history of printing essay

Prepressure

Prepress, printing, PDF, PostScript, fonts and stuff…

Home » Printing » The history of printing

The history of printing

Printing (graphic communication by multiplied impressions) has a long history behind it. This page describes its evolution. It acts as a summary of a more elaborate description that starts here . You can also click on the title of each century to get more in-depth information. There is a separate section on the history of prepress .

3000 BC and earlier

The Mesopotamians use round cylinder seals for rolling an impress of images onto clay tablets.  In other early societies in China and Egypt, small stamps are used to print on cloth.

Second century AD

A Chinese eunuch court official named Ts’ai Lun (or Cai Lun) is credited with inventing paper.

Eleventh century

A Chinese man named Pi-Sheng develops type characters from hardened clay, creating the first movable type. The fairly soft material hampers the success of this technology.

Twelfth century

Papermaking reaches Europe.

Thirteenth century

Type characters cast from metal (bronze) are developed in China, Japan and Korea. The oldest known book printed using metal type dates back to the year 1377. It is a Korean Buddhist document, called  Selected Teachings of Buddhist Sages and Seon Masters .

Fifteenth century

Even though woodcut had already been in use for centuries in China and Japan, the oldest known European specimen dates from the beginning of the 15th century. Woodcut is a relief printing technique in which text and images are carved into the surface of a block of wood. The printing parts remain level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with a knife or chisel. The woodblock is then inked and the substrate pressed against the woodblock. The ink that is used is made of lampblack (soot from oil lamps) mixed with varnish or boiled linseed oil.

Books are still rare since they need to be laboriously handwritten by scribes . The University of Cambridge has one of the largest libraries in Europe – constituting just 122 books.

In 1436 Gutenberg begins work on a printing press. It takes him 4 years to finish his wooden press which uses movable metal type. Among his first publications that get printed on the new device are bibles. The first edition has 40 lines per page. A later 42-line version comes in two volumes.

In 1465 the first drypoint engravings are created by the Housebook Master , a south German artist. Drypoint is a technique in which an image is incised into a (copper) plate with a hard-pointed ‘needle’ of sharp metal or a diamond point.

In their print shop in Venice John and Wendelin of Speier are probably the first printers to use pure roman type , which no longer looks like the handwritten characters that other printers have been trying to imitate until then.

In 1476 William Caxton buys equipment from the Netherlands and establishes the first printing press in England at Westminster. The painting below depicts Caxton showing his printing press to King Edward IV.

That same year copper engravings are for the first time used for illustrations. With engravings, a drawing is made on a copper plate by cutting grooves into it.

By the end of the century, printing has become established in more than 250 cities around Europe. One of the main challenges of the industry is distribution, which leads to the establishment of numerous book fairs. The most important one is the Frankfurt Book Fair .

Sixteenth century

Aldus Manutius is the first printer to come up with smaller, more portable books. He is also the first to use Italic type , designed by Venetian punchcutter Francesco Griffo.

In 1507 Lucas Cranach invents the chiaroscuro woodcut , a technique in which drawings are reproduced using two or more blocks printed in different colors. The Italian Ugo da Carpi is one of the printers to use such woodcuts, for example in Diogenes , the work shown below.

In 1525 the famous painter, wood carver and copper engraver Albrecht Dürer publishes ‘Unterweysung der Messung’ (A Course on the Art of Measurement), a book on the geometry of letters.

The ‘Historia Veneta’ (1551) is one of the many books of Pietro Bembo , a Venetian scholar, and cardinal who is most famous for his work on the Italian language and poetry. The Bembo typeface is named after him.

Christophe Plantin is one of the most famous printers of this century. In his print shop in Antwerp, he produces fine work ornamented with engravings after Rubens and other artists. Many of his works as well as some of the equipment from the shop can be admired in the Plantin-Moretus Museum .

Plantin is also the first to print a facsimile . A facsimile is a reproduction of an old book, manuscript, map, art print, or another item that is as true to the original source as possible.

Seventeenth century

The word ‘not’ is accidentally left out of Exodus 20:14 in a 1631 reprint of the King James Bible. The Archbishop of Canterbury and King Charles I are not amused when they learn that God commanded Moses “Thou shalt commit adultery”. The printers, Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, are fined and have their printing license revoked. This version of the Bible is referred to as The Wicked Bible and also called the Adulterous Bible or Sinner’s Bible.

