Press power of the Long 1960s: Liberation through duplication

“Amerika is devouring its children” screenprint by Jay Belloli, 1970, UC Berkeley poster workshop

Social justice printing history in the United States during the “long 1960s” – describing the period from the early 1960s through the later 1970s – is not one of skilled craft or precious publications. It’s a history of young, passionate amateurs learning new skills and new technologies as a means to an end.  

Several factors converged to produce a massive outpouring of printed documents. First, there was the baby boom – by 1969, 19 percent of the U.S. population was between 14 and 25 years old – an increase of 44 percent over this age group in 1960.[i] Young people were finding their voice and had something to say. The civil rights movement here was being matched by vigorous national independence movements around the world. The period was intoxicating and full of optimism.

But how to get the word out? Most standard print shops were either too expensive for broke students or simply wouldn’t touch the radical materials that were brought in. Some of the content could draw the unwanted attention of authorities. So activists learned to print for themselves. Here’s how the mainstream media described it:

The information officers of the New American Left have rediscovered an ancient political ally: print power.  All over the country, radical and “movement” organizations have spawned their own print shops run by their own pressmen to churn out an increasing number of posters, pamphlets, handbills, and flyers. Whether it’s to mobilize a march on Washington, explain the advantages of “Free Speech” for GIs, or advertise courses at an alternative university, the rebel presses are rolling. By the thousands, their folded-and-stapled brochures, decorated with crude graphics, are being given away at hastily set up campus tables or sold in the standard subculture outlets.[1]

The equipment included small offset presses (Multilith 1250s and AB Dick 360s were ubiquitous) that were simple to learn and operate. Silkscreen printing saw a renaissance, using hand-cut lacquer-based stencils and oil-based inks. And one new technology, the electric stencil-burning Gestefax, was transformative in supporting community-based communications.

The Gestefax, introduced in 1959, was the first device that allowed consumers to scan original art to run on a Gestetner. This was a mechanical duplicator on which a stencil master mounted on an ink-filled drum printed pages up to 8 ½ x 14”. Instead of needing a typewriter to pound out a stencil, any art – even a photo – could be scanned on the dual rotating drums of the Gestefax, one with an electric eye skimming the original and the second burning the stencil with an electric spark. It was so simple to use that ads noted “it can be operated by your office girl, without any training.”[ii]

This scanner, coupled with the fact that by swapping or cleaning the ink drums one could print multiple colors in subsequent passes, offered some of the earliest opportunities for grassroots artists and organizers to make colorful flyers and newsletters. It may be hard to believe in this day and age, when “color separation” isn’t even a conscious act and photographs can be effortlessly published on a Web page, but this clunky technology was a breakthrough aesthetic boon to democratic media.

One of the first to experiment with the artistic possibilities of these machines was the Communication Company (or “Comm Co”), founded in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district by Chester Anderson and Claude Hayward in January of 1967. This was the epicenter of the new counterculture, and every movement needs a medium. The Communication Company cranked out an endless stream of flyers and handbills for community groups such as the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Diggers as well as scores of events. As their promotional flyer stated, they planned to “Provide quick & inexpensive printing services for the hip community.” They also aspired to “Produce occasional incredibilities out of an unnatural fondness for either outrage or profit, as the case may be” and to “Do what we damn well please.” Years later one Comm Co participant described the chutzpah of this printing adventure:

We took [samples of our] sheets to the Gestetner company. They had no idea that their machines were capable of doing what we did. Like we put a peacock feather on the Gestetner and put the top down and Xeroxed it in color. And they were amazed. They were very beautiful sheets. We asked the Gestetner company to let us keep their machine, which hadn’t been paid for in full, and they said, No. So we liberated it.[2]

With an unsustainable business model and run by at-the-edge artists, the Communication Company lasted less than a year, but its flyers set the bar for artistry in street propaganda. Ten years later, another Gestetner art movement blossomed in the Bay Area. In the late 1970s, a critical mass of neighborhood arts organizations and community-based artists were prolifically making murals, posters, theater, and other cultural forms. A report produced about the S.F. Neighborhood Arts Program noted: “Uncontestedly, NAP’s design and printing of colorful flyers for community arts activities is the program’s best-known service…An average day’s output includes design of two to four flyers and printing of eight editions, many designed by the requesting group, of from 500 to 1000 each. They run through about 120,000 pages monthly.”[iii]  Once again, the lowly Gestetner and Gestefax came to the rescue in helping spread the word, and in some cases, be the word. 

Screen printing was quickly adopted by activists as a simple and effective way to create large and colorful posters. When Paris art students wanted to support the workers’ general strike in 1968, they quickly abandoned the clunky lithography they were taught in school and began screenprinting after one participant shared the “American printing” process he’d learned at a gallery job.[3] Like Gestetner, screenprinting is a stencil process but is printed by hand using a squeegee to push the ink through a framed stretched fabric that supports the image. Stencils can be hand cut with no machinery required. The resultant huge body of simple and strong street posters inspired artists around the world.

