When Publishing Was Different

Funny! Thought-Provoking!

In 1833, Harper & Brothers (today HarperCollins, and until 1833 J. & J. Harper) started using a steam press (pictured above) to print their books. The steam press had been invented in 1811 by a German, Friedrich Koenig, and quickly replaced the metal Stanhope press, which had also greatly increased the number of pages a printer could pull from the press, which in turn was a great advancement upon the iron hand press, which had been invented centuries ago, supplanting the wooden hand press invented by Gutenberg. With each of these new presses, printers were able to work faster and more efficiently. The Museum of Printing has a great visual display of these and other presses, from which the image above is screenshotted.

Before they moved to the stream press, Harper had been using the first American “printing machine,” invented by a Bostonian…