In Paris, the Imprimerie Royale du Louvre is established in 1640 at the instigation of Richelieu. The first book that is published is ‘De Imitatione Christi’ ( The Imitation of Christ), a widely read Catholic Christian spiritual book that was first published in Latin around 1418.

In 1642 Ludwig von Siegen invents mezzotint , a technique to reproduce halftones by roughening a copper plate with thousands of little dots made by a metal tool with small teeth, called a ‘rocker’. The tiny pits in the plate hold the ink when the face of the plate is wiped clean.

The first American paper mill is established in 1690.

Eighteenth century

In 1710 the German painter and engraver Jakob Christof Le Blon produces the first engraving in several colors. He uses the mezzotint method to engrave three metal plates. Each plate is inked with a different color, using red, yellow, and blue. Later on, he adds a fourth plate, bearing black lines. This technique helped form the foundation for modern color printing. Le Bon’s work is based on Newton’s theory, published in 1702, which states that all colors in the spectrum are composed of the three primary colors blue, yellow, and red.

William Caslon is an English typographer whose foundry operates in London for over 200 years. His Caslon Roman Old Face is cut between 1716 and 1728. The letters are modeled on Dutch types but they are more delicate and not as monotonous. Caslon’s typefaces remain popular, digital versions are still available today.

The Gentleman’s Magazine is published for the first time in 1731. It is generally considered to be the first general-interest magazine. The publication runs uninterrupted until 1922.

In 1732 Benjamin Franklin establishes his own printing office and becomes the publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette. Among his publications, Poor Richard’s Almanac becomes the most famous.

Alois Senefelder invents lithography in 1796 and uses it as a low-cost method for printing theatrical works. In a more refined form lithography is still the dominant printing technique today.

Another famous person from this era is Giambattista Bodoni who creates a series of typefaces that carry his name and that are still frequently used today. They are characterized by the sharp contrast between the thick vertical stems and thin horizontal hairlines.

Nineteenth century

In 1800 Charles Stanhope, the third Earl Stanhope, builds the first press which has an iron frame instead of a wooden one. This Stanhope press is faster, more durable and it can print larger sheets. A few years later another performance improvement is achieved by Friedrich Gottlob Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer who build their first cylinder press. Their company is still in existence today and is known as KBA .

In 1837 Godefroy Engelmann is awarded a patent on chromolithography , a method for printing in color using lithography. Chromolithographs or chromos are mainly used to reproduce paintings. The advertisement below is from the end of the century and shows what can be achieved using this color printing technique. Another popular technique is the photochrom process, which is mainly used to print postcards of landscapes .

The Illustrated London News is the world’s first illustrated weekly newspaper. It costs five pence in 1842. A year later Sir Henry Cole commissions the English painter John Callcott Horsley to do the artwork of (arguably) the first commercial Christmas card . Around 1000 cards are printed and hand-colored. Ten of these are still in existence today.

Around the same time, the American inventor Richard March Hoe builds the first lithographic rotary printing press , a press in which the type is placed on a revolving cylinder instead of a flatbed. This speeds up the printing process considerably.

The Czech painter Karel Klíč invents photogravur e in 1878. This process can be used to faithfully reproduce the detail and continuous tones of photographs.

In typesetting, Ottmar Mergenthaler’s 1886 invention of the Linotype composing machine is a major step forward. With this typesetter, an operator can enter text using a 90-character keyboard. The machine outputs the text as slugs, which are lines of metal type.

Lothar Meggendorfer’s International Circus is a nice example of the quality that could be achieved in those days. This pop-up book contains six pop-up scenes of circus acts, including acrobats, clowns, and daredevil riders.

In 1890 Bibby, Baron and Sons build the first flexographic press . This type of press uses the relief on a rubber printing plate to hold the image that needs to be printed. Because the ink that is used in that first flexo press smears easily, the device becomes known as Bibby’s Folly .

Twentieth century

In 1903 American printer Ira Washington Rubel is instrumental in producing the first lithographic offset press for paper. In offset presses, a rubber roller transfers the image from a printing plate or stone to the substrate. Such an offset cylinder was already in use for printing on metals, such as tin.

In 1907  the Englishman Samuel Simon is awarded a patent for the process of using silk fabric as a printing screen. Screen printing quickly becomes popular for producing expensive wallpaper and printing on fabrics such as linen and silk. Screen printing had first appeared in China during the Shang Dynasty (960–1279 AD).

A few of the new press manufacturers that appear on the market are Roland (nowadays known as Man Roland) in 1911 and Komori Machine Works in 1923.