After the antiwar student demonstrations and killings at Kent State, Ohio (May 4, 1970) and Jackson State, Mississippi (May 14, 1970) there was a massive upswelling of resistance culture in the United States. Political poster workshops blossomed all over the country to express public outrage. At the University of California, Berkeley, faculty at the College of Environmental Design encouraged the use of campus facilities for a short-lived workshop that created an estimated 50,000 copies of hundreds of works. Many of these were screenprinted on distinctive discarded tractor-feed computer paper from the computer labs.

Conventional offset printing was a key tool of political movements as well. Occasionally older radicals in the trade would share their skills and equipment, but more often than not activists simply learned on the job and did the best they could.

The first glimmer of the new generation of activist print shops started in 1964 in the heat of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement (FSM). Their newsletter was first printed on a 14” x 20” Multilith 2066 by in the basement of a home later demolished to make People’s Park. The press was owned by Dunbar Aitken, publisher of the occasional science journal Particle, but Dunbar was evicted by his landlord for printing “communist papers.” When FSM activist Barbara Garson got involved, the shop was being managed by an old Trotskyist printer. Barbara describes the scene:

Deward Hastings, a speed freak who was handy with equipment, got [the old press] running… We printed five or six issues of the FSM newsletter. The press did movement printing at cost.  That was in the day of marches and demos with huge print runs of leaflets.  We also took in commercial business at normal prices. But it was understood that in a political emergency the political jobs would come first.

The first generation of shops blossomed in 1967. In addition to Peace Press in Los Angeles, several other printers dedicated to social change began inking their cylinders.

Glad Day Press was founded in Ithaca, New York as a spin-off from the local peace center. The name was from William Blake’s 1795 painting, where Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” is liberated from his constraining circle and square, beaming with an inner energy – an apt metaphor for the transformative feeling of the mid-1960s. They bought used equipment, learned to print, and served as a model for an independent activist shop. Although their initial priority was opposing the war in Viet Nam, they weathered shifts within the movement, including the disintegration of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the end of the war in 1973, and continued to produce materials for a wide range of issues including Cuba solidarity, Native American occupations, and support for liberation movements in Southern Africa. They charged a sliding scale and produced many self-published projects, including posters and books. As they began to take on more commercial printing to sustain the shop, they relied less on volunteers and cross-trained a core group of skilled collective members, and proudly displayed the militant union label of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Also in 1967 Madison, Wisconsin, publisher Morris Edelson donated the profits from his production of Barbara Garson’s satirical play MacBird for the purchase of a used Multilith 1250 duplicator. This became the first movement press in the area.

Sometimes political organizations chose to handle their own printing. The Black Panther Party operated an offset press in San Francisco and Oakland from 1968 to 1978. Although primarily used for printing BPP flyers and posters (except for their newspaper), this shop did handle occasional work for other progressive causes. The first BPP printing operation was at the national distribution office in San Francisco, which was set up by young Panther Benny Harris. Benny had recently restored an industrial shoe stitcher and was invited to help out at the print shop, where the equipment needed mechanical attention. He described the scene:

After arriving at the SF distribution office, I saw two old and incomplete Chief 20 printing presses sitting side by side on the concrete floor. After examining them and discussing what was required to rebuild them, I decided to take on the challenge. I did not have any knowledge of the printing process but I did have the required mechanical skills to do a rebuild of the presses. A few months later with one machine used for spare parts, the rebuild was complete. One functional Chief 14×20” printing press was up and running. After receiving a few lessons on the basics of printing, I was left on my own to develop my printing skills. Emory Douglas [“Revolutionary Artist and Minister of Culture” for the BPP] also provided me with valuable artistic guidance and proper artistic layout etiquette. My printing skills gradually developed over time as the press was used to print flyers, posters, pamphlets, restaurant menus, and business cards.[4]

More movement shops sprang up in almost every major city. Madison’s second shop, RPM (Revolutions Per Minute) Print Co-op, got its start in 1970 with a grant from the Wisconsin Student Association to buy out an existing commercial printer. Salsedo Press incorporated in Chicago in 1973 (and lasted until 2021). The next year saw the triple birth of Red Sun in the Boston area, Resistance Press in Philadelphia, and Inkworks Press in Oakland (later Berkeley). Other shops of this vintage include New York City’s Come!Unity Press (a 24-hour open access print shop run by a gay anarchist collective), Fanshen in San Diego, People’s Press in San Francisco, and Northwest Working Press in Eugene, Oregon.

Most of these shops embraced a distinct set of qualities:

●      An articulated political position;

●      A sliding scale for fees and specific mechanisms for donated work;

●      A commitment to hiring people not usually in the trade (women and people of color);

●      Membership in a trade union;

●      Organization in a non-hierarchical form, such as a collective or co-op.

Berkeley’s Inkworks Press was formed in 1974 by several members who had been learning offset printing at an alternative school and wanted to create a movement print shop. From the beginning, the shop planned to be self-sufficient, which would be accomplished with a blend of commercial and political work charged on a sliding scale. As a mechanism to institutionalize revolutionary politics, the shop became a non-profit (though not tax-exempt) corporation with a collective structure in which everyone owned it together – no one owned any individual share, as is the case with co-ops. As a way to assure reasonable working conditions and align with the labor movement, Inkworks became a union shop (International Printing and Graphic Communications Union, later Teamsters) in 1978. One of the long-lasting movement press giants, Inkworks closed down in 2015 – it had become hard to recruit new members willing to take on collective responsibilities and the rapidly-changing printing trade had become more competitive..

