Jacksonian bent, printed a notice on this day during the presidential campaign of 1828 : “During the month of August just passed, we find on looking over our books, that 63 persons have become subscribers. Three persons have discontinued their papers, one because he was moving [...]

On the first of September in 1906, the strenuous twenty-sixth President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, attempted to add spelling reform to his long list of progressive achievements. In a letter to Charles S. Stillings, Public Printer, made public on this day, he said: “I enclose herewith copies of certain circulars of the Simplified [...]

When this day happened to occur on a Saturday during the last three centuries, it is probable that English printers took the opportunity to celebrate with a party which has been given the name of wayzgoose. The first factual account of this festivity appeared in the Mechanick Exercises of Joseph Moxon, published in 1683. In [...]

A broadside printed this day in 1734, setting forth the Rules of the Chapel, has survived to become one of the most important sources of information upon the working conditions in the printing office of the 18th century. Some of the rules to be observed by the compositors follow: “The Stones, Next of Drawers, &c. [...]

“On the 29th day of August, 1862 I commenced the work with one male assistant and four female operatives.” With this short statement by Spencer M.Clark, the chief clerk of the Bureau of Construction of the Treasury Department of the United States, recorded the promulgation of his orders from Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the [...]

To contemporary graphic designers, the name of Theodore Brown, Hapgood, Jr., a New England Yankee Gentleman who died on this day in 1938 is quite unknown. Yet a fellow designer said of him at his death: “He was a master designer with a passion for lettering. He believed that lettering on a tablet was as [...]

From Kelmscot House in Hammersmith on this day in 1894 William Morris wrote to his intimate friend, the architect Philip Webb, about the books being produced by his famous Kelmscot Press, at the same time getting in his usual little dig at Americans: “My dear Fellow “A traveller once entered a western hotel in America [...]

Of Christopher Sower, Jr. of Germantown, Pennsylvania, who died upon this day in 1784, the historian Isaiah Thomas said, “No medicines could be esteemed effectual, unless procured at Sower’s apothecary shop; no almanac, unless published by him, could be correct in time and weather; no newspaper promulgated truth but Christopher Sower’s German Gazette.” Thomas might [...]

This is a memorable date in the history of the republic. The event which made it outstanding was the burning and partial destruction of the capital city of Washington in 1814. The guiding spirit behind this feat of British arms was a rear admiral of the Royal Navy, Sir George Cockburn. Good friend and fighting [...]

The copy of the great bible printed by Johann Gutenberg in Maim, Germany and now in the possession of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, contains a note in the hand of Heinrich Cremer of St. Stephens College, Mainz, dated this day in 1456,that he had completed the illumination, headings, and binding. This is the earliest [...]

An advertisement in the New York Journal of this date in 1787 stated: “Mr. John Baine & Grandson, Letter-Founders, “Lately from Edinburgh, Having concluded to establish their Typefoundery at Philadelphia, removed to that city, on the 18th inst. with their founding machinery, leaving, at Mr. David Mitchelson’s corner of Fly-Market and Water-street, the following Founts [...]

“It has been my endeavor to combine the agreeable with the useful, and should this, a first attempt, meet with the approbation of the ‘Gentlemen of the Press,’ to whom it is most respectfully inscribed, the aim of the Compiler will be attained, his warmest wishes realized, and a debt of heartfelt gratitude be owing [...]

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin on this day in 1840 was born Nelson C.. Hawks, who was to become—to borrow a journalistic expression—the “father” of the American Point System of type measurement. At sixteen years of age Hawks was apprenticed to a printer, but a month after he had gone to work, his employers sold the business, [...]

In a letter addressed to the typefounder George Bruce on this day in 1855 Joel Munsell, the Albany printer and typographic historian, asked for precise information concerning the construction of the Ramage printing press, probably the most widely used press in America during the first thirty years of the 19th century. Nearly every account of the [...]

In the city of Antwerp the house in the Vrijdagmarkt (the Friday Market) was opened to the public on this day in 1877. This building was named the Three Compasses by the printer Christopher Plantin when he first occupied it in 1576, and for exactly three centuries a printing office was maintained on the premises [...]

Harold Curwen, proprietor of the distinguished English printing office, the Curwen Press, wrote under this date in 1920 to Oliver Simon, a recently demobilized young officer of the 53rd (Welsh) Divisional Cyclist Company: “I think I shall get this through all right but I’ll have to speak to the whole of the Combined Chapel before [...]

From the press established in Lima, Peru by the Italian printer Antonio Ricardo, there issued on August 17, 1854 the first piece of printing known to have been produced on the South American continent. Ricardo, a native of Turin, ha originally traveled to Mexico City about the year 1570, where he worked occasionally with the [...]

“Dear Doctor: A moment of historical importance, not only for our monastery but for the whole civilized and literary world, has come on: the moment in which we are about to put into your hands the most precious jewel of our archives, one of the oldest books of the world, a copy of the parchment-bible, [...]

A Presbyterian dominie who made solid contributions to the history of American invention was born this day in 1838 near Rochester, New York. Merritt Gally losthis father, also a minister of the Presbyterian persuasion, and found it necessary at the age of eleven to earn his own living. He apprenticed himself to a printer and [...]

The Cincinnati Advertiser, in its issue of this date in 1833, carried an announcement concerning the publication of what might well have been the first comic book to be produced in the trans-Allegheny west. The publisher was a Yale man, Nathan Guilford (Class of 18 12), in company with his brother, George. The title of [...]

William Morris, in a letter written on this day in 1884, mentions a Socialist meeting during which he held the chair. Quite possibly this was the meeting at which he met Emery Walker, as his daughter May Morris later wrote that the two men had met first at a Socialist meeting during 1884. The first [...]

Thomas MacKellar, printer, typefounder, author, and poet, was born this day in New York City in the year 1812. He is remembered today primarily as the author of The American Printer: A Manual of Typography, first published in 1866 and so popular that it went into eighteen editions. At $1.50 the text was a real [...]

“I sit in meditation on the matrices and punches of the Doves Press fount of type, and revolve in my mind whether I should destroy them in my lifetime, dedicate them to the purpose of the Press, and to the River upon whose shore the Press has lived and worked.” Thus reads the entry for [...]

Rarely mentioned among the hazards of life experienced by the itinerant printer as he tramped from job to job was the abuse he had to suffer intellectually, by having to set type for a variety of periodicals with whose opinions he did not necessarily agree. Concerning the vulnerability of the ubiquitous compositor to editorial suggestion, [...]

“The fact that Sam Nowell of the Class of August 9, 1653 had his ‘study in the printing roome’ indicates that the press had very little business; . . .” This statement by Samuel Eliot Morison in The Founding of Harvard College concerns the establishment which is generally termed the Cambridge Press, the first printing [...]

‘To the Right Reverend Father in GOD, JOHN Lord Bishop of Oxford, and Dean of Christ-Church; And to the Right Honourable Sir LEOLINE JENKINS Knight, and Principal Secretary of State, And to the Right Honourable Sir JOSEPH WILLIAMSON Knight; and one of his Majesties most this day Honourable Privy-Council.” Thus began a book about printing, [...]

Printers have ever been quick to dissent from prevailing acceptance of unsophisticated promotion; thus typo Charles H. Gard of Chicago followed tradition when he took pen in hand and placed tongue in cheek on this day in 1890 to write to the editor of a printer’s trade publication: “I clip the following from the Printer’s [...]

That the craft of printing in the California of 1849 was every bit as bounteous as prospecting for gold is obvious from the account of the establishment of the Pacific News which appeared in The Pacific Printer, Stationer and Lithographer in 1884: “Thirty-five years ago on the 6th of August, there arrived in the harbor [...]

An edition of two thousand copies of the L’Estrange translation of Seneca’s Morals was delivered on August 5, 1817 to the New York bookseller, Evert Duyckinck. At the foot of the title page of this volume was the imprint, “J. & J. Harper, printers,” representing the first use in any book of one of the [...]

The United States Patent Office granted this day in 1845 to Thomas W. Starr of Philadelphia a patent upon “an improved formation of the matrix for casting the face of type, borders, and cuts therein, by means of a type, or cut, and a metallic plate, with an opening in the matrix with slanting sides. [...]

A Belfast Orangeman named Hugh Gaine on this day in 1752 published the first issue of The New York Mercury, a newspaper which established a unique first in American journalism by simultaneously publishing in two locations, each with its own political philosophy. When he arrived in New York in 1745, upon the completion of his [...]