In 1915 Hallmark , founded in 1910, creates its first Christmas card. It is during this same era that magazines such as the National Geographic Magazine  (1888), Life  (1883, but focussing on photojournalism from 1936), Time (1923), Vogue  (1892) and The Reader’s Digest  (1920) starting reaching millions of readers.

Press manufacturer Koenig & Bauer launch the four-color Iris printing press in 1923. It can be used for printing banknotes. Over time security printing becomes one of the main focus points of the company.

The first commercially successful series of paperback books are published by Penguin Books in the UK in 1935. Earlier in 1931 German publisher Albatross Books had already tried to market a series of lower-priced books with a paper cover and glue binding. Penguin copied many of the concepts of their failed attempt, such as the use of color-coded covers.

In 1938 Xerography , a dry photocopying technique is invented by Chester Carlson. The first commercial xerographic copier is introduced in 1949 but it is the 1959 Xerox 914 plain paper copier that is the breakthrough.

Japanese machine tool manufacturer Shinohara Machinery Company  begins manufacturing flatbed letterpress machines in 1948. A popular press from that time is the Heidelberg Tiegel. The picture below shows it being demonstrated to German finance minister Ludwig Erhard at the first drupa trade show in 1951.

In 1967 the  ISBN  or International Standard Book Number started. This is a unique numeric identifier for commercial books. That same year  Océ enters the office printing market with an electro-photographic process for copying documents using a special chemically-treated type of paper.

New materials like silicone make it possible for manufacturers such as Tampoprint  to build more efficient presses for printing on curved surfaces. Pad printing can now be done on an industrial scale.

In the USA newspaper circulation reaches its highest level ever in 1973. It will remain fairly steady until a gradual decline sets in during the mid-’80s.

The first laser printers, such as the IBM 3800 and Xerox 9700 , hit the market in 1975. They are prohibitively expensive but useful for applications such as cheque printing.

Desktop publishing takes off in 1985. The combination of the Apple Macintosh computer, printers and imagesetters powered by Adobe PostScript and the layout application Aldus PageMaker makes publishing more affordable.

At drupa 1986 MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG introduces its LITHOMAN commercial web offset printing press. Polar shows off the POLAR Compucut , a system for computer-assisted, external generation of cutting programs with automatic transfer to the cutting machine.

The Xerox Docutech, launched in 1990, combines a 135 page-per-minute black & white xerographic print engine with a scanner and finisher modules. It is arguably the first affordable print-on-demand publishing system.

In 1992 Australia is the first country to use polymer banknotes for general circulation.

Digital printing takes off in 1993 with the introduction of the  Indigo E-Print 100 (shown below) and  Xeikon DCP-1.

Twenty-first century

Offset presses still evolve incrementally. Two prime examples are the introduction of the KBA Cortina, a waterless web press for newspapers and semi-commercials, in 2000, and that of the giant  Goss Sunday 5000, the world’s first 96-page web press, in 2009.

Bigger changes happen in digital printing with machines that evolve as fast as the companies that produce them. Take the NexPress  for example. It is initially a joint development from Heidelberg and Kodak, later taken over completely by Kodak.

One of the bigger players in the market is HP, especially after its acquisition of Indigo in 2001. Other big players in the market are Konica Minolta with the  Bizhub  digital presses and Canon with its  Imagepress range. Part of Canon’s growth is through its acquisition of Océ in 2009.

One area of the market that evolves quickly is that of large format inkjet presses for the sign & display market. Inkjet technology also starts making inroads in the packaging industry. At the 2016 edition of drupa the EFI Nozomi C18000, HP PageWide C500, and Durst Rho 130 SPC (shown below) are all presses optimized for printing on corrugated packaging board.

16 thoughts on “ The history of printing ”

Great stuff, I wonder what the future of printing is ?

Very interesting article! Our offset presses are Heidelberg presses and our digital printers are Xerox. Love reading how both companies have been at the forefront of print

One of the most intriguing museums I’ve ever visited was the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT. They have several different buildings with various collections which are all phenomenal. They have one building for Printing and Weaving.

https://shelburnemuseum.org/collection/printing-shop-weaving-shop/

That is very cool I would love to see it in person and not just over google

There’s a whole huge historical area you skip in the 60s, 70s. I used to be a paste-up artist. (Gee, wonder what that was.) I’d think you’d at least include a photo of one of those huge AB Dick presses.

i couldnt find what i needed!!!

…but we have no idea what you needed.