After the military draft ended and the Viet Nam War collapsed, much of the wind was taken out of the sails for movement printing. But American capitalism and imperialism lumbered on, and a whole new set of issues – among them, women’s liberation, gay rights, U.S. proxy wars in Latin America, South African apartheid – emerged that also required printing. Artists and activists continued to learn the various technologies for generating effective propaganda. Current social justice print shops include Community Printers in Santa Cruz (California) and Radix Media in Brooklyn.

The radical printing of the “long 1960s,” ragged and chaotic though it may have been, was a powerful testament to the importance of document duplication in support of liberation. Long live the power of the press!

Images:

“Karma repair kit” Gestetner flyer by Richard Brautigan, printed by the Communication Company, circa 1967

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“My name is Assata Shakur and I am a Black revolutionary” Gestetner flyer by Miranda Bergman, 1977 (printed by Jane Norling).

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“Amerika is devouring its children” screenprint by Jay Belloli, 1970, UC Berkeley poster workshop

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Article on Glad Day Press, Liberation Support Movement newsletter Winter 1978; scan from photocopy by Lincoln Cushing

“[Al] Ferrari making ink fountain adjustment on Glad Day’s biggest press, a Chief 126” in “Left profile: Glad Day Press” Liberation Support Movement Newsletter, Winter 1978

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Bennie Harris at Black Panther Party print shop, San Francisco, circa 1969

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First published in Printing History Number 33, Summer 2023, the journal of the American Printing History Association

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[1] “Young Radicals Rediscover and Use the Power of the Press,” Associated Press, July 8, 1970

[2] “A University Of The Streets” Jay Babcock  interview with Judy Goldhaft of the San Francisco Diggers, September 9, 2021, Digger Docs

[3] “Anti-Nazism and the Ateliers Populaires: The Memory of Nazi Collaboration in the Posters of Mai ’68”
Gene M. Tempest, thesis prepared for the B.A. in History, U.C. Berkeley, 2006. https://www.docspopuli.org/articles/Paris1968_Tempest/AfficheParis1968_Tempest.html 

[4] e-mail from to Benny Harris, 2/2/2011

[i] “Characteristics of American Youth,” United States Census report P23-30, February 6, 1970.

[ii] “George Stuart Stocks Newest in Equipment,” Orlando Evening Star July 9, 1970, p. 11

[iii] “The San Francisco Neighborhood Arts Program,” Interviews Conducted by Suzanne B. Riess for The Bancroft Library in 1978, p. 212

