The 40th annual American History Association Conference at Rochester Institute of Technology is just days away. It’s certain to be a thrilling weekend of presentations, workshops, tours and camaraderie. See the revised program.

The American Printing History Association is pleased to presents the 2015 J. Ben Lieberman Lecture “The WunderCabinet* The Curious Worlds of Barbara Hodgson & Claudia Cohen” to  be delivered by Barbara Hodgson. The lecture is at 6pm, Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Main Conference Room. Free and open to the public. Reception to follow. Please RSVP by November 6. Hosted by UCLA Library Special Collections. Directions and parking.  [Read more]

APHA is developing a history of printing timeline and would like your help to improve it. In accord with our mission, it includes all related arts and crafts: calligraphy, typefounding, typography, papermaking, bookbinding, illustration, and publishing. It also notes digital publishing, plus relevant laws and labor events. There are no plans to add graphics or manage external links. Please review and let us know what we left out or should cut. The editor welcomes all comments and suggestions.

Via the contact form:

We have a F.P.Rosback foot powered perforator with fixed punches. The back of the machine indicates that it is a No. 6 Special Model Adjustable Multiplex Punching Machine. We are trying to find more information about this machine but don’t know how to start. From what I can tell it was built when the company moved to Benton Harbor [MI] as it has the city name on the back of the face of the machine. Can you help me understand where to start to find more information? 

Joyce Ihlenfeldt

Robert Oldham with J. J. Lankes’ 1845 Hoe Washington hand press at The Tampa Book Arts Studio. (Richard Mathews)

In North America, there are over 1,150 recorded hand presses of all types, makes, and vintages. They range from the press used by the first recorded English colonial printers, Stephen and Matthew Daye, in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1639 (now in the collection of the Vermont Historical Society), to the eighteen reproduction tabletop Albion presses built by Steve Pratt in Utah, between 2001 until his death in 2012. [Read more]

Specimens of Holly Wood Type, Borders, Reglet and Furniture, Manufactured by Hamilton & Katz, Two Rivers, Wisconsin, ca. 1884. Courtesy of the RIT Cary Collection.

The 40th Susan Garretson Swartzburg ’60 Memorial Lecture at the Wells College Book Arts Center will coincide this October with the 40th Annual American Printing History Association conference. Professor David Shields will deliver his talk “Muster Hundreds! Towards a People’s History of American Wood Type,” at 5:30 p.m. on October 21, at the Wells Stratton Hall Auditorium in Aurora-on-Cayuga, New York. This is one day before the APHA Printing on the Handpress & Beyond activities begin at RIT in Rochester, New York. Why not come a day early to enjoy both! [Read more]

The lost Mergenthaler factory, ca. 1890, Locust Point, Baltimore. (Courtesy of RIT Press)

Baltimore, Maryland, is well known as the birthplace of the typesetting machine that revolutionized publishing: the Linotype, invented by German immigrant Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1886. However, it has not been widely recognized that Baltimore also played a pivotal role as the original manufacturing center for the machine that replaced Gutenberg’s handset typesetting method, a mechanical marvel that Thomas Edison called “the eighth wonder of the world.” [Read more]

APHA’s 40th Annual Conference, Printing on the Handpress & Beyond, hosted by the RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection is now open for registration. Workshops, tours, demonstrations, lectures, famous printing presses, excursions in Rochester and Upstate New York, a vendor fair, and great camaraderie all await you! Printing on the Handpress & Beyond will examine and show you the creative ways these earliest printing machines are employed today by printers, artists, scholars, and educators. Program information and registration are now available

Via the contact form:

Hello — I am working on a short biography/history book for children that describes the night John Dunlap printed the broadside announcing independence, looking closely at each detail: the Caslon types he used, the paper, the ink. I have read everything available, or tried to. Is there someone I could speak to who might be able to suggest other titles about printing history and the conditions of the day, or someone who could direct me to a press similar to Dunlap’s so that I might try setting type and pulling a proof for myself? Thanks, Jenny Green

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The speaker roster for “Printing on the Hand Press & Beyond,” is now confirmed. APHA’s Fortieth Annual Conference will be held at Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York from October 22 to 24, 2015. Pre-conference workshops will take place on Thursday, October 22. A vendor fair and the keynote address will kick off the full conference on Friday, October 23. Saturday will bring several tracks of presentations which draw from the expertise of an international group of printers, educators, designers, and historians. Registration information will be forthcoming soon!