“Bibliotheca Moresiana: A Catalogue of the Large and Valuable Library of Printed Books, Rare old Tracts, Manuscripts, Prints and Drawings, Copper Plates, sundry Antiquities, Philosophical Instruments, and other Curiosities, of that eminent British Antiquary the late Rev. and learned Edward Rowe Mores, F.A.S., deceased.” Thus began the title page of Catalogue No. 17 of Auctioneer [...]

In the self-deprecating manner of the 19th century writer, one Thomas Hodgson wrote in the introductory chapter of An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Stereotype Printing, published this day in 1820: “The Writer of the following pages can the lay claim to little merit beyond that of collecting, into one publication, a variety [...]

In the Prologue to the edition of Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, completed upon this last day of July in 1485, its printer, William Caxton wrote: “After I had accomplysshed & Fynsshed dyvershystoryes as wel of contemplacyon as of other hystorycal and worldly actes of grete conquerors & prynces, And also certeyn bookes of ensaumples and doctryne, [...]

In 1894 a letter bearing this date was written by an English gentlemen named William Morris, using as his address, Kelmscott House: My Dear Cockerell I have to be at court tomorrow before 10 in order to be the first witness examined, so I shall probably miss you, and I shall probably not be back [...]

The typographical equivalent of the one-armed paper hanger is undoubtedly the left-handed compositor, and for five centuries the term has been one of derision. “How many readers of The Inland Printer,” asked Sam G. Sloane in 1888, “ever saw a left-handed typesetter? By this I mean a typesetter who picks up the types, places them [...]

In the office of the Washington Republican, a typesetting contest was held on this day in 1874. The first prize was a gold composing stick, with a silver stick to be presented for second. It is to be doubted, however, that the successful type stickers actually put their gold and silver sticks to actual use, [...]

A rested and refreshed crew reported back to the San Francisco printing office of John Henry Nash on the morning of this day in 1926. Nash’s customers were informed in a notice sent out some weeks previously that, “Everybody in the shop wanted to go fishing & they all wanted to go at the same [...]

On his day in 1775 the Second Continental Congress took action upon the report of a “Committee to consider the best means of establishing Posts for conveying Letters and Intelligence through this Continent.” Thus was the first publicly-owned American postal system set up in opposition to that of the British government. However, the role of [...]

The first issue of a periodical called Humors of a Coffee House appeared upon this date in London in 1707, published “for the benefit of a black coffee man called Bohee.” The “coffee break” is thus of ancient lineage, as proved by this publication and others similar to it during the 18th century. Prior to [...]

On this day in 1520 Henri Estienne, the elder, died. It is not known when he was first established as a printer, but about 1496, just twenty-six years after the first press came to France, his name begins to appear on scholarly books. During his lifetime, he published over one hundred of these, all of [...]

Here lyes the Daye that darkness could no blind When Papish fogges had overcaste the sunne, This Daye the cruelle nighte did leave behind To view, and show what blodi actes were donne He set a Fox to wright how martyrs runne By Death to lyfe. Fox ventured paynes and health To give them light: [...]

Born into a family of clothiers in Rochester, New York on this day in 1884, Elmer Adler proceeded slowly to the printer’s craft, taking thirty-six years to become involved in a printing office. But at his death in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1962, he was counted among a small group of men who have [...]

“Dear RR,” wrote a distinguished designer of printer’s typefaces on this day in 1937 to an equally distinguished graphic artist who was then working upon his first type design: “the way I work at present is to draw an alphabet 10 times 12-point size, with a pen or brush, the letters carefully finished.” The type [...]

“It is hoped that this humble attempt to bring to the knowledge of American readers, a quaint wad. beautiful little treatise upon a subject so interesting, written so many centuries ago, and by a man who played so distinguished a part in his time, as prelate, a statesman, and a scholar, will commend itself to [...]

Joell Munsell, printer, of Albany, New York, ‘recorded in his diary on this day in 1828, “For two years I have been taking much pains in collecting a copy of all the different papers published in the Union, and indeed, the world. The number I have procured already amounts to upwards of 400. It is [...]

Addressing the Editor of The Printer’s Register, a Dublin printer on this day in wrote about the effect of the Factory Acts Extension Act of 1867, relative to the employment of young people and women: “None of us can object to the general principles of the Act, or their application to our trade; but I [...]

On this summer day in 1903 in a Park Ridge, Illinois barn there was struck the first proof to come from the Village Press under the watchful eyes of its enthusiastic proprietors, Frederic W. Goudy, Bertha Goudy, and Will Ransom Whereas most private presses consider type to be but one of the appurtenances of a [...]

“At the beginning of this undertaking I made up my mind to copy nothing from the work of others, but to stick to nature as closely as I could; and for this purpose, being invited by Mr. Constable, the then owner of Wycliffe, I visited the extensive museum there, collected by the late Marmaduke Tunstal, [...]

That the century old House of Elsevier was no longer in existence became obvious when the printer-publisher Joseph Athias advertised in the Haarlemsche Courant on this day in 1683 that he had purchased from Madame Elsevier, widow of Daniel Elsevier, the typefoundry attached to the House, and was ready for business in the City of [...]

When John Henry Nash, the distinguished San Francisco printer, wrote to Bruce Rogers expressing an interest in acquiring the original matrices of Centaur type, he mentioned that their value was no doubt decreased due to their recutting as a Monotype face. Rogers replied, in part, in a letter dated on this day, 1930: “As to [...]

An almanac published in 1780 by the printer Isaiah Thomas in Worchester, Massachusetts, gained a unique distinction and greatly increased its printer’s reputation and subsequent business in almanacs with an accidental prognostication for this day. When the apprentice who was composing the page for this date inquired of Thomas what should be placed against the [...]

On this day in 1403, “the reputable men of the Craft of Writers of Text Letters those commonly called scriveners and other good folks citizens of London who were wont to bind and sell books” appeared before the Lord Mayor requesting him to form them into a guild. Permission to organize was granted the following [...]

John Bell the English publisher, typefounder, and bookseller, in his anxiety to produce the most splendid printing of his times, inserted into the columns of his own newspaper, The World, upon this day in the following advertisement: “Press-men for Book-work—Wanted, Four Complete Press-men, who can execute Book-work in the most perfect manner, and who can [...]

Born this day in the city of Boston in 1868 was a man whose career spanned the most important typographical trends of the last hundred years, and who lived long enough to be called the “dean” of American typographers, art directors, and designers. Will Bradley first handled type in his sixth year when his father, [...]

E.W.G. Kircher, a printer of Goslar, a city located just a few miles inside the eastern border of West Germany, petitioned the City Council on this day in 1796 as follows: “I, the undersigned, transfer to the engraver, Herr Walbaum of this town, and his wife the privilege graciously granted me by the Most Honourable [...]

‘Towne was not deficient in intellect and was a decent workman. He was a bon vivant, but he did not possess the art of accumulating and retaining wealth.” So wrote Isaiah Thomas, the American printing historian of Benjamin Towne, who died on July 8, 1793. That statement is practically the only decent remark concerning printer [...]

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Member of Parliament, dramatist, orator, and distinguished defender of the Press, died in London this day in 1816. Just three years previously his constituents of the town of Stafford had presented him with a “vase cup” which bore the following engraving: To the Right Hon. R. B. Sheridan the eloquent, intrepid, and [...]

William A. Dwiggins chose this date for the first illustration in his whimsical essay, Towards a Reform of the Paper Currency, Particularly in Point of its Design, published in 1932. The illustration bears the caption, “Infuriated Artists demolishing the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington. Morning of the 6th of July, 1951. First phase [...]

George Bruce, one of the best of the American typefounders, died on July 5, 1886, just four years after the printing of what, is considered to be one of the finest type specimen books produced in the United States—the 1882 catalog of the Bruce Type Foundry. Coming to these shores from his native Scotland in [...]

“In Congress, July 4, 1776.A Declaration by the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled.” Thus reads the heading of the first printed copy of America’s most famous document. The engrossed copy of the Declaration of Independence, signed by most of the members of Congress, is the one most readily recognized [...]

Andrew Marvell essayist, wit, controversialist, Member of Parliament, received upon this day in 1796 a letter which read, ‘If thou darest to print any lie or libel against Doctor Parker, by the eternal God, I will cut thy throat.” The correspondent, who merely signed himself J.G., was a partisan favoring Parker, the Bishop of Oxford, [...]