ca. 3100 BCECuneiform, one of the earliest known writing systems developed in Sumer (modern day Iraq). Wedge-shaped marks were made on clay tablets by a blunt stylus cut from a reed. ca. 3000Papyrus plant, paper-like material used as a writing surface in Egypt.
Ink from lamp-black made in China. ca. 500Amate, a beaten paper-like material, made in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. ca. 200Parchment, a material made from processed animal skin, used as a writing surface in Pergamon (Anatolian Greece, Asia Minor, now Turkey). 105 CEInvention of the papermaking process credited to Ts'ai Lun [Cai Lun] a palace advisor during the Han Dynasty of China. ca. 500Papermaking in Samarkand (modern day Uzbekistan). 711Moors invade Spain, introducing papermaking techniques from the east. 794Papermill established in Baghdad, Abbasid dynasty ( present day Iraq). ca. 800Book of Kells illuminated Latin manuscript Gospel produced in Britain and Ireland. 868The oldest dated printed text known: The Diamond Sutra, a Chinese translation of a Buddhist text now preserved in the British Library. 932Chinese printers adapt Wood-block printing to mass-produce classical books. 1041Movable type, made from baked clay, invented in China. 1151First papermill in Europe at Xàtiva (Spain). 1239The oldest Metal-Movable-Type printed book is "The Song of Enlightenment with Commentaries by Buddhist Monk Nammyeong Cheon (南明泉和尙頌證道歌)”. (The Goryeo (高麗) Dynasty of Korea) 1282Watermarks first used in Italian-made paper. 1298Marco Polo reported seeing the printing of paper money in China. 1309Paper first used in England. 1377The world's second oldest extant book printed with movable metal type Baekun Hwasang Chorok Buljo Jikji Simche Yojeol (Korean: 백운화상초록불조직지심체요절, 白雲和尙抄錄佛祖直指心體要節, Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests' Zen Teachings) published in Cheungju (淸州), Korea, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). It is often abbreviated to Jikji (직지, 直指). 1403Guild of Stationers, consisting of booksellers, scribes, illustrators and bookbinders, founded in London. 1423European wood block print: St. Christopher with the infant Christ. 1430sEngraving, combined with drypoint, was first used for intaglio printing plates in Germany 1438–44Adjustable type mold developed by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz (Germany). 1454First dated European document: a papal indulgence attributed to Gutenberg. 1455Gutenberg's Bible completed by his creditor Johann Fust and his own workman Peter Schoeffer. 1457First printed colophon in the Psalter by Fust and Schoeffer. It also had the first error: "Spalmorum" instead of Psalmorum. Corrected in subsequent editions. 1462Fust and Schoeffer first to use a printer's mark. 1464Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweinheim, first printers in Italy (Subiaco) and first to use a Roman printing type. 1465Drypoint engraving developed in Germany.
Greek type used in Cicero's De officiis printed by Fust and Schoeffer. 1473The Constance Gradual, the earliest printed music (after the single line of music in the 1457 Mainz Psalter).
William Caxton prints the first book in English, Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, in Bruges in collaboration with the Flemish printer Colard Mansion. Three years later Caxton then set up a printshop in England. 1476Intaglio used for book illustration, a printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, and the incision line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the opposite of relief printing such as letterpress.
First modern title page in Regiomontanus's Kalendario printed by Erhard Ratdolt in Venice. 1478Printing begins at Oxford University. 1486Erhard Ratdolt issues earliest known type specimen in Venice. 1493Nuremberg Chronicle one of the first books to successfully integrate illustrations and text. 1495Paper mill established in England. ca.1495Etching developed by metalsmith Daniel Hopfer in Augsburg (Germany). 1498–1501Odhecaton, book of music printed from movable type. 1499Woodcut of a printing press appears in La Grande Danse Macabre printed by Matthias Huss at Lyon. 1501Italic type and small format books introduced by Aldus Manutius in Venice. 1514Book of Hours printed in Arabic types in Fano (Italy). 1520–23Babylonian Talmud printed by Daniel Bomberg in Venice. 1529Champfleury published by Geoffroy Tory in Paris. It promoted grammar, punctuation and letterform proportion. 1530Claude Garamond designs a Roman typeface in Paris. 1537–38Paganino and Alessandro Paganini produced the first printed edition of the Qur'an in Arabic (Venice). 1539Juan Pablos (Giovanni Paoli) became the first printer in North America (Mexico City). 1545Claude Garamond designs his typeface; forms first independent foundry. 1563Printing in France forbidden without royal permission under penalty of death. 1568–1573Biblia Polyglotta printed in five languages by Christopher Plantin in Antwerp. 1569Mercator's world map, his projection was a boon to navigation. 1584The University Press at Cambridge begins operation, and has done so continuously since. It lays claim to being both the world's oldest university press in and the oldest printing & publishing house. ca. 1600Spain outlaws papermaking in its New World colonies. 1605German language newspaper Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien (Strasbourg). 1611Publication of the first edition of the King James Bible 1623Shakespeare's First Folio published. 1639The Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in the American colonies (Cambridge). 1642Mezzotint, the first tonal method to produce half-tones without using line- or dot-based techniques such as cross-hatching or stippleling. It is achieved by roughening the plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth called a "rocker." 1665The Oxford Gazette, first regularly published English newspaper. Charles II moved his family (and the newspaper) back to London in 1666. 1683Mechanick Exercises on The Whole Art of Printing by Joseph Moxon, the first manual on printing. 1690Papermaking in America (Philadelphia).