Very interesting article! Our offset presses are Heidelberg presses and our digital printers are Xerox. Love reading how both companies have been at the forefront of print, contributed so much, and been around for so long.

Very thorough article. Thank you

very intriguing to read all about thank you

Can you please share the 3D view of flex printing machine?

Where in the world is one or more museums that showcase the history of printing? Modern digital printing and what goes behind my typing in as we read and clicking it to print are, least understood by me. I guess by most. Ought not the German Museum of Gutenberg in Mainz, filling such a Gap? Naturally only if not already covered elsewhere? Love to get feedback.

You can find a list of printing museums on this page: https://www.aapainfo.org/printing-museums.html

Do you offer a pdf of this timeline?

No, I’ve been thinking about making an e-book version but feel that the pages still need some more work.

Interesting article as I am just researching my family tree and found Gt Gt Grandad was a stereotyper and Gt Grandad was a compositor. They lived and worked around Aldgate, Fleet St and Chancery Lane in London in mid 1800s. No idea where they worked but one was married in St Johns Gate which is the one featured in the May 1759 Gentlemans magazine featured in your article. They lived for a time in Cursitor St London where the Jewish Chronicle is still printed. I’d love to research more but I’m not sure where to go for info. Any help would be great.

Dear R Clarkson. Have you tried United Kingdom’s National Archive at Kew, Surrey, England. Its geneology section is worth a try if you have not done so.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The History of Printing and Printing Processes

The earliest dated printed book known is "Diamond Sutra"

Wang Jie / Wikimedia Commons

• Famous Inventions
• Famous Inventors
• Patents & Trademarks
• Invention Timelines
• Computers & The Internet
• American History
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• Military History
• The 20th Century
• Women's History

The earliest dated printed book known is "Diamond Sutra," printed in China in 868 CE. However, it is suspected that book printing may have occurred long before this date.

Back then, printing was limited in the number of editions made and nearly exclusively decorative, used for pictures and designs. The material to be printed was carved into wood, stone, and metal, rolled with ink or paint, and transferred by pressure to parchment or vellum. Books were hand copied mostly by members of religious orders.

In 1452,  Johannes Gutenberg --a German blacksmith craftsman, goldsmith, printer, and inventor--printed copies of the Bible on the Gutenberg press, an innovative printing press machine that used movable type. It remained the standard until the 20th century. 