One of the earliest experiments in the creation of a roman alphabet which could satisfactorily lend itself to the more economic aspects of typesetting was granted the approbation of a patent on or about this day to Philip Rusher in 1802 by the British Patent Office. Rusher’s patent (No. 2620) reads as follows: “Various Improvements [...]

On this day in 1589 in Antwerp a man died of whom Thomas Frognall Dibdin wrote in his Bibliographical Decameron: “Of all the printers whose works have ever adorned the literary republic, none, I think, stand upon so broad and lofty a pedestal as Christopher Plantin Jenson and Robert Stephen had equal elegance, and Aldus [...]

On this day in 1948 occurred the death of the most prolific of all American type designers, Morris Fuller Benton. We have grown accustomed to considering Frederic W. Goudy as the type designer who contributed the widest variety of types to America’s composing rooms. But when comparing the output of the almost forgotten Morris Benton [...]

Compositor William A. Hunter, of Bryan, Ohio no doubt wearying of his continued purchasing of soap, received a patent this day in 1858 which offered some promise of alleviating the problem. The nature of Hunter’s contribution to the history of American ingenuity evolved the construction of a type case with a metallic screen bottom. In [...]

The bibliophile William Blades tells of a letter written by the Rev. C.F. Newmarsh, Rector of Pelham, to the Rev. S.R. Maitland, Librarian to the Archbishop of Canterbury, concerning a copy of the Boke of St. Albans printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496. This early English imprint, probably the most celebrated of all English [...]

The proof that a pugnacious Irishman named Joseph Charless was the first printer in the trans-Mississippi West is more or less taken from the records of a Dr. B.G. Farrar of St. Louis whose journal lists the printer as being dosed with calomel on this date in 1818. No doubt he needed it to rectify [...]

The benevolent Patent Office of the United States issued on June 26, 1860 a patent to Henry Harger of Delhi, Iowa for an invention which “consists in the arrangement of machinery in connection with the type case by which the typesare fed to the composing-stick, and of an arrangement of fingers and levers in connection [...]

The Journal of the Printing-Office at Strawberry Hill contains in its first entry, upon this day in 1757 the simple statement, ”The Press was erected. Wm. Robinson, printer.” The proprietor of the press was the English essayist Horace Walpole, younger son of the great prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Walpole’s attitude to printing may be [...]

To Crochallan came The old cock’d hat, the grey surtout, the same; His bristling beard just rising in its might, ‘Twas four long nights and days to shaving night; His uncurl’d grizzly locks, wild staring, thatch’d A head, for thought profound and clear, unmatch’d; Yet though his caustic wit was biting, rude, His heart was [...]

Non amo te, Sabidi, nec possum dicere quare, Hoc tantum possum dicere, non amo te. Or rather freely paraphrased from the Epigrams of Martial, as it appeared in the widely read Tom Brown’s Schooldays: I do not love thee, Doctor Fell The reason why I cannot tell, But this alone I know full well, I do [...]

In Augsburg, Germany on June 22 1484 was published the first book to be printed by a woman.The book was Sachsenspiegel by Eike von Repgow and the printer was Anna Rügerin. Frau Rügerin was the widow of a printer. In taking over her late husband’s printing office, she began a tradition in the craft, from [...]

The Fann Street Foundry of London was this day in 1820 auctioned to William Thorowgood, manager of a business called Patent “Roller Pump. “This gentleman was previously unconnected with the typographical profession,” wrote Talbot Baines Reed, somewhat disparagingly, in his History of the Old English Letter Foundries. In point of fact, Mr. Thorowgood was taking [...]

Robert Estienne the Paris printer, published on June 20, 1536 Seminarium, written by his brother Charles,a professor of Greek. This volume was but one of thirteen edited and printed by Estienne between the end of April and the end of September of that year. During a twenty-five year period the great scholar-printer printed some 465 [...]

John W. Gardner, President of the Carnegie Corporation, in an address before the annual meeting of American school board members on this day in 1962, said: “A school board member . . . should understand, for example, that there is a lot that no one knows for sure about the teaching of reading. Beware of [...]

On or about this date in 1788 a retired printer, statesman, and flyer of kites wrote to William Caslon III: “I yesterday received your favour of April 2, informing me that the Types I ordered by mine of Feby 17, would be shipt in about a Fortnight which I am glad to hear. I promised [...]

It was on this day in 1965 that the writer received from Don Canfield, the Utica, New York typesetter, a most welcome gift in the form of a copy of Typographical Printing Surfaces by Lucien Alphonse Legros and John Cameron Grant, a book which is long out of print and without which no technical library [...]

Mr. Porter Garnett, associate professor of graphic arts at Carnegie Institute of Technology, received a letter, dated this day in 1925, from Mr. Henry L. Bullen, curator of the Typographic Library and Museum of the American Type Founders Company, at Jersey City. This correspondence stated in part: “The Library has just received specimens Nos. 17 [...]

On this day in 1903 a young man named Dard Hunter just nineteen years old, awoke in the sleeping car of a railroad train to find himself in the Buffalo, New York station. The son of the publisher of the Gazette in Steubenville, Ohio, Hunter had been introduced to the typesetter’s case at eight years [...]

In the wake of the Conquistadors the art of printing came quickly to the New World. To Mexican printers must be given the credit for a number of notable firsts in the history of American printing. It was upon this day in 1544, just forty-two years after Columbus stepped upon the shores of the Western [...]

Not at all content to allow his works to speak for themselves, the great Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson wrote into the colophon of De Veritate Catholicae, “Moreover this new edition was furnished us to print at Venice by Nicholas Jenson of France, a true Catholic, kind towards all, beneficent, generous, truthful and steadfast. In the [...]

The earliest press to be established in Italy completed on June 12, 1465 its fourth book, De Civitate Dei of St. Augustine. The press then removed to Rome from its first location, the three Benedictine monasteries at Subiaco which make up the Abbey of Santa Scolastica. In 1454 the reigning Pope, Calixtus in, had appointed [...]

In a letter written upon this date in 1886 from New Brunswick, New Jersey, John F. Babcock, a compositor in the office of The Fredonian wrote of the earliest known contests of speed in typesetting in the United States. The letter was addressed to William C. Barnes, one of the great “swifts” of the period: [...]

“Being frequently censur’d and condemn’d by Different Persons for printing Things which they say ought not to be printed, I have sometimes thought it might be necessary to make a standing Apology for myself, and publish it once a Year, to be read upon all Occasions of that Nature.” So began an article published by [...]

“Nos, laus Deo, omnia absolvimus qua ad Biblla regia pertinent,” wrote the great Antwerp printer Christopher Plantin on this day in 1572, in a thankful and weary statement which may be translated, “Praise be to God we have finished everything pertaining to the Royal Bible.” Plantin bad reason to be weary, as he had just [...]

Issuing from the United States Patent Office on this day in 1869 was Letters Patent No. 91,175, entitled Improvement in Machinery for Sewing Books, in which the inventor stated: “Be it known that I, David McConnell Smyth, of Orange, in the County of Essex, and State of New Jersey, have invented certain new and useful [...]

Whenever contemporary pressmen discuss “wild” printing presses, the conversation invariably turns to the Hoe Patented Ten Cylinder Type-Revolving Press, illustrations of which appear in most histories of printing. The inventor of the machine, Richard March Hoe, died on this day in 1886 in Florence, Italy. He was the inventive genius of the Hoe family of [...]

Academicians but rarely descend to the level of bestowing honorary degrees upon printers for their contributions to our civilization. There come to mind but a half-dozen instances when an American college or university has called to a convocation platform a craftsman representing the industry, other than a rather steady flow of newspaper and magazine publishers. [...]

Across Harvard Yard at the commencement exercises on this June day in 1947 came the sonorous phrases of a recitation citing a printer for an honorary degree: “William Addison Dwiggins: Typographical designer whose skill and creative imagination have left a lasting impress on the pages of time.” Thus America’s oldest university honored with a Master [...]

At the age of seven years Isaiah Thomas was indentured to a Boston printer named Zechariah Fowle, on this day in 1756. The articles provided that: “The said apprentice, his said master and mistress, well and faithfully shall serve; their secrets he shall keep close; their commandments lawful and honest everywhere he shall gladly obey; [...]