Newspaper published in America, Publick Occurrences, Both Foreign and Domestick (Boston). 1692Romain du Roi, the first produced type based rational design. Influenced the later transitional typefaces of Pierre Simon Fournier and John Baskerville. 1698Public library opens in Charleston, South Carolina. 1702Daily newspaper in England, the Daily Courant. 1710Statute of Anne regulates copyright in Great Britain. 1725Coloritto by Jacob Christoph Le Blon. Described a RYB three-color printing process. 1728Stereotype printing plates developed. It was means of reproducing composed type forms to prevent wear of original types and free them for other use. 1731Library Company of Philadelphia, first American subscription library, founded by Benjamin Franklin and fellow members of the Junto, a club for mutual improvement. 1733Poor Richard's Almanack, published by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 1735Publisher John Peter Zenger acquitted of libel in colonial New York City, setting the legal standard. 1743Joh. Enschedé began manufacturing type in Haarlem (The Netherlands). 1750John Baskerville designs a typeface in Cambridge, England. 1751Diderot's Encyclopédie published in France. 1752Canada's first newspaper the Halifax Gazette in Nova Scotia. 1755A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson.
The Printer's Grammar by John Smith. 1757Wove paper developed by James Whatman for Baskerville's Virgil. 1764Manuel Typographique by Pierre-Simon Fournier. A treatise on the history of French types and printing. 1768Encyclopædia Britannica 1775Common Sense by Thomas Paine.
Wood engraving developed by Thomas Bewick.
Kibyoshi, Japanese picture books, birth of the graphic novel. 1776Declaration of Independence printed July 4 by John Dunlap. 1780A typographic point system developed by (and later named for) François-Ambroise Didot. Based on the pre-metric French inch. 1790William Nicholson (1753–1815) patents cylindrical printing press, London. 1786Philadelphia printers conduct first successful strike for increased wages. 1793The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake. 1796Lithography invented by Alois Senefelder.
Binny & Ronaldson type foundry established in Philadelphia. 1798Giambattista Bodoni designs a typeface in Parma (Italy). 1803An all iron hand press built by Charles Mahon, third Earl of Stanhope.
Fourdrinier continuous web papermaking machine. 1803Fourdrinier continuous web papermaking machine. 1805R. Hoe & Company, a printing press manufacturer, established in New York.
Carbon paper developed 1806Canada's first French language newspaper Le Canadien published in Quebec City until 1810. 1810Composition ink rollers developed in London to replace ink balls.
The History of Printing in America by Isaiah Thomas 1813George Clymer develops the Columbian printing press, a cast-iron hand press featuring a lever, which replaced the simple screw mechanism for lowering the platen. It is distinguished by its bald eagle counterweight at top. 1814Steam-powered, cylinder printing press, built by Frederick Koenig and Conrad Bauer installed at The Times in London. 1816Sans-serif type shown in a specimen by William Caslon IV. 1818Manual Tipografico by Giambattista Bodoni, posthumously published by his widow in Parma.
Stephenson Blake typefoundry established in Sheffield, England. 1820sPhotoengraving process emerges.
Albion press iron hand press developed by Richard Whittaker Cope. Its simple toggle action is an improvement on the complex lever-mechanism of the Columbian press and the Stanhope press.
American Daniel Treadwell developed the first bed and platen press powered by a treadle (London). 1821Commercial lithographic firm established by William Armand Genet Barnet and Isaac Doolittle. 1823Newly-founded Republic of Mexico establishes a Government Printing Office in Mexico City, inside the National Palace. 1824Books bound in cloth issued by William Pickering in London. 1825Typographia by Thomas Curson Hansard
Louis John Pouchée, a London typefounder, produces ornamented types now regarded among the best of their kind. 1826Daniel Fanshaw, NYC, arguably the first "production printer of the machine age." Using Treadwell presses, he held the contracts for the American Bible Society and the American Tract Society. Active till about 1846."
Paper first made in the Toronto area from rags in by Eastwood and Skinner. 1827John B. Russwurm establishes Freedom's Journal, first African-American newspaper in New York.
Means for mass-producing wood type invented by Darius Wells in New York.
Mass-produced newspaper, The New York Sun, "the penny press." 1827–38Audubon's The Birds of America. Hand-colored, life-size prints, often referred to its large size as the double elephant folio. 1828Darius Wells published the first known catalogue of wood type.
Wells introduced the lateral router for cutting endgrain wood type which, when combined with the pantograph in 1834, created the essential wood type making machinery that lasted over 150 years. 1829Louis Braille develops a tactile writing system used by the blind. 1830Adams Power Press introduced.
Calendered paper produced in England. 1830sPaperback books appear in England and Ireland. 1834London Union of Compositors formed by the merger of the London Trade Society of Compositors and the London General Trade Society of Compositors.
Darius introduced the lateral router for cutting endgrain wood type which, when combined with the pantograph created the essential wood type making machinery that lasted over 150 years.
Augustin Zamorano establishes a printing operation at Monterrey, Alta California, the first on the western seaboard of North America. 1835Padre Martinez brings the first printing press to New Mexico. 1837Chromolithography (multicolor printing). 1838Electrotype plates invented by Moritz von Jacobi.
First successful type casting machine patented in the U.S. by David Bruce Jr. 1839Practical photography developed.
After acquiring a small handpress from a Hawaiian mission, Henry Spaulding establishes the Lapwai Mission Press in Northwestern Idaho and prints the first book produced west of the Rocky Mountains in the Nez Perce language. 1841First paperback books are published by Tauchnitz Verlag in Germany
A system of syllabic signs for the Cree language compiled by James Evans in Manitoba. 1843Rotary letterpress developed. 1844Paper cutter patented by Guillaume Massiquot.
