Library Guides: What's There to Know about Books?: Class 3: The Printing Press

Hand Press Printing

Moveable type was invented in Asia but was not widely used due to the logographic nature of Asian languages, meaning that most Asian printers relied on xylography and other forms of block printing. In Europe, moveable type was invented separately by the goldsmith and merchant Johannes Gutenberg, drawing on processes from numerous extant technologies. Further innovations followed and the specific details of Gutenberg's own press have been lost, but within a few years, the printing press had largely taken the form it would retain throughout the rest of the hand press period until the mechanization of printing in the nineteenth century.

The following videos are included below:

The Print Workshop in the Fifteenth Century. This documentary from the Cambridge University Library briefly discusses the history and mechanics of the early hand press.
The Making of a Renaissance Book. This documentary was shot in 1969 at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which maintains a seventeenth-century print shop, and was remastered by the Rare Book School in 2004. Topics covered include: cutting a type punch; making a copper strike and justifying the matrix; casting and dressing the type; composition, imposition, and proof-reading; inking and running off the sheets; and stop-press corrections.
Letterpress printing at the Museum Plantin-Moretus. These four videos (collected in a playlist on YouTube) present silent demonstrations of printing created by the museum in Antwerp, Belgium. The videos show: (1) a compositor setting a page; (2) type being tied up; (3) type moved to press; (4) pages being printed.
At the Acorn Press in Neilson Library. The curator of rare books at Smith College walks the viewer through the use of a cast-iron “acorn press” from the 1830s, explaining each step as he goes along. The acorn press was developed immediately before the wide-spread use of fully mechanized printing, i.e., it was one of the last fully hand-run presses.

20th-Century Newspaper Printing

Newspaper printing was initially done by regular printers but would eventually become its own style of printing requiring special machines. Speed was essential and so during the 20th century, newspaper printing was done using Linotype, a late 19th-century invention that permitted a furious rate of typesetting that not even the best hand compositor could hope to match. It also relied on huge, complex printing presses that were generations removed from Gutenberg's humble handpress or even the early machine presses. The videos below grant a sense of the scale and complexity of these operations.

The following videos are included below:

Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu. A short documentary filmed on location during the typesetting of the last issue of The New York Times to be set using the hot-metal printing process (i.e., a Linotype machine). The Times transitioned to a digital composing process in July 1978. In addition to its discussion of Linotype, Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu provides an overview of overall operation of a newspaper press in the 20th century.
Stopping the Presses: The Globe’s Dorchester printing plant goes dark. This documentary gives an overview of the mechanics of a major newspaper printing press and provides a sense of the scale of the machines involved.

Pressure + Ink

This series of short documentaries from the Museum of Modern Art takes you through different aspects of print illustrative techniques. The documentaries all stand alone, though it is best to watch the general introduction (1:48) and then both the introduction to each technique (2 minutes or less) and the actual demonstration of a given technique (generally 5 to 7 minutes). Phil Sanders was the director of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop at the time when the video was done and is now an independent artist and printer based in Asheville, North Carolina.