A Timeline of Printing

• 618-906:  T’ang Dynasty - The first printing is performed in China, using ink on carved wooden blocks; multiple transfers of an image to paper begins.
• 868:  "Diamond Sutra" is printed.
• 1241:  Koreans print books using movable type.
• 1300:  The first use of wooden type in China begins.
• 1309:  Europeans first make  paper . However, the Chinese and Egyptians had started making paper in previous centuries.
• 1338:  The first paper mill opened in France.
• 1390:  The first paper mill opened in Germany.
• 1392:  Foundries that can produce bronze type are opened in Korea.
• 1423:  Block printing is used to print books in Europe.
• 1452:  Metal plates are first used in printing in Europe. Johannes Gutenberg begins printing the Bible, which he finishes in 1456.
• 1457:  The first color printing is produced by Fust and Schoeffer.
• 1465:  Drypoint engravings are invented by Germans.
• 1476:  William Caxton begins using a Gutenberg printing press in England.
• 1477:  Intaglio is first used for book illustration for Flemish book "Il Monte Sancto di Dio."
• 1495:  The first paper mill opened in England.
• 1501:  Italic type is first used.
• 1550:  Wallpaper is introduced in Europe.
• 1605:  The first weekly newspaper is published in Antwerp.
• 1611:  The King James Bible is published.
• 1660:  Mezzotint--a method of engraving on copper or steel by burnishing or scraping away a uniformly roughened surface--is invented in Germany.
• 1691:  The first paper mill is opened in the American colonies.
• 1702:  Multicolored engraving is invented by German Jakob Le Blon. The first English-language daily newspaper--The Daily Courant--is published called.
• 1725:   Stereotyping  is invented by William Ged in Scotland.
• 1800:  Iron printing presses are invented.
• 1819:  The rotary printing press is invented by David Napier.
• 1829:  Embossed printing is invented by Louis Braille.
• 1841:  The type-composing machine is invented.
• 1844:  Electrotyping is invented.
• 1846:  The cylinder press is invented by Richard Hoe; it can print 8,000 sheets per hour.
• 1863:  The rotary web-fed letterpress is invented by William Bullock.
• 1865:  The web offset press can print on both sides of the paper at once.
• 1886:  The linotype composing machine is invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler.
• 1870:  Paper is now mass-manufactured from wood pulp.
• 1878:  Photogravure printing is invented by Karl Klic.
• 1890:  The mimeograph machine is introduced.
• 1891:  Printing presses can now print and fold 90,000 four-page papers per hour. Diazotype--in which photographs are printed on fabric--is invented.
• 1892:  The four-color rotary press is invented.
• 1904:  Offset lithography becomes common, and the first  comic book  is published.
• 1907:  Commercial silk screening is invented.
• 1947:  Phototypesetting is made practical.
• 59 B.C.:  "Acta Diurna," the first newspaper, is published in Rome.
• 1556:  The first monthly newspaper, "Notizie Scritte," is published in Venice.
• 1605:  The first printed newspaper published weekly in Antwerp is called "Relation."
• 1631:  The first French newspaper, "The Gazette," is published.
• 1645:  "Post-och Inrikes Tidningar" is published in Sweden and is still being published today, making it the world's oldest newspaper.
• 1690:  The first newspaper is published in America: "Publick Occurrences."
• 1702:  The first English-language daily newspaper is published: "The Daily Courant." The "Courant" was first published as a periodical in 1621.
• 1704:  Considered the world’s first journalist, Daniel Defoe publishes "The Review."
•   1803:  The first newspapers to be published in Australia include "The Sydney Gazette" and "New South Wales Advertiser."
• 1830:  The number of newspapers published in the United States is 715.
• 1831:  The famous abolitionist newspaper "The Liberator" is first published by  William Lloyd Garrison .
• 1833:  The "New York Sun" newspaper costs one cent and is the beginning of the  penny press .
• 1844:  The first newspaper is published in Thailand.
• 1848:  The "Brooklyn Freeman" newspaper is first published by  Walt Whitman .
• 1850:  P.T. Barnum starts running newspaper ads for Jenny Lind, the " Swedish Nightingale " performances in America.
• 1851:  The United States Post Office starts offering a cheap newspaper rate.
• 1855:  The first newspaper published in Sierra Leone.
• 1856:  The first full-page newspaper ad is published in the "New York Ledger." Large type newspaper ads are made popular by photographer Mathew Brady. Machines now mechanically fold newspapers.
• 1860:  "The New York Herald" starts the first morgue--a "morgue" in newspaper terms means an archive. 
• 1864:  William James Carlton of J. Walter Thompson Company begins selling advertising space in newspapers. The J. Walter Thompson Company is the longest-running American advertising agency.
• 1867:  The first double column advertising appears for the department store Lord & Taylor.
• 1869:  Newspaper circulation numbers are published by George P. Rowell in the first Rowell's American Newspaper Directory.
• 1870:  The number of newspapers published in the United States is 5,091.
• 1871:  The first newspaper published in Japan is the daily "Yokohama Mainichi Shimbun." 
• 1873:  The first illustrated daily newspaper, "The Daily Graphic," is published in New York.
• 1877:  The first weather report with a map is published in Australia. "The Washington Post" newspaper first publishes, with a circulation of 10,000 and a cost of 3 cents per paper.
• 1879:  The benday process--a technique for producing shading, texture or tone in line drawings and photographs by overlaying a fine screen or a pattern of dots, which is named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Day--improves newspapers. The first whole-page newspaper ad is placed by American department store Wanamaker's.
• 1880:  The first halftone photograph--Shantytown--is published in a newspaper.
• 1885:  Newspapers are delivered daily by train.
• 1887:  "The San Francisco Examiner" is published.
• 1893:  The Royal Baking Powder Company becomes the biggest newspaper advertiser in the world.
• 1903:  The first tabloid-style newspaper, "The Daily Mirror," is published.
• 1931:  Newspaper funnies now include Plainclothes Tracy, starring Dick Tracy.
• 1933:  A battle develops between the newspaper and  radio  industries. American newspapers try to force the Associated Press to terminate news service to radio stations.
• 1955:  Teletype-setting is used for newspapers.
• 1967:  Newspapers use digital production processes and begin using computers for operations.
• 1971:  The use of offset presses becomes common.
• 1977:  The first public access to archives is offered by Toronto's "Globe and Mail."
• 2007:  There are now 1,456 daily newspapers in the United States alone, selling 55 million copies a day.
• 2009:  This was the worst year in decades as far as advertising revenues for newspapers. Newspapers begin moving into online versions.
• 2010-present:resent:  Digital printing becomes the new norm, as commercial printing and publishing fade slightly due to technology.
• History of Computer Printers
• Here Is a Brief History of Print Journalism in America
• The Early History of Communication
• History's 15 Most Popular Inventors
• The African American Press Timeline: 1827 to 1895
• Key Events in the History of the English Language
• The Colorful History of Comic Books and Newspaper Cartoon Strips
• Biography of Johannes Gutenberg, German Inventor of the Printing Press
• Today in History: Inventions, Patents, and Copyrights
• Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Printer, Inventor, Statesman
• Imposition for Commercial Print Jobs
• The Role Printing Plates Play in the Printing Process
• The History of Photography: Pinholes and Polaroids to Digital Images
• Definition and Examples of Periods: Full Stop
• The Power of the Press: Black American News Publications in the Jim Crow Era
• Robert Sengstacke Abbott: Publisher of "The Chicago Defender"