On this day in 1693 William Anderton, an unfortunate printer, stood at the Bar of the Old Bailey before the august members of the Court, which included the Lord Chief Justice Treby, Mr. Justice Powell, Sir John Fleet, Lord Mayor, and Sir Salathiel Lovell, Recorder of London. Anderton was charged with high treason in the [...]

In Berwyn, Illinois on this date in 1897, Frederic W. Goudy, a bookkeeper of sorts, married Bertha Sprinks, whom he had known for about seven years. He thereby acquired a helpmate who exerted a most powerful influence on his subsequent career, as Bertha Goudy became one of its motivating forces. Almost immediately she was helping [...]

At Manchester, England on June 1, 1839, Charles H. Timperley completed his preface to A Dictionary of Printers and Printing, an octavo containing in 1,002 pages of brevier type, a storehouse of factual information concerning the progress of the craft of printing. The authoritative bibliographers of printing, Messrs. Bigmore and Wyman, say of it, “One [...]

A tiny bookplate, measuring 10½ x 5½ picas, containing the name of Samuel Phillips and dated May 31, 1652, might very well stand as a prime example of a well-designed book-plate. In addition it has historic value as probably the earliest known authentic American bookplate. This bookplate, simply designed with a border of acorn ornaments, [...]

James Conner, one of the important typefounders of the 19th century, died this day in 1861. Born near Hyde Park in New York’s Dutchess County, Conner became apprenticed to a printer at the age of thirteen. His indentures were interrupted the following year when he ran off to fight in the War of 1812. He [...]

“Gentlemen,” wrote James Watson to the Printers in Scotland in the preface of his book, History of the Art of Printing, published this day in Edinburgh in 1713,”That Men are not born for themselves, but for the Republick, is an ancient and universally applauded Maxim. And it is so agreeable to right Reason, that the [...]

William A. Kittredge was born into the family of a Lowell, Massachusetts printer on this day in 1891. Just fourteen years later he was beginning his apprenticeship as a compositor at the Parkhurst Press, Chelmsford, Massachusetts. Afterwards he undertook the traditional journey, working as far away from New England as Elk River, Idaho. By 1914 [...]

A faded statement, written in pencil on a piece of paper with the single word “Memorandums’ set in the left-hand comer in 18-point Gretchen caps, was attached to a page tom from a copy of The Inland Printer. Under the date of May 27, 1913 were the words, “Be sure the new boy sees this!” [...]

The renowned Theodore L. De Vinne was asked to state his views on the changing technology of the printing industry during the 19th century. In a broadly reasoned statement De Vinne expressed on this day in 1889 his attitude toward what critics were then calling the destructive forces which endangered the future of the industry. [...]

“Dear Sir,” wrote John P. Sheldon, founding editor of the Michigan Gazette on this day in 1829 to Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, “This is a specimen of the printing done by me on Mr. Burt’s typographer. You will observe some inaccuracies in the situation of the letters; these are owing to [...]

“The wildly enthusiastic youngster from Snohomish, Washington,” who helped Fred Goudy start the Village Press and then went on to a long and distinguished career in typography, died this day in 1955. Will Ransom’s interest in printing came about when as a boy he wrote out by hand his favorite stories, decorating them in the [...]

In the year 1752 upon this day a printer died in his ninetieth year, honored as the man who had introduced the art of printing into the middle colonies of British America. William Bradford thus occupies a distinctive place in the history of the craft in the United States. Bradford was apprenticed to his trade [...]

“Perfect typography is a science rather than an art. A thorough grasp of the craft is indispensable but it is not all, for the sound taste which distinguishes the perfect is based on a clear knowledge of the laws of harmonious form. It is true that it springs, as a rule, even though only in [...]

On May 21, 1948 Bruce Rogers was honored with the gold medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chauncey Brewster Tinker, who had made the presentation, stated in part: “I have the honor to present to Bruce Rogers, designer of books, the gold medal of the Academy for special distinction in the arts. [...]

Caleb Slower, printer, dedicated his lengthy work, The Printer’s Grammar; or, Introduction to the Art of Printing: containing A Concise History of the Art, with the Improvements in the Practice of Printing, for the Last Fifty Years, to his patron. Lord Stanhope, in a letter dated this day in 1808: “To the Right Honourable Earl [...]

An advertisement in Liberty Hall, Cincinnati on this date in 1807 announced the forthcoming publication of a book which was bound to titillate the frontier population: “For Publishing by Subscription, in one volume royal duodecimo, The Long and Interesting Trial of Charles Vattier.” Written by two “Gentlemen of Law Knowledge,” this volume took advantage of [...]

On this day just sixty years after Earnest Elmo Calkins set (and promptly pied) his first line of type in 1890, he received the medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, with the following citation: “To Earnest Elmo Calkins, Printer Writer, Collector, Dean of Advertising Men; Founder of the Advertising Agency As we know [...]

The passage of the infamous Stamp Act was announced bitterly by the New-Hampshire Gazette in its issue of May 17, 1765. The editor placed heavy black rules around the announcement, in which he declared that the new law would “oblige the Printers on this Continent to Raise more Money every Year, than was ever raised [...]

It was a happy day, indeed, for authors with writers’ cramp and for typesetters who had to follow copy, when on May 16, 1893 Patent No. 497560 was issued to a Brooklynite named Herman L. Wagner, who in company with his brother Franz developed the first typewriter with a visible front-strike design. The writer could [...]

An edition of Cicero’s Letters, from a printing of 300 copies at Venice by Wendelin Da Spira, was presented this day in 1471 to the Dominican convent in Nürnberg, by Friar Peter Schwartz. This volume, set in roman type, is an indication of the spread of the humanist ideas into northern Europe by way of [...]

In a sense, Bruce Rogers, who was born on this day in 1870, was both the first and last of America’s great artists of the book, enjoying an international reputation for over a half century. During his active career he designed over 700 volumes, among them some of the outstanding books of our times. No [...]

In the Mohawk Valley village of Little Falls in upstate New York was born this day in 1844 a boy named Linn Boyd Benton. He was destined to live for eighty-eight years and to add considerably to the technological advancement of the printing industry. Benton’s father was a lawyer who became interested in a career [...]

An advertisement appearing in the Philadelphia Aurora on this spring day in 1797 read: “TYPEFOUNDERS papier-maché Wanted, five or six journeymen typefounders, to whom the highest wages and constant employment will be given papier-maché Also an apprentice wanted. Apply at Binny & Ronaldson’s FOUNDRY, in CEDAR at the end of ELEVENTH Street, PHILADELPHIA, where any [...]

In the tiny village of Hatchel (pop. 400) in Germany was born this day in 1854 a man destined to revolutionize the printing industry of his time. Ottmar Mergenthaler was the son of parents who were both teachers. It was their desire that he also train for that profession but since the boy was more [...]

It might have been Thin Space McGill, but more likely it was Small Cap Jones, who—feeling poorly on this day in 1881—did something mighty unusual for a peregrinating printer; he stopped off to visit a doctor. The sawbones examined him and suggested that all he needed was a little more fresh air while sleeping. “Hell, [...]

The proprietor of the Northern Whig of Hudson, New York engaged this day in 1809 in a controversy with the local postmaster over the employment of an apprentice to fetch the mail, the postmaster demanding a written order from the editor upon each occasion that the boy appeared in his post office. The poor apprentice [...]

“Dear Sol,” wrote Frederic W. Goudy on May 8, 1947 in what was to be the last of countless letters which had come from the hand of the great type designer, “I would have written you long ago except for an acute attack of neuritis which has kept me in the house since early in [...]

At ten minutes after two o’clock on the afternoon of this day in 1915, the Cunard liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat. It sank in the Irish Sea with a loss of life of 1,257. Among these were Elbert Hubbard of East Aurora, New York and his wife Alice. Hubbard, the self-styled Fra [...]

“Typography may be defined as the craft of rightly disposing printing material in accordance with specific purpose; of so arranging the letters, distributing the space and controlling the type as to aid to the maximum the reader’s comprehension of the text. Typography is the efficient means to an essentially utilitarian and only accidental aesthetic end, [...]

On May 5, 1637 William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, informed the Vice-chancellor of Oxford University, “You are now upon a very good way towards the setting up of a learned Press.” His Grace was referring to the code of statutes, called the Laudian Code, set up eleven months previously, under which a printing office could [...]