1844 Toronto Typographical Union established, the oldest trade union in Canada. 1849Thomas Howard forms by hand in Salt Lake City the first paper produced in the arid North American West. The paper was used to produce binder's board and in the local newspaper, the Deseret News. 1850New York Printers' Union founded.
Heidelberg printing press manufacturer established in Heidelberg, Germany. 1851Platen job press developed by George Phineas Gordon.
Paper made from wood pulp. 1852National Typographical Union founded in the United States. 1853Mary Ann Shadd Cary (1823–1893) founded The Provincial Freeman in Windsor, Ontario. The first female Black woman publisher in North America and the first woman publisher in Canada. 1855The Bank of England issues modern standardized bank notes. 1856Paper folding machine. 1857Work begins on The Oxford English Dictionary. 1860Rotary gravure printing press developed. 1861Confederates capture Mesilla (New Mexico Territory) and throw the local printing press into the Rio Grande 1866American Printer. A Manual of Typography by Thomas MacKellar. 1869National Typographical Union (U.S.) changes name to International Typographical Union to include Canada. First to admit women as members.
Golding & Co., a manufacturer of platen printing presses, founded in Boston. 1870Collotype, or photogelatin printing.
Shniedewend & Lee, a printing equipment manufacturer, founded in Chicago. 1871Daily Yokohama Mainichi Shimbun first newspaper in Japan established. 1873Barnhart Brothers & Spindler (called Great Western Type Foundry until 1883). Bought out by American Type Founders in 1911. 1875Rotary offset lithographic printing press developed.
Mimeograph invented by Thomas Edison. 1876Plantin-Moretus Museum established in Antwerp on the premises of the printing house founded by Christophe Plantin in the sixteenth century. 1879Benday process for production of color images in newspapers.
Gestetner Cyclograph stencil method duplicator.
Smyth sewing machine for bookbinding. 1880Halftone printed from a photograph: "A Scene in Shantytown" in the New York Daily Graphic.
Printers' International Specimen Exchange an influential annual subscription publication that ran until 1898.
James E. Hamilton of Two Rivers, Wisconsin opened a wood type factory in which scroll-sawed veneer wood type was made. The company later switched to endgrain router-made wood type and operated until around 1990. See Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum. 1881Halftone process patented by Frederic Ives.
Chandler & Price, a printing equipment maufacturer, founded in Cleveland, Ohio. Production ceased in 1964. 1883The Inland Printer trade journal founded in Chicago.
The Yellow Pages.
A. B. Dick Company, manufacturer of offset presses, copy machines and office supplies, founded in Chicago. 1884Grolier Club, a bibliophilic organization, founded in New York. 1886Linotype, the first successful automatic typesetting machine developed. The New York Tribune was the first newspaper to install one.
U.S. Type Founders' Association. adopts the American Point System
Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
Historic Printing Types by Theodore Low Devinne. 1887Monotype, hot metal typesetting machine, patented by Tolbert Lanston of Philadelphia. This two-part machine (keyboard and caster) could cast individual types in the order of the text, thus composing and casting at the same time.
Master Printers Club of Boston formed, an owners association.
The United Typothetae of America (UTA) a national owners association organized in Chicago. 1888The British Printer trade journal founded. 1889The Kelmscott Press established by William Morris in London. Inspires the modern fine press movement.
International Printing Pressmen and Assistants Union of North America (IPPAU) split from the International Typographical Union (ITU) 1890Flexography developed. 1891St Bride Library and printing school established in London 1892American Type Founders, a merger of 23 type foundries.
Bibliographical Society (of London) founded.
Four-color rotary press developed.
International Brotherhood of Bookbinding formed. 1895Caxton Club (Chicago) founded.
Stempel type foundry established in Frankfurt am Main.
Ashendene Press founded by C.H. St. John Hornby, London. 1896Central School of Arts and Crafts founded in London.
The Kelmscott Chaucer published. 1900Doves Press established by T.J. Cobden-Sanderson at Hammersmith, London.
Master Printers Club of Boston establishes a School of Printing Apprentices.
The Practice of Typography by Theodore Low DeVinne. 1902Air conditioning accidentally invented by Willis Carrier while developing a dehumidifier for a New York printer.
Etched zinc engravings begin to replace hand-cut wood blocks.
Cost Finding Movement, called upon printers to adopt better accounting methods.
International Stereotypers and Electroplaters Union formed 1904The Bibliographical Society of America established. 1905The Society of Printers established in Boston. 1906Ludlow Typograph hot metal typesetting system developed.
CMYK four-color wet process inks developed by the Eagle Printing Ink Co.
Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering by Edward Johnston. 1907Photostat and Rectigraph developed.
Modern screenprinting process developed.
Peter Behrens was the first designer to create a corporate identity for the German electrical company AEG (Allgemeine Elektricit_ts-Gesellschaft). 1909Vandercook flatbed cylinder proof press introduced in Chicago.
"Futurist Manifesto" published on the front cover of Le Figaro in Paris. 1911Allied Printing Trades Association formed from five unions: Includes the International Typographical Union (ITU) and the Pressman, Bookbinders, Photo Engravers, Stereotypers and Electrotypers Unions
Pressmen's Home established by the International Printing Pressmen and Assistants Union of North America. Situated in Tennessee, it was a training center healthcare facility and resort for union members and their families that operated for sixty-five years. 1912American Specimen Book of Type Styles: Complete Catalogue of Printing Machinery and Printing Supplies issued by American Type Founders Co. the most extensive catalogue ever published by the conglomerate. 1913The Imprint a short-lived British journal of printing trade notable for its contributors. Nine issued were published January to November in that year.