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

7 Ways the Printing Press Changed the World

By: Dave Roos

Updated: March 27, 2023 | Original: August 28, 2019

Knowledge is power, as the saying goes, and the invention of the mechanical movable type printing press helped disseminate knowledge wider and faster than ever before.

German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg is credited with inventing the printing press around 1436, although he was far from the first to automate the book-printing process. Woodblock printing in China dates back to the 9th century and Korean bookmakers were printing with moveable metal type a century before Gutenberg.

But most historians believe Gutenberg’s adaptation, which employed a screw-type wine press to squeeze down evenly on the inked metal type, was the key to unlocking the modern age. With the newfound ability to inexpensively mass-produce books on every imaginable topic, revolutionary ideas and priceless ancient knowledge were placed in the hands of every literate European, whose numbers doubled every century.

Here are just some of the ways the printing press helped pull Europe out of the Middle Ages and accelerate human progress.

1. A Global News Network Was Launched

Gutenberg didn’t live to see the immense impact of his invention. His greatest accomplishment was the first print run of the Bible in Latin, which took three years to print around 200 copies, a miraculously speedy achievement in the day of hand-copied manuscripts.

But as historian Ada Palmer explains, Gutenberg’s invention wasn’t profitable until there was a distribution network for books. Palmer, a professor of early modern European history at the University of Chicago, compares early printed books like the Gutenberg Bible to how e-books struggled to find a market before Amazon introduced the Kindle.

“Congratulations, you’ve printed 200 copies of the Bible; there are about three people in your town who can read the Bible in Latin,” says Palmer. “What are you going to do with the other 197 copies?”

Gutenberg died penniless, his presses impounded by his creditors. Other German printers fled for greener pastures, eventually arriving in Venice, which was the central shipping hub of the Mediterranean in the late 15th century.

“If you printed 200 copies of a book in Venice, you could sell five to the captain of each ship leaving port,” says Palmer, which created the first mass-distribution mechanism for printed books.

The ships left Venice carrying religious texts and literature, but also breaking news from across the known world. Printers in Venice sold four-page news pamphlets to sailors, and when their ships arrived in distant ports, local printers would copy the pamphlets and hand them off to riders who would race them off to dozens of towns.

Since literacy rates were still very low in the 1490s, locals would gather at the pub to hear a paid reader recite the latest news, which was everything from bawdy scandals to war reports.

“This radically changed the consumption of news,” says Palmer. “It made it normal to go check the news every day.”

2. The Renaissance Kicked Into High Gear

The Italian Renaissance began nearly a century before Gutenberg invented his printing press when 14th-century political leaders in Italian city-states like Rome and Florence set out to revive the Ancient Roman educational system that had produced giants like Caesar, Cicero and Seneca.

One of the chief projects of the early Renaissance was to find long-lost works by figures like Plato and Aristotle and republish them. Wealthy patrons funded expensive expeditions across the Alps in search of isolated monasteries. Italian emissaries spent years in the Ottoman Empire learning enough Ancient Greek and Arabic to translate and copy rare texts into Latin.

The operation to retrieve classic texts was in action long before the printing press, but publishing the texts had been arduously slow and prohibitively expensive for anyone other than the richest of the rich. Palmer says that one hand-copied book in the 14th century cost as much as a house and libraries cost a small fortune. The largest European library in 1300 was the university library of Paris, which had 300 total manuscripts.

By the 1490s, when Venice was the book-printing capital of Europe, a printed copy of a great work by Cicero only cost a month’s salary for a school teacher. The printing press didn’t launch the Renaissance, but it vastly accelerated the rediscovery and sharing of knowledge.

