jan 1, 1800 - Industrialized Printing

Description:

The 19th century brought a variety of developments to the field of printing. The beginning of the century saw the development of the iron platen printing press (circa 1800 CE), followed shortly afterwards by the invention of the first widely-used steam-powered mechanized printing press by Friedrich Koenig in 1811 CE (Raven, 2023). These innovations allowed for the rapid mass-production of books, newspapers and other printed materials, laying the groundwork for the modern publishing industry (Galbraith, 2020).

About the image: I took this picture at my home on February 22, 2025. It is a book from my (very small) personal collection: The Atlas of Histology by E. Klein and E. Noble Smith, first published in 1880. I cannot definitively date my copy (it looks to me like someone scraped off the year on the title page at some point), but comparing it to digitized copies online it looks quite similar to the 1880 edition. The book’s publisher, Smith, Elder & Company, was an incredibly prolific publishing company, enabled by the many technological innovations of the century.

SOURCES
Galbraith, S. K. (2020). A Brief History of the Book: From Tablet to Tablet. Libraries Unlimited.
Klein, E. (Edward) 1844-1925, Cory, R. (Former owner) S., & Royal College of Physicians of London. n 80046799 (with Royal College of Physicians, L.). (1880). Atlas of histology. London : Smith, Elder and Co. http://archive.org/details/b28038423
Raven, J. (2023). The Oxford History of the Book (First edition). OUP Oxford. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192886897.001.0001

IMAGES
Taken by the author, A.E. Shuff, in 2025.

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