History of printing press

The History Of Print From 1800 To 1849

During the nineteenth century the productivity of presses
increased greatly, partly because of improvements in
their construction and partly because of the use of steam
to power them. As a result, print becomes more
affordable and accessible to the working class. A typical
example of this are the so-called penny prints, cheap
single page prints which often commemorate important
and unusual events. The example below is a humorous
19th-century penny print depicting a henpecked husband
who gets a beating from his bossy wife. Such prints
already existed in the previous centuries, but this one is
printed with two additional spot colors.

A 19th century penny print of Jan De Wasscher

1808 – First printing in Brazil

In Spanish America printing presses are introduced fairly
early, such as in Mexico (before 1540) or Peru (1584). In
Brazil, which is under Portuguese reign, this happens
much later. Some pamphlets were printed in the
eighteenth century but the first official printing press is
only installed in 1808.

1800 – Iron presses

Inspired by earlier attempts by Swiss typefounder
Wilhelm Haas, Charles Stanhope, the third Earl Stanhope,
builds a press which has an iron frame instead of a
wooden one. It can print around 200 impressions per
hour. Because this Stanhope press is also more durable
and can print larger sheets, other press manufacturers
soon switch to a similar type of construction.

Stanhope press

1810 – History of Printing in America

Isaiah Thomas creates the two-volume History of Printing
in America which is one of the best resources on colonial
printing in the United States.

1814 – First cylinder presses

Friedrich Gottlob Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer
build their first cylinder press, which is much faster than
the existing flatbed presses. One of the first customers is
John Walter of The Times. The first issue of The Times
that is printed with the new presses is published in 1814.
The press is installed in secret to avoid sabotage by
disgruntled pressmen operating the existing Stanhope
presses. The machine is capable of printing over 1100
double-sided sheets per hour. In 1817 Koenig & Bauer
return to Germany and start building presses in an
abandoned monastery in Würzburg. Their company is
nowadays known as KBA.

Koenig double cylinder press

1816 – Columbian Press

The cast iron Columbian Press, invented by George
Clymer, can produce 250 prints per hour. The Eagle
mounted on top is not just a decorative element, it also
serves as a counterweight.

Columbian press
1817 – Cardboard boxes
The first cardboard box packaging is produced. The
Kellogg Company is the first to use it for packaging
cereals in the late 19th century.

1821 – De La Rue is founded

Thomas de la Rue starts a printing company in London. In
1831 the company is allowed to produce playing cards,
with postage stamps following in 1855 and banknotes in
1860. Nowadays it is the largest security printing
business in the world.

1826 – Dandy roll

John Marshall invents the dandy roll which makes it
much easier for paper manufacturers to add a watermark
to paper.

1827 – Baedeker travel guides

Verlag Karl Baedeker is founded by Karl Baedeker. It
publishes travel guides and becomes such a household
name that such guides are often referred to as
‘Baedekers’. The guide below, photographed by Manfred
Heyde, shows a guide from 1910.

Baedeker travel guide

That same year Rudolphe Töpffer creates the world’s

first comic strip in Switzerland and the first sections of
The Birds of America are published. This book by John
James Audubon contains illustrations of a wide variety of
birds of the United States and is considered a
masterpiece of contemporary engraving and printing.

John James Audubon - The Birds of America

1829 – Braille is invented

Louis Braille publishes his Braille alphabet, a tactile
reading system for the blind.

Braille
1830 – Dust jackets made of paper and sealed with wax
Expensive books are protected by a dust jacket, a
removable paper wrapper. The oldest one in existence is
from 1830.

1832 – Automating binding

Philip Watt invents the sewing machine, a major step
forward in automating binding.

1835 – Bertelsmann
Carl Bertelsmann founds C. Bertelsmann Verlag as a
German Protestant publishing house. Over time this
company will become the largest printing group in
Europe.

1837 – Chromolithography
In France, Godefroy Engelmann is awarded a patent on
chromolithography, a method for printing in color using
lithography. Chromolithographs or chromos are mainly
used to reproduce paintings and scenic photographs. A
reproduction of an oil painting which is printed on canvas
or gets a canvas-like texture using embossing is called an
oleograph. Compared to a hand-colored litho a chromo
can be fifty percent cheaper. The advertisement below is
from the end of the century and shows what can be
achieved using this color printing technique.

A chromolithograph from around 1890

In the United States, A. Hoen & Co in Baltimore is one of

the first printing companies to use the technology.

Lithographers A Hoen

Another patent from the same year is that of William

Hancock for binding books using glue. After a book is
printed, folded and collated its spine is trimmed and
roughened using sandpaper. Instead of sewing several
coats of rubber (caoutchouc) are then applied to hold the
pages together. Rubber has nowadays been replaced by
other adhesives but Hancock’s perfect binding method is
still the way paperbacks, thicker magazines or catalogs
are bound.
1840 – The first adhesive postage stamp
The Penny Black is the first adhesive postage stamp. It
allows UK citizens to send letters of up to 14 grams to
any location in the country at a flat rate of one penny.

Penny Black adhesive postage stamp

1841 – Anastatic printing

Anastatic printing is a process to create a facsimile or
identical copy of a document. As such, it is an early
forerunner of photocopying. Its most well-known
proponent is Edgar Allan Poe, the American poet and
writer who publishes an article on the potential and
dangers of the technique.

1842 – The first illustrated weekly newspaper

The Illustrated London News is the world’s first
illustrated weekly newspaper. It costs five pence. From
1861 onwards such newspaper becomes a lot cheaper in
the United Kingdom because of the abolition of paper
duty.

1843 – First use of photos in a book and first Christmas

cards
Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions by
English botanist and photographer Anna Atkins is the first
book ever to be illustrated exclusively with photographs.
The 389 photos are all made by placing algae directly
onto photographic paper and exposing them using
sunlight.

First book with only photographs as illustrations

That same year Sir Henry Cole commissions the English
painter John Callcott Horsley to do the artwork of
(arguably) the first commercial Christmas card. Around
1000 cards are printed and hand-colored. Ten of these
are still in existence today. The card was fairly
controversial in its day because it featured a child taking
a sip from a glass of wine.
The oldest mass-produced Christmas cardIn 1843 the
American inventor Richard March Hoe builds the first
lithographic rotary printing press, a press in which the
type is placed on a revolving cylinder instead of a
flatbed. This speeds up the printing process considerably.

Hoe rotary press

Printing gets even faster in 1870 when Hoe builds a

rotary press that prints both sides of a page in a single
operation. This roll-fed press has a speed of 240 meters
(800 ft) per minute. It is used for printing newspapers
and includes a built-in cutting unit and separate folder.

1844 – Using wood to produce paper

The Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty and his German
counterpart F.G. Keller simultaneously invent a new
papermaking technique based on pulping wood. Until
then all paper was made from pulped rags. Cotton fiber
is still used today but only for specialty applications such
as currency.
1846 – AP is founded
Five daily newspapers in New York City create The
Associated Press (AP) to share the cost of transmitting
news of the Mexican-American War by boat, horse
express, and telegraph. Other news agencies from the
same era are Agence France-Presse or AFP (France,
1835), Agenzia Stefani (Italy, 1853) .