At the tenth session of the Lateran Council, Pope Leo X issued a bull on this day in 1515, entitled Inter solicitudines, which became a part of the long struggle by ecclesiastical authorities to control printing. All books were to be submitted to the Cardinal Vicar and the “Magister Sacri Palatii” if printed in Rome, [...]

In a letter to the Editor of The Times of London, dated this day in 1917, Gerard T. Meynell, publisher of The Imprint, and a director of the Westminster Press, fine printers, wrote: “Sir—It would be interesting to know what Mr. Emery Walker thinks should be done with the Doves Press punches and matrices. The [...]

Eleven hair trunks were delivered to the city of Washington on the second of May in the year 1801 and were placed in the office of the Clerk of the United States Senate. The trunks contained the first purchase of books for the newly formed Library for “the Use of Both Houses of Congress.” There [...]

“On the first day of May, 1826, we set our initial stickful of types, followed by three more on the same day, all in brevier, besides laying a font of job type. It was our first day in any printing-office, and a high day it was, for we believe we leaped deerlike over every housetop [...]

The title page of a 12mo (pp. iv, 156) London, 1797 reads: “Typographical antiquities. History, Origin, and Progress of the Art of Printing, from its first invention in Germany to the end of the 17th century, and from its introduction into England, by Caxton, to the present time; including, among a variety of curious and [...]

The journal of Thomas James Cobden-Sanderson contained for this day in 1900 the following entry: “I have in hand now: (1) Organization of Printing Press. We are in treaty for No. 1 in the Terrace, and propose to install our printing press there. . . . And we have engaged a compositor, J.H. Mason, sent [...]

“Take it, therefore, in good part, and it please you, O devoted and worthy lovers of well-made letters, and believe that what I have done has been done with zeal and hearty good-will. Praying our Lord JESUS to give you all increase in well-made letters and excellent virtues, withall sound health of body and soul. [...]

Henry Lewis Bullen, one of the most prolific writers on the subject of typography, died on April 27, 1938 in his eightieth year, honored for a unique and outstanding career devoted to the advancement of the printing craft. Indefatigable in his efforts to raise the standards of the ordinary printer, this Australian-born typographic historian and [...]

“In the choice of books to print I have been influenced partly by my own personal taste in literature and partly by the suitability of a book from the purely typographical standpoint—or perhaps it would be more true to say by a combination of these two factors.” C.H. St. John Hornby, proprietor of the great [...]

“Since we must have books,” wrote Jean Jacques Rousseau, “there is just one which, to my mind, furnishes the finest of treatises on education according to nature. My son shall read this book before any other; it shall for a long time be his entire library, and shall always hold an honorable place. It shall [...]

On this day in 1911,the “greatest library ever assembled by an American” was auctioned in the first of the nine sessions which witnessed the disposal of 14,996 books, realizing the sum of $1,932,000, and making it by long odds the most important book auction ever held. The library had originally been gathered by Robert Hoe [...]

April 23, 1924, Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, American architect, died. While Goodhue achieved notable success in his profession, the printer’s fraternity is most interested in his contributions to the book arts. Beginning his career at the same time and in the same spirit as the William Morris revival, he produced innumerable decorative designs in the medieval [...]

At a point in the North Atlantic Ocean approximately Latitude 53° N., and Longitude 32° W., a battleship of the United States Atlantic Fleet was headed this day in 1942 on a zig-zag course. By this route the Navigator hopefully believed the ship would eventually reach port within a half day of the Estimated Time [...]

H.M. Leydenberg, Director of the New York Public Library wrote, on this day in 1936, to the printing historian and editor, John Clyde Oswald: “Let me thank you for your note of April 20th about the forlorn widow as the printer recognizes her. The question came up as a routine matter some time ago, and [...]

John Gamble an English paper mill proprietor, obtained on this day in 1801 a patent for a machine “for making paper, in single sheets, without seams or joinings, from one to twelve feet and upwards in length.” Thus, with patent No. 2487, the printing industry marched into the industrial revolution. While paper had first been [...]

“It is one of the more felicitous privileges of the bookman’s life to meet in this hall. In the sixty-odd years of the Grolier Club’s existence, it has made a distinguished name for itself as an association of book collectors and book makers. And I think it is sometimes overlooked that without book makers, that [...]

On April 18, 1925, a printer discussed in a radio talk the production of a book which had been printed in his plant. Normally reticent about speaking in public, William Edwin Rudge was perhaps emboldened by the fact that it was also his wedding anniversary. The Printing House of William Edwin Rudge, then located in [...]

Samuel Rust of New York City was granted a patent on this day in 1829 for a printing press, which he named after George Washington. For several years this machine was manufactured by the firm of Rust and Turney, but in 1835 it was taken over by R. Hoe & Company, the principal builders of [...]

In a paper read before the Society of Arts in London on this day in 1890,the English typefounder and writer, Talbot Baines Reed, discussed the revival of interest in typography then taking place. Most of his comments were to the point and bear repeating for the present generation of typographers: “As artists,” he began, “the [...]

Adam Mappa, one of the earliest typefounders to set up and practice his craft in the United States, died on this day in 1828. He was thoroughly convinced that his life had been of no consequence. As a young man he had served in the Dutch army as a lieutenant. When his father purchased a [...]

A series of letters, one of which was dated April 14, 1920, were written between a boy employed as a printer’s “devil” and the well-known printer of Salt Lake City, C.H. Porte. In them the numerous problems of the beginner in a printing office were discussed. The boy’s questions were plaintive, and the answers he [...]

“It is an easy thing to talk about the book—but difficult to find words that will give a true picture of the man. His was a character at once so simple that anyone could come to him, yet of such a nature that he evoked a feeling almost of reverence.” This, the opening paragraph in [...]

Upon this day in 1870 in Salisbury, Maryland a compositor named Alexander W. Collins was born. He was destined to live but forty-eight years and achieved no great repute during his lifetime. His accomplishments were of an order which could not attract wide notice, but they did happen to receive the attention of a printing [...]

“We cordially wish every book, job, or newspaper printer in America, north, east, west, and south, to consider himself on our free list; and if any time our paper fails to reach him, let him acquaint us with the mishap, and we will do what we can to remedy the evil.” Thus were the printers [...]

The imprint, “Press of A. Colish,” was for many years an indication of quality in printing far beyond the ordinary. Its proprietor, who died on this day in 1963, can well be considered one of the fine American printers of his time. Abraham Colish was introduced to the printer’s craft in the ’90′s when, in [...]

Shortly after Charles Dickens called New York City the most prosperous and worst-managed city in America, and another contemporary critic had complained, “She’s had, as far back as I can remember, the reputation of being the dirtiest city in the Union!” A reform mayor was elected, on April 9, 1844, in the person of publisher [...]

Early in 1891 there was set up in the Parish of St Bride in London a Foundation which was to be a center for educational and social activities in the area. This spot happened to be also the heart of the district which had contained, from the time of Wynkyn de Worde, the majority of [...]

“The printers beg leave to acquaint their Subscribers and the Public, that the Types with which this Paper is printed are of AMERICAN manufacture, and should it by this means fail of giving such entire satisfaction to the judicious and accurate eye, they hope every patriotic allowance will be made in its favour, and that [...]

“I am in receipt of your favor of March 25 in which you make inquiry as to my connection with the Paige Type-setting and Justifying Machine.” So begins a letter written on April 6, 1913 to Messrs. Lucien Alphonse Legros and John Cameron Grant, and reprinted in their monumental work, Typographical Printing Surfaces. The writer [...]

Upon this day in the happy extrovertish year of 1926 Oswald Bruce Cooper, a Chicago typographer and type designer, wrote a letter in which he predicted that Chicago would become the typefounding center of the country. “In case we fail,” he said, “we may be able to touch off a right smart red fire, anyway.” [...]

The journal of Will Ransom contained an entry for April 4, 1903: “Saturday. Before I went to work this morning I went up to see Goudy and he made me a proposition to work with him during the summer. I might make enough to live on, but probably not, and then he may go East [...]

The typefoundries of the United States were in the fresh bloom of youth in 1818. They had enjoyed almost unlimited prosperity as there were too few founders for the number of printers who needed type. These conditions were changing, however, and the founders were becoming competitive. In an “Advertisement” bearing this date, appearing in the [...]

