This post is the second installment in a series on how old books were made in the 15th-18th centuries. The first installment describes the papermaking process.
Last summer, when I arrived at the Library for my first week working for the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, I learned with a flutter of both excitement and nerves that part of my job would be to help design a teaching space around a colonial-era replica printing press. What an incredible teaching tool, I thought. If only I knew something about it.
Over the past few months, I’ve enjoyed learning not only the basics of how to operate the press, but also some of the history of this innovative technology. Most of us learned in school that Gutenberg invented the printing press, but that does not mean that he was the first to design a machine that would apply pressure when pulled or cranked. Winepresses had been used to squeeze grapes and olives since the Roman Empire, and East Asian cultures printed textual characters