“Suddenly, what had been a project to educate only the few wealthiest elite in this society could now become a project to put a library in every medium-sized town, and a library in the house of every reasonably wealthy merchant family,” says Palmer.

3. Martin Luther Becomes the First Best-Selling Author

There’s a famous quote attributed to German religious reformer Martin Luther that sums up the role of the printing press in the Protestant Reformation: “Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.”

Luther wasn’t the first theologian to question the Church, but he was the first to widely publish his message. Other “heretics” saw their movements quickly quashed by Church authorities and the few copies of their writings easily destroyed. But the timing of Luther’s crusade against the selling of indulgences coincided with an explosion of printing presses across Europe.

As the legend goes, Luther nailed his “95 Theses” to the church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Palmer says that broadsheet copies of Luther’s document were being printed in London as quickly as 17 days later.

Thanks to the printing press and the timely power of his message, Luther became the world’s first best-selling author. Luther’s translation of the New Testament into German sold 5,000 copies in just two weeks. From 1518 to 1525, Luther’s writings accounted for a third of all books sold in Germany and his German Bible went through more than 430 editions.

4. Printing Powers the Scientific Revolution

The English philosopher Francis Bacon, who’s credited with developing the scientific method, wrote in 1620 that the three inventions that forever changed the world were gunpowder , the nautical compass and the printing press.

For millennia, science was a largely solitary pursuit. Great mathematicians and natural philosophers were separated by geography, language and the sloth-like pace of hand-written publishing. Not only were handwritten copies of scientific data expensive and hard to come by, they were also prone to human error.

With the newfound ability to publish and share scientific findings and experimental data with a wide audience, science took great leaps forward in the 16th and 17th centuries. When developing his sun-centric model of the galaxy in the early 1500s, for example, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus relied not only on his own heavenly observations, but on printed astronomical tables of planetary movements.

When historian Elizabeth Eisenstein wrote her 1980 book about the impact of the printing press, she said that its biggest gift to science wasn’t necessarily the speed at which ideas could spread with printed books, but the accuracy with which the original data were copied. With printed formulas and mathematical tables in hand, scientists could trust the fidelity of existing data and devote more energy to breaking new ground.

5. Fringe Voices Get a Platform

“Whenever a new information technology comes along, and this includes the printing press, among the very first groups to be ‘loud’ in it are the people who were silenced in the earlier system, which means radical voices,” says Palmer.

It takes effort to adopt a new information technology, whether it’s the ham radio, an internet bulletin board, or Instagram. The people most willing to take risks and make the effort to be early adopters are those who had no voice before that technology existed.

“In the print revolution, that meant radical heresies, radical Christian splinter groups, radical egalitarian groups, critics of the government,” says Palmer. “The Protestant Reformation is only one of many symptoms of print enabling these voices to be heard.”

As critical and alternative opinions entered the public discourse, those in power tried to censor it. Before the printing press, censorship was easy. All it required was killing the “heretic” and burning his or her handful of notebooks.

But after the printing press, Palmer says it became nearly impossible to destroy all copies of a dangerous idea. And the more dangerous a book was claimed to be, the more the people wanted to read it. Every time the Church published a list of banned books, the booksellers knew exactly what they should print next.

6. From Public Opinion to Popular Revolution

During the Enlightenment era, philosophers like John Locke , Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were widely read among an increasingly literate populace. Their elevation of critical reasoning above custom and tradition encouraged people to question religious authority and prize personal liberty.

Increasing democratization of knowledge in the Enlightenment era led to the development of public opinion and its power to topple the ruling elite. Writing in pre-Revolution France, Louis-Sebástien Mercier declared:

“A great and momentous revolution in our ideas has taken place within the last thirty years. Public opinion has now become a preponderant power in Europe, one that cannot be resisted… one may hope that enlightened ideas will bring about the greatest good on Earth and that tyrants of all kinds will tremble before the universal cry that echoes everywhere, awakening Europe from its slumbers.”

“[Printing] is the most beautiful gift from heaven,” continues Mercier. “It soon will change the countenance of the universe… Printing was only born a short while ago, and already everything is heading toward perfection… Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world! Tremble before the virtuous writer!”

Even the illiterate couldn’t resist the attraction of revolutionary Enlightenment authors, Palmer says. When Thomas Paine published “Common Sense” in 1776 , the literacy rate in the American colonies was around 15 percent, yet there were more copies printed and sold of the revolutionary tract than the entire population of the colonies.