In Leipzig, Germany, upon this day in 1902, was born Jan Tschichold, one of the fine typographers of our times. Just eighteen years later he was teaching calligraphy at the Graphic Arts Academy of Leipzig. In 1923, after attending the Weimar Bauhaus exhibition, he was carried away by the strong protest against the established values [...]

In Augsburg, Germany a printer named Erhardus Ratdolt printed a broadside specimen sheet on the first day of April in 1486. Upon the sheet appeared ten sizes of textura rotunda, or round gothic, three roman types and one Greek. In the colophon the printer titled his sheet Indicis characterum diversarum manerierum impression! paraterum. Finis. The [...]

An agreement “for an entirely new Method of Printing by Machine” was signed in London on this day in 1807 between an immigrant German printer named Frederick Koenig and the noted English printer, Thomas Bensley. The latter arranged to either purchase the “new Method” which happened to be a power printing press or to conclude [...]

In a gloomy cabin aboard the ship, Nelson, enroute to England, William Parks who had been Public Printer of both Maryland and Virginia, wrote his will as he lay dying of pleurisy on this day in 1750. He died two days later and was buried in his home soil from whence he had departed in [...]

It was undoubtedly inevitable that when the hand press was finally automated, it would be the result of the efforts of a compositor, and such proved to be the case when Frederick Koenig received a patent from the British Commissioners of Patents, dated this day in 1810. Koenig, a farmer’s son who had become a [...]

By decree of the Council of the Colony of Georgia on March 28, 1763, it was “Ordered That the Secretary of the Province do deliver such Laws to the Printer as the Commissioners shall direct to be printed taking his Receipt for same.” Just over a week later, James Johnston, a printer from Scotland, printed [...]

The second National Typesetting Tournament ended March 27, 1886 in Philadelphia, with a compositor named Alexander Duguid establishing a record for fast typesetting which has never been surpassed. Among the contestants were the professional swifts, men who engaged in contests for cash prizes in all parts of the country. During the last decades of the [...]

The production record of the Wicks Rotary Type-Casting Company of Blacksfriar Road, London, records on this day in 1901 the firm cast in a single machine 319,284 pieces of minion (7-point) type, utilizing the labor of one man and an unskilled helper, plus a three-horsepower motor. The production for the entire month of March of [...]

On the letterhead of the Department of Fine Arts of Wells College, in the Finger Lakes country of New York State, Victor Hammer wrote to his friend, Howard Coggeshall, the Utica printer, on this date in 1946 and enclosed some specimens of his recent printing at the Wells College Press. The outstanding item was A [...]

“I was born at Walthamstow in Essex in March 1834, a suburban village on the edge of Epping Forest, and once a pleasant place enough, but now terribly cocknified and choked up by the jerry-builder.” So wrote William Morris in 1834 referring to his birth upon this day. Born to enjoy a reasonable affluence, Morris [...]

In the year 1861 on this day, just three weeks before the guns sounded at Fort Sumter, the Kentucky-born publisher of the Indianapolis Journal, John D. Defrees, took office as the first Superintendent of Public Printing. In 1869 this title was changed to Congressional Printer, and in 1876 an Act of Congress decreed the office [...]

In 1834 upon this day a new sixteen page weekly named the New Yorker was published. It was edited by a young compositor from Vermont by the name of Horace Greeley, then just twenty-three years of age. In his opening statement, the youthful editor wrote, “Our paper is not blazoned through the land as ‘The [...]

On this date in the year 1794 John Hayes, a printer of Baltimore, Maryland, advertised that he had recently acquired “an elegant and complete apparatus” from Caslon in England. During this period it was quite common for the printers of the young republic to so advise their customers. It is evident that there was need [...]

The April issue of The American Mercury, edited by H.L. Mencken and George Nathan, was published on March 20, 1926. One of the stories entitled “Hatrack,” by Herbert Asbury concerned a prostitute. For this the publication was banned in Boston. Its censorship meant that it had run afoul of the Watch and Ward Society, self-appointed [...]

Advertising in the Federal Gazette of Baltimore on this date in 1812, Samuel Sower, typefounder, and grandson of the earlier founder, Christopher Sower, stated that he was “ready to execute orders for sizes from diamond to French canon, including music, script, and German text.” The tenth son of the second Christopher Sower, Samuel had originally [...]

Young typographic designers are frequently cautioned to be careful about the size of the types which they specify in their design. They are told that if they must err, to do so in favor of using larger sizes for body composition of promotional copy, particularly if the message is addressed to a high-priced audience, which [...]

On this day in 1838 the United States Patent Office granted to David Bruce Jr. a patent for modifications on a typecasting machine which greatly improved the original model of 1836. Although not the first American to develop a machine to free the typefounder from the dependence upon the laborious hand-casting of single types, Bruce [...]

A weary Venetian printer named Aldus Manutius on this day in 1503 finally decided that he had had enough and thereupon broke into print to announce the fact. Aldus was primarily concerned with the pirating of his printed works. One of the great publishers of any era, Aldus had been meticulous in the editing of [...]

“I think I am dying,” wrote Sir Sidney Carlyle Cockerell upon a set of postcards of the spring flowers in Kew Gardens, and sent them to his family and friends, postmarked this day in 1962. The fact that he was then in his ninety-fifth year and had been confined to his bed for a number [...]

John Mansir Wing, compositor, editor, and bibliophile, died on this day in 1917 in the city of Chicago, leaving all of his earthly possessions to the Newberry Library of that city. Born in New York’s Oswego County in 1845, Wing served an apprenticeship at the type case at an early age and worked as a [...]

On this day in 1895 a young man named Charles Harry St. John Hornby sat down to tea with William Morris, following an inspection of the Kelmscott Press at Hammersmith. The Press was then engaged in the printing of the great folio Chaucer. Just one year previously Hornby had started a small private press, as [...]

“There is no such thing nor can there be such a thing as ‘the ideal book.’” So began an essay on the ideal book, written by Porter Garnett, of the School of Printing at Carnegie Institute of Technology and founder of the Laboratory Press. He was born on March 12, 1869 in San Francisco. After [...]

“The rush of office-seekers upon the departments exceeds anything of the kind ever before known. From all morning till late in the evening, Uncle Abe and each of the members of the cabinet are beset by men, women and children.” So said the Baltimore Sun of this date in 1861. It was describing Washington where [...]

“Hearing / Before the / Committee on the Library / House of Representatives / Seventy-first Congress / Second Session / on / H.R. 6147 / A bill authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to pay to the Joint Committee on the Library the sum of $1,500,000 for the purchase of the collection of three thousand [...]

A slyly inserted item appeared in the New York Tribune under this date in 1868, concerning its rival, the World: “On Wednesday night the compositors of the World quarrelled over a ‘fat take,’ and during the row accidentally pied a ‘saving galley,’ containing the following words: —146 Grants, 122 drunken louts, 40 Greeleys, 6,000 Tribunes, [...]

Born on this day in 1865 in Bloomington, Illinois, Frederic W. Goudy lived to be the best known American printer of his times. He achieved international renown as a letterer, a type designer, and a typographer. He was also the operator of a most distinguished private press, the Village Press. Fred Goudy came late to [...]

“This book has been a conspiracy. Building it has been an adventure, an experience, a headache and a pleasure . . . mixed up day by day.” So wrote Paul A. Bennett in the introduction of a book put together for a single purpose, presentation to Frederic W. Goudy on this day in 1935, the [...]

The British periodical, The Printer’s Register, dated on this day in 1868, contained the following item: “The Typos and Artemus Ward—The Chicago Evening Journal says that the National Typographical Union at its session in Washington, adopted a resolution directing that the funds now in the hands of the late secretary and treasurer, collected for the [...]

In a letter written to the editor of The American Printer on this day in 1921, a printer from Pittsburgh tried to express his attitude toward his work. Undoubtedly the personal philosophy of James E. Creech has been matched by countless other printers who remain completely anonymous, particularly in the days when men accepted simpler [...]

On March 4,1921, Warren Gamaliel Harding was inaugurated as the twenty-ninth President of the United States. Upon his nomination the previous summer, he was referred to in the trade press as “Our Printer President,” the first presidential nominee to be so honored. “Senator Harding is practical in every department of the newspaper game,” said George [...]

The Library of the Congress was assured of continuous growth by an enactment of Congress on March 3, 1865 which required that one copy of each work copyrighted in the United States was to be deposited in the library within one month of the date of publication. The same act extended protection to photographs and negatives. [...]