Publication of La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, a collaboration between artist Sonia Delaunay and poet Blaise Cendrars. It defined the modern artist's book. 1914American Institute of Graphic Arts founded in New York. 1919Bauhaus School founded in Weimar, Germany.
The Newberry Library establishes the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing.
Brandtjen and Kluge, printing press manufacturer founded in St. Paul, Minnesota. 1921Wirephoto transmitted by telephotography. 1922Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use by Daniel Berkeley Updike.
DIN standard for paper sizes introduced in Germany.
Laboratory Press, directed by Porter Garnett, started as the first U.S. fine press educational program at Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 1923Deberny et Peignot typefoundry established in Paris.
The Fleuron, an influential British journal of typography and book arts published in seven volumes through 1930.
Spirit duplicator (ditto machine) developed.
Specimen Book and Catalogue issued by American Type Founders Co. 1924UTA establishes Lithographers Technical Foundation (forerunner of Graphic Arts Technical Foundation) 1927Futura a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Paul Renner. Commercially released in 1936.
Society of Typographic Arts founded in Chicago.
Atelier 17 is founded by Stanley Hayter in Paris. 1928Gill Sans a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill, released by the Monotype Corporation.
Die Neue Typographie by Jan Tschichold.
Roxburghe Club, a bibliographic organization founded in San Francisco. 1929Graphic Arts Monthly a trade magazine founded.
Modern Typography and Layout by Douglas C. McMurtrie. 1930The Colophon: A Book Collectors' Quarterly, a limited edition periodical appearing in various formats until 1950. 1931Albert Skira publishes his first livre de peintre, Ovid's Metamorphoses with etchings by Pablo Picasso in Lausanne, Switzerland. 1932Times New Roman typeface debuted by the The Times newspaper in London. Commercially released the following year by the Monotype Corporation. 1933Synthetic rubber printing rollers appear.
The Newspaper Guild established in 1933, affiliated with the Communications Workers of America in 1995. 1934Pocket Pal: A Graphic Arts Production Handbook, first issued by Grover Daniels of Daniels' Printing in Everet, Massachusetts. 1935Penguin paperbacks introduced in Great Britain.
Bookburnings carried out on a large scale in Nazi Germany 1937Boston Typothetae renamed Graphic Arts Institute of Massachusetts.
FAG (Fournitures pour les Arts Graphiques) prepress equipment manufacturer established in Switzerland.
The American Imprint Inventory begins under Douglas C. McMurtrie, a Depression-era section the Historical Records Survey to identify and catalogue US imprints produced before 1800 (1890 west of the Mississippi). Suspended in 1942. 1938Xerography (photocopying) developed by Chester S. Carlson of Queens, New York. 1940Print, A Quarterly Journal of the Graphic Arts. 1943Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft by Dard Hunter. 1946Bookbinding, Its Background and Technique by Edith Diehl.
International Standards Organization (ISO) founded in London 1947Graphic Arts Institute of Massachusetts changes name to PIA-New England
Communications Workers of America (CWA) formed. 1949Phototypesetting developed. 1950sPhotopolymer used for flexography.
Term "prepress" replaces "pre-makeready" used in commercial letterpress, particularly in regard to printing photoengravings. 1951Inkjet printing developed.
Drupa is the world's largest printing equipment exhibition first held in D&uumlsseldorf. 1952The Wonderful World of Insects, first book composed by phototypesetting. 1954Leonard Baskin establishes his Gehenna Press while a student at the Yale School of Art. 1955Printing for Pleasure by John Ryder, it popularized the amateur and fine press movement after World War II.
Claire Van Vliet establishes the Janus Press.
Allied Printing Trades Association (formed in 1911) admits five unions: United Papermakers and Paperworkers, the Newspaper Guild, the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers, and the Plate Printers, Die Stampers and Engravers. 1957Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI).
Helvetica typeface introduced.
Dye-sublimation printing developed.
Image scanner (176 pixels) introduced.
Tilon, the first photopolymer-based letterpress plate is developed by Time, Inc. 1958New Graphic Design an internationally influential journal published in Zurich until 1965. 1959Xerographic office photocopying introduced. 1960Tamarind Lithography Workshop is founded by June Wayne in Los Angeles. 1961IBM "golf ball" typewriter introduced.
Letraset, dry rub-down instant lettering developed. 1962Ed Ruscha publishes Twentysix Gasoline Stations. 1963Pantone Color Matching System introduced.
"Printing and the Mind of Man" exhibition in London. 1964Printing Historical Society founded in London.
Walter Hamady founds his Perishable Press. In 1966, he moves to the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
National Graphical Association formed in Great Britain through the merger of the Typographical Association and the London Typographical Society. 1965Term "hypertext" coined. 1967WorldCat founded, an online catalog describing the collections of libraries worldwide.
1967 Carl Dair created Cartier, the first Canadian-designed type face. 1968Dot matrix printing introduced. 1969Laser printer invented at Xerox.
Printing with A Handpress published by Lewis and Dorothy Allen.
The Visual Studies Workshop is founded in Rochester, New York. 1970Water-based ink introduced. 1971Project Gutenberg, oldest digital library of public domain books launched. 1972Thermal printing developed.
A New Introduction to Bibliography by Philip Gaskell. 1973–75Graphical User Interface developed by Xerox PARC.
Nexus Press is founded by Michael Goodman and others in Atlanta. 1974American Printing History Association founded.