7. Machines ‘Steal Jobs’ From Workers

The Industrial Revolution didn’t get into full swing in Europe until the mid-18th century, but you can make the argument that the printing press introduced the world to the idea of machines “stealing jobs” from workers.

Before Gutenberg’s paradigm-shifting invention, scribes were in high demand. Bookmakers would employ dozens of trained artisans to painstakingly hand-copy and illuminate manuscripts. But by the late 15th century, the printing press had rendered their unique skillset all but obsolete.

On the flip side, the huge demand for printed material spawned the creation of an entirely new industry of printers, brick-and-mortar booksellers and enterprising street peddlers. Among those who got his start as a printer's apprentice was future Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin.

HISTORY Vault: 101 Inventions That Changed the World

Take a closer look at the inventions that have transformed our lives far beyond our homes (the steam engine), our planet (the telescope) and our wildest dreams (the internet).

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Skip to the good stuff!

Printing History

Submissions  |   Back Issues   |   Advertising   |   Editors

Printing History , the semiannual peer-reviewed journal of the American Printing HistoryAssociation (APHA), has been published since 1979. Digital copies of the journal are available on the Gale and EBSCO databases. The journal is available in paper format as a benefit of membership in APHA.

Befitting a publication devoted to these subjects, Printing History is an artifact in its own right that reflects the histories it documents. The journal is beautifully designed, illustrated, and printed and is available only in paper format through membership in APHA.

Accordingly, Printing History is a highly desirable advertising venue that is circulated widely amongst those concerned with the production of printed materials. Consider becoming part of that community of readers, and part of the publication’s legacy, through purchasing advertising space.

Please direct all correspondence and inquiries about Printing History to Josef Beery, Vice President for Publications, at [email protected] . 

Printing History follows the guidelines of The Chicago Manual of Style .

Back to top

submitting an article to printing history

The editor welcomes submissions on any aspect of printing history and its related arts; contributors need not be members of APHA. Articles, book reviews, and other journal submissions should be sent to [email protected] .

We are readily prepared to receive submissions that are created in the major word processing programs. Images should, ideally, be submitted as 600 ppi files in the TIF format on CDs or DVDs. In general, we follow the guidelines of The Chicago Manual of Style . Footnotes, rather than endnotes, are the preferred form of documentation.  Printing History  is indexed in  Library Literature  and the  MLA International Bibliography . 

Back issues of Printing History

Back issues of Printing History  are indexed in  Library Literature  and the  MLA International Bibliography . Back issues of the new series are searchable in EBSCO and Gale online academic databases. Many back issues of both the original and the new series are  available for purchase . 

Advertising in Printing History

To place an ad, please contact Josef Beery, Vice President for Publications, at [email protected]. Please supply your advertisement as a high-resolution, press-ready grayscale PDF file in an attachment. (Color advertising is available at an additional charge.)  

Original artwork (before making the PDF) should be 1200 ppi for line art and 300 ppi for halftones at the ad’s finished size. 

Printing History  was founded in 1979; since then it has been edited by Susan Otis Thompson, Anna Lou Ashby, Renee I. Weber, and David Pankow. The first 50 issues of the journal constitute the  Original Series —many of which are  now on sale .

Printing History New Series  began in 2007 under the editorship of William S. Peterson, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, former editor of  Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America,  and the author of books about the Kelmscott Press and Daniel Berkeley Updike.

In July 2011, Peterson was succeeded by William T. La Moy, curator of rare books and printed materials at the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library.  

In 2016,  La Moy was succeeded by Brooke S. Palmieri, a Ph.D Candidate in History at University College London.

In 2021, George Barnum, then Vice President for Publications, edited NS 29/30

In 2022, Daniel Arbino was the guest editor for NS 31/32. 

In 2023, Danelle Moon will be the guest editor for NS 33. 

• Back issues of Printing History
• Website Production Notes
• Administrative login
• American Printing History Association
• PO Box 4519
• Grand Central Station
• New York NY 10163-4519

© 2024 American Printing History Association

• Tools and Resources
• Customer Services
• 20th Century: Post-1945
• 20th Century: Pre-1945
• African American History
• Antebellum History
• Asian American History
• Civil War and Reconstruction
• Colonial History
• Cultural History
• Early National History
• Economic History
• Environmental History
• Foreign Relations and Foreign Policy
• History of Science and Technology
• Labor and Working Class History
• Late 19th-Century History
• Latino History
• Legal History
• Native American History
• Political History