The first United States patent for a power printing press was awarded on this date in 1826 to a silversmith turned inventor named Daniel Treadwell. This press, a bed-and-platen machine, was first produced about 1822 and was an improvement over the hand presses of the period, supplying as it did, power to make the impression [...]

On this day in 1837 was born a man who became one of the great literary critics of his time—William Dean Howells. Beginning as a compositor in his father’s country printing office in Ohio, Howells received very little schooling. He is an outstanding example of the self-educated man. He served as U.S. Consul in Venice, [...]

“The Printer to the Reader, Philadelphia, February 29, 1743/4.” So began the colophon to M.T. Cicero’s Cato Major, or His Discourse on Old Age, printed and published by Benjamin Franklin, and considered to be Franklin’s finest effort as a printer. The colophon continued: “This version of CICERO’S TRACT de Senectute, was made Ten Years since, [...]

The colophon of a private press book which was completed in Pittsburgh on this date in 1926 reads: Here endeth (paradoxically) ‘That Endeth Never,’ written by Hildegarde Planner as a gift for Porter Garnett and now embellished and put into type by him, at the Laboratory Press, for her and a few of their common [...]

Johann Fust, a money-lender of Mainz who had been a partner of Johann Gutenberg in the establishment of the world’s finest printing office, died in Paris on this day in 1466, whence he had gone to sell printed bibles. He was probably the victim of a plague which swept that city during that year. Fust [...]

In the city of Munich, Germany on February 26, 1834 there died in moderate circumstances in his sixty-third year, a former actor-dramatist named Alois Senefelder, the inventor of the printing process called lithography. The son of an actor of the Theatre Royal in Munich, Senefelder was sent to the university of Ingolstadt to study jurisprudence, [...]

In a letter to the editor of the Press News on this date in 1893, William Morris proprietor of the Kelmscott Press, substantiated what he had said to a representative of the London Daily Chronicle when pressed for his views upon printing and the current state of the art in England and across the Atlantic [...]

In the city of Providence, Rhode Island, Daniel Berkeley Updike was born upon this day in 1860. With no practical background as a printer, he was destined to become one of the great American printers, and with no formal education as such, to become an outstanding scholar of printing, responsible for the revival of interest [...]

“John Howard Benson died on February 23, 1956, in Newport, Rhode Island, where he had spent all the fifty-four and a half years of his life. Artist, calligrapher, sculptor, scholar, and humanist, he was unquestionably America’s leading designer of incised letters.” Thus begins the short biography of Benson, written by his friend Philip Hofer, and [...]

On this day in 1802 the Philadelphia Typographical Society presented a list of rates which printers expected to receive from their employers for the various classes of work. The Society had been formed that year as a benevolent and trade group. It exists in that capacity at the present time and is the oldest of [...]

“I thank God,” wrote Sir William Berkeley, royal governor of Virginia, in 1671, “there are no free schools, nor printing an I hope we shall not have, these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them. . . . God keep us from both!” [...]

On this day, in 1947, James T. Babb, librarian of Yale University, journeyed to New York City with a check in his pocket made out in the sum of $151,000 to Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach, America’s great rare book dealer. In return for this slip of paper he received a copy of what appeared to be [...]

In the Old Bailey, on this day in 1663, one John Twynn, printer, was condemned to death for high treason for the printing of a “seditious, poisonous, and scandalous book, entitled A Treatise on the execution of Justice is as well the people’s as the magistrate’s duty, and if the magistrates prevent judgment, then the [...]

In a Dedicatory Epistle addressed to Matthieu de Longue-Joue, Bishop of Scissons, the punchcutter Claude Garamond thanked the ecclesiastic for the use of a theological work printed in his new type. Dated February 18, 1545, the dedication read: “That I, an unknown and private individual, should offer and dedicate the first fruits of my work [...]

“A.D. 1801, February 17th—No. 2481. Mathias Koops of James Street, Westminster, gentleman, for a method of manufacturing paper from straw, hay, thistles, waste, and refuse of hemp and flax, and different kinds of wood and bark, fit for printing and other useful purposes.” So stated the Great Seal Patent Office of London, upon the granting [...]

On February 16, 1914, died the most honored printer in the United States—Theodore Low De Vinne. With no formal education, De Vinne was the recipient of the degree of Master of Arts from both Yale and Columbia Universities. The citation at the Columbia convocation was read by President Low: “As you are thus the master [...]

A newspaper clipping had been inserted in a copy of the original journal maintained by Horace Walpole in which he recorded his experiences with the “Press at Strawberry Hill.” It described an event taking place on this day in 1731. “A Printing Press, and Cases for Composing, were on Monday put up at St. James’s [...]

In the light of the contemporary relationship between printers and their employers, there is a certain aura of respect evident in a document prepared by the Compositors of London on February 14, 1793 for delivery to the Master Printers. Under the heading of The Address of the Compositors of London to the Master Printers, the [...]

On this day in 1890 the Pall Mall Gazette of London carried an account of an interview with a pair of ladies who had possessed the temerity to invade the province of the Victorian Make by founding a Journalists’ Training Home for Women, in which were to be trained compositors, readers, shorthand writers, reporters, and [...]

Residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the City of Washington, D.C. have from time to time been prevailed upon to say a few words about printing, generally about the time of Benjamin Franklin’s birthday. It is rare indeed that any President of the United States has mentioned the art prior to his elevation to the [...]

The first person ever to print on a train was born on February 11, 1847. As he was to become the greatest inventive genius of his time, it is unfortunate that his interest in printing was of short duration. The present electronic upheaval in the craft might have come a half century earlier had Thomas [...]

The compositor who composed on this day in 1734 the even lines of Latin prose which made up William Caslon’s first specimen sheet no doubt considered the task quite ordinary, such was the level of literacy of most of the printers of that period. His employer, the typefounder William Caslon, had started something however which [...]

This day in 1777 Samuel Johnson nominated for membership in the exclusive Literary Club of London, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose play, The Rivals, had so captivated audiences two years previously. Perhaps Dr. Johnson was attempting to placate the playwright’s father, with whom he was constantly embroiled, but he did enjoy the comedy and may indeed [...]

“It was born of compromise and courage, but grew and prospered through the faith of men who believed in its destiny.” These were not the resounding words of one of the founding fathers of our nation, but instead represent the opinion of a president of the American Type Founders Company, which was incorporated this day [...]

On this day in 1941, Daniel Berkeley Updike acceded to a request from the Typophiles to write a short introduction to the collection of wartime letters which Beatrice Warde wrote from London to her mother in New York. This compilation was published as one of the Typophile Chap Books under the title, Bombed But Unbeaten. [...]

On February 6, 1868 the English printing periodical, The Printers’ Register, published the “Reflections of an American Country Printer on Printing Considered as a Fine Art.” The country printer evidently chose to remain anonymous but his meditations have the universality of all printers in love with their craft. “The great intelligence of printers,” he wrote, “is [...]

“The generosity of your invitation to me to speak on this important occasion leaves me a trifle bewildered. I am so accustomed to being told to keep my opinions to myself that being thus unexpectedly encouraged to express them gives me some cause to wonder if I have, or ever had, any opinions upon the [...]

Probably the earliest known use of a printer’s mark which pictured the printer himself occurred in a book, Heures à l’Usaige de Rome, published on this day in Paris in 1489 by Jean du Pré. The device was apparently cut in relief on metal, a method quite common in French books of the period. This [...]

Born on this day in Troy, Ohio, in 1844 was the American inventive genius, Tolbert Lanston, the producer of the successful typesetting machine, the Monotype. Leaving school at fifteen years of age, Lanston worked in Ohio and Iowa before volunteering for service with the Union Army during the Civil War. After this term he was [...]

On this day in 1952 the writer received from William A. Dwiggins of Hingham, Massachusetts a limited edition printing of an excerpt from the pen of Hokusai, the remarkable 19th century Japanese draughtsman, book illustrator, painter, and wood engraver. The philosophy expressed in this fragment from the introduction to Hokusai‘s Hundred Views of Fuji unquestionably [...]

“Abel Buell of Killingworth in Connecticut, Jeweller and Lapidary, begs leave to acquaint the Public, and the Printers of the Several Colonies, that he hath already entered upon the Business of founding Types, which as Soon as he can furnish himself with Stock, will sell for the same price at which they are purchased in [...]