The Center for Book Arts founded in New York, the first not-for-profit organization of its kind in the United States.
Women's Studio Workshop is founded by Tatana Kellner, Ann Kalmbach, Anita Wetzel, and Barbara Leoff Burge in Rosendale, New York. 1975Fine Print a Journal of printing founded. Ran through 1990.
ISO standard for paper sizes introduced (ISO 216). 1977Gocco compact color screen printing system developed in Japan.
Judith Hoffberg begins publishing Umbrella, a critical journal of artists' books. 1978Last New York Times set by Linotype; featured in documentary film Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu.
TeX typesetting system developed by Donald Knuth. It revolutionized the composition and publication of technical books and journals.
The Museum of Printing now in Haverhill, Masssachusetts incorporated. 1981The Internet developed.
Matrix: A Review for Printers & Bibliophiles an annual "utilizing a remarkable combination of authoritative scholarship and fine printing." Still produced.
Microsoft Disk Operating System introduced. 1982Artists Book Works, a community book art student founded by Barbara Lazarus Metz in Chicago.
Adobe Systems Inc. founded.
The Printing Museum, founded by Raoul Beasley, Vernon P. Hearn, Don Piercy, and J. V. Burnham, officially opens in Houston, Texas. 1983Desktop publishing appears.
Rare Book School founded by Terry Belanger at Columbia University. 1984Apple Macintosh personal computer introduced.
3D printing developed.
Emigre, Inc. digital type foundry and Emigre magazine founded. 1985Microsoft Windows introduced.
Microtek 300 dpi black and white scanner introduced.
PostScript typesetting language introduced.
Apple LaserWriter desktop printer introduced.
PageMaker one of the first desktop publishing programs introduced.
Minnesota Center for Book Arts opens in Minneapolis.
Pyramid Atlantic, a private studio for printmaking, papermaking, and book arts, founded by Helen Frederick. 1986Wapping Dispute: a significant turning point in the history of the trade union movement and of UK industrial relations. 1987Soy-based ink appears.
QuarkXPress desktop publishing program.
The International Typographical Union affiliates with the Communication Workers of America. 1988Adobe Photoshop raster graphics editor introduced.
The International Printing Museum was founded by David Jacobson and Ernest A. Lindner in Carson, California. 1989Photopolymer plates begun to be used by studio letterpress printers. 1990Xerox DocuTech. Production-publishing system that allowed paper documents to be scanned, electronically edited, and then printed on demand. 1991World Wide Web launched.
Bookways: A Quarterly for the Book Arts, a journal of fine printing, is published by Thomas Taylor in Austin, Texas. Sixteen issued published through 1995.
TrueType scalable computer introduced.
Heidelberg and Presstek introduce GTO-DI, first platemaking on press. 1992Rare Book School moves to the University of Virginia. 1993Indigo digital color printer introduced.
Portable Document Format (PDF) introduced.
Practical Typecasting by Theo Rehak. 1994The Journal of Artists' Books (JAB) founded by Brad Freeman and Johanna Drucker to further discourse and criticism about artists books. In 2006, it moved with Freeman to Columbia College, Chicago.
Columbia College Chicago takes in the people and structures of Artists Book Works (Barbara Lazarus Metz) and Paper Press (Marilyn Sward) to form the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts. 1995Letpress listserv online discussion group for letterpress.
Amazon.com founded. 1996OpenType scalable computer fonts introduced.
World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty ensures that computer programs are protected as literary works.
Fine Press Book Association founded. 1997Printing on the Iron Handpress by Richard-Gabriel Rummonds.
The Newspaper Guild and the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees affiliate with the Communication Workers of America. 1998U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Fine Press Book Association launched its biannual journal Parenthesis.
Printing Digital Type On The Hand-operated Flatbed Cylinder Press by Gerald Lange. 1999PIA and GATF merge as PIA/GATF.
Blogger online self-publishing app launches. 2000Theo Rehak produces a new casting in metal reproducing Gutenberg's 42-line Bible type, called B-42. The entire Gutenberg Bible available at gutenbergdigital.de. 2001Wikipedia free, online collaborative encyclopedia launched.
Creative Commons, a non-profit "devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share." 2003Hewlett Packard wi-fi laser printer introduced.
WordPress open source online publishing platform launched. 2004Facebook social network launched. 2006Twitter social networking service launched. It allows users to send and read 140-character messages called tweets. 2008PIA/GATF renamed PIA.
College Book Art Association is formed, professionalizing book art education, supporting academic book artists and students, setting standards, and promoting the field. 2007Kindle e-reader developed by Amazon.com. 2009Nook e-reader developed by Barnes & Noble. 2010Apple iPad tablet introduced.
Instagram online mobile photo and video-sharing service launched. 2011St. John's Bible first completely handwritten and illuminated Bible commissioned by a Benedictine Abbey since the invention of printing.
Snapchat image messaging and multimedia mobile application 2012London Centre for Book Arts opens. 2014Sorts from the lost Dove Press type located on the banks of the River Thames. 2017US Postal Service issued stamp printed with thermochromic ink, which responds to changes in temperature as one touches it. The image is a solar eclipse that becomes the moon. It reverts to the original image as it cools. 2018The U.S. Government Publishing Office declares the last remnants of its letterpress operation to be hazardous waste and sends off its remaining Vandercooks, Intertypes, Ludlows and 200-300 cases of foundry type—the last physical artifacts of what once was the largest hot metal operation on earth—for scrap. 2019U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics no longer tracks the commercial printing industry for its monthly jobs report.