Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book (9781316241677) by Leslie Howsam (ed)

Author:Leslie Howsam (ed)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge Univ Pr
Published: 2014-11-13T16:00:00+00:00

Technological revolution

In the eighteenth century, technological progress had been a limited force in the book trades, restricted to typefounding and design, and to a lesser extent to paper manufacture and experiments with intaglio techniques and the rolling press. The first successful lithography, using paper laid upon a drawing made in lithographic chalk on a damp stone, dates from the work of the Czech Alois Senefelder in Germany in 1798.4 Thin India paper arrived in Europe in about 1750; coated paper and transparent paper were patented in 1827. From the early nineteenth century, technical and mechanical improvements made printing, papermaking, bookbinding and transportation cheaper and faster in Europe and North America. By contrast, Japanese interest in letter-press printing declined in favour of traditional wood-block xylography, although greater efficiencies were also introduced. In China, by the end of the nineteenth century, a revolution in production processes akin to those in Europe had transformed the productive capacity and commercial market of its much older book and printing trades.

Steam-driven machinery, following Watt’s British patent for a steam engine in 1781, shattered technological constraints in weaving, spinning and the production of machine tools (among other applications), but the book trades were not similarly transformed until after 1814. Nicholas-Louis Robert patented a papermaking machine at the paper mill of Didot Saint Leger in Essonnes, France. Mechanized papermaking first became commercially viable in 1807 with machines made by Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier in London, but throughout the century local stationers commonly complained about shortages of inexpensive paper. Criticism led to the introduction of new sources for papermaking: first esparto grass and straw and then wood pulp. By 1825 half of all paper in England was manufactured by machine, with total output increasing thirty-fold between 1820 and 1900. In the final third of the nineteenth century, papermaking costs were reduced by about two-thirds.5

For the publishers of Europe and the Americas, the nineteenth century might be said to begin in 1814, the year in which a steam-driven press first printed The Times in London. The replacement of the manual printing press shattered the principal technological shackles of three and a half centuries of printed publication by moveable type in Europe and of the far more ancient printing activities of East Asia. The long quest to improve the wooden printing press, to reduce manual effort and to increase productivity, culminated in successful experiments with an all-metal lever press at the very end of the eighteenth century, but it took a further decade to produce an effective alternative to the hand-operated press. Following Earl Stanhope’s experiments with an iron press in 1800 (and various successful initiatives in using stereotyped plates), George Clymer (an American of Swiss origins) patented the Columbia iron press in 1817. Soon after Clymer’s arrival in England his press was rivalled by the British Albion press. The key development, however, was mechanization, now enabled by the greater stability of the iron press. Frederick Koenig first patented a power-driven platen screw-press in 1810, but his further patent of 1814 featured a machine with an inking roller, cast-iron platen and, crucially, an impression cylinder.

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