British Standards 2961:1958 titled Typeface Nomenclature was published on January 31, 1958. It represents an attempt to systematize the terminology of a craft which had heretofore resisted such endeavors for over five hundred years. While there is a reasonable amount of agreement on some printing trade terms and it wouldn’t take very long for any [...]

Henry Barth died on January 30, 1907. A printer, engineer, and typefounder, he invented the typecasting machine which bears his name and upon which all the present-day typecasting machines used by the world’s typefounders are modelled. Barth was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1823. He first worked for the typefounder Schelter & Giesecke as a [...]

At 10 o’clock on this Monday morning in 1951, three men drove a station wagon to the Idlewild Airport in New York City. One of these men was a Customs broker. He was equipped with a set of pre-entry forms by which he expected to appease the Customs officials sufficiently to bring about the release [...]

On this day in 1706 John Baskerville was baptized. He thus began life with a blessing, although he ended as a Free Thinker and—in the opinion of many of his contemporaries—an atheist. Honored now for his reputation as a great printer and as the designer of one of the universal typefaces, Baskerville’s personal life is [...]

On January 27, 1878, George Phineas Gordon died, leaving a will which was so well hidden that it was not found for twelve years, and about one million dollars for his heirs to squabble over—all of which had been acquired in the manufacture of printing presses. Gordon, born in Salem, New Hampshire in 1810, had [...]

“The old pre-Revolutionary mill at Marlborough, in which Frederic W. Goudy famous type designer, has his studio and workshop since 1923, burned to the ground early Thursday morning [January 26, 1939], with everything it contained. The loss is tentatively estimated at $50,000 at least; the money value of many of the things destroyed is beyond [...]

Apprentice contracts are still required between employer and employee, but the language in which they are composed is quite mild compared to that used during the last century, if we can accept as normal a contract made this day in Canada. It is probably period. “This indenture, made the Twenty-fifth day of January, one thousand [...]

The United States Patent Office on January 24, 1854, granted to William Overend of Cincinnati a patent for “intended to give to paper the proper dampness, in order to prepare it for the press. A given quantity of paper is placed upon the table, and is fed into the machine by nippers, when it is [...]

“Mr. Caslon is an Artist, to whom the Republic of Learning has great obligations; his ingenuity has left a fairer copy for my emulation, than any other master.” So wrote John Baskerville about the most famous of all English typefounders, William Caslon, who died January 23, 1766. It is curious various accounts of how Caslon [...]

In a bull dated January 22,1587, Pope Sixtus V issued a mandate officially recognizing the press which he had ordered established the previous year in the Vatican Library. Called at first the Typographia Vaticana, this press has survived under a variety of names and is presently known as the Vatican Printing Office. Sixtus V, the [...]

“I have to apologize to my kind readers,” wrote Editor James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald on this date in 1836, “for the want of my usual life today.” He went on to describe an attack upon his person in which he was severely caned by Col. James Watson, editor of the Courier [...]

The life of one of America’s fine printers came to a premature end on this day in 1962. Peter Beilenson introduced countless bookbuyers to good printing at extremely reasonable prices through the medium of his Peter Pauper Press. He was a man who had early in life decided what he wanted to do and who [...]

“Amidst the darkness which surrounds the discovery of many of the arts, it has been ascertained that it is practicable to trace the Introduction and Progress of Printing, in the northern part of America, to the period of the revolution.” Thus a printer named Isaiah Thomas who was born on this day in 1749, stated [...]

The Typothetae of the City of New York met on the evening of January 18 in 1886 to honor two printers, Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain. The white-shirted audience who attended the affair, held at the grand old restaurant, Delmonico’s, ostensibly to honor Dr. Franklin, was not above allowing the humorist to share the proceedings, [...]

If any printer doesn’t know that his patron saint was born upon this day in 1706, he must be a hibernating mammal, as each year the printing industry uses Benjamin Franklin‘s birthday as an excuse to stand up and shout, “Look at me, I’m a printer, too!” Possibly a hundred years ago this date was [...]

Suggesting a scheme for preparing correct texts, the Birmingham printer John Baskerville wrote to Robert Dodsley, the foremost 18th century London publisher of belles-lettre, on this day in 1754: “Tis this. Two people must be concerned; the one must name every letter, capital, point reference, accent, etc., that is, in English, must spell every part [...]

“The Charles Whittinghams, Uncle and Nephew, were creditors of our age, or at least, of those among us who confess a liking for comely books. There is a real debt of thankfulness still owing them, and a considerable balance of it will be carried forward to the account of generations which are yet to come [...]

It was possible upon this date in 1920 for a fortunate bibliophile with an interest in printing to purchase at auction any of the more than two thousand books from the library of the great American printer, Theodore Low De Vinne which were then being offered for realized just over twenty-four thousand dollars, and the [...]

Felice Feliciano of Verona, Italy, wrote a dedicatory letter to Andrea Mantegna, the painter, on this day in 1464. This communication appeared in a book of epitaphs. Feliciano had earlier written Alphabetum Romanum, which is probably the earliest book concerning the geometric construction of roman capitals. A splendid new edition of this work was printed [...]

The chronological account of the life of Jan van Krimpen states that he was born upon this day in 1892, that he died on October 20, 1958, and that between these dates he was a typographer specializing in the design of books and was, in addition, a type designer. When typographers discuss among themselves the [...]

“I wish you would resolve henceforth to write one such article per week,” wrote publisher Horace Greeley to Bayard Taylor, born this day in 1825,” and sign your own initials or some distinctive mark at the bottom. I want everyone connected with the Tribune to become known to the public (in some unobtrusive way) as [...]

Pierre Simon Fournier called le juene, applied upon this day in 1757 to be appointed a master printer, without the necessity of serving as an apprentice and journeyman. For Fournier this was no quick way to success, as he was then forty-four years of age and already a distinguished punchcutter and typefounder. He but wished [...]

Published upon this day in the year 1775 was the first great best-selling book on the American continent. Written by Thomas Paine, staymaker, pedagogue, customs officer, journalist, and toper, Common Sense was an instantaneous success, being hawked in almost every corner of the English Colonies within days of publication. It has been estimated that the [...]

On this day in 1775, John Baskerville died. Born at Walverley, in Worchestershire, England, in 1706, Baskerville at an early age acquired such skill in penmanship that he was prompted to maintain a school in the subject in Birmingham. In 1735 he began a career in the japanning process which was then most popular for [...]

Born into the family of a French printer on this day in 1730 was François Ambroise Didot, who was destined to become the most influential member of one of the most distinguished families ever to practice the printer’s craft. Along with his younger brother, Pierre François, F.A. Didot fully established the family reputation in the [...]

A footnote in the history of the manufacture of printing presses in the United Sates is taken from the American Apollo, published on this date in Boston 1792, which stated that it had been printed on “the first complete Printing-Press ever made in this town—the wood-work was made by Mr. Berry, and the iron work [...]

“Eureka!” exclained a former compositor named Sam Clemens, at 12:20 p.m. on this day in 1889. The esteemed author and humorist, Mark Twain, then went on to say, “At this moment I have seen a line of movable type, spaced and justified by machinery! This is the first time in the history of the world [...]

Henry George Bohn, English linguist, bookseller, publisher, and art connoisseur , was born upon this day in 1796. He achieved distinction in all of these endeavors until his death in his eight-ninth year. Appearing before the Philobiblon Society in April, 1857, he gave a long and curious lecture concerning the history of printing. It was [...]

“Your suggestion that I write a note about the work of my friend W.A. Dwiggins falls happily with my mood.” So began a letter written this day in 1939 by the President of the Society of Calligraphers, Dr. Hermann Püterschein. “. . . moreover,” continued the good doctor, “there are one or two points about [...]

According to Mr. P.J. Conkwright, typographer to Princeton University, the first use, to his knowledge, of the type-cast dollar sign ($) occurred in the year 1802 on this date. The vehicle of this typographic innovation was William Duane’s Philadelphia Aurora, in which appeared a Treasury Department report by Abraham Alphonse Albert Gallatin, the brilliant Swiss [...]

Upon a Monday morning on this date in 1787, was published the first issue of The World, or Fashionable Advertiser, a periodical which published the best current writers, including Richard Brinsley Sheridan. The proprietor of this immediately successful journal was John Bell—bookseller, printer, publisher, typefounder, journalist, &c, to use the title supplied by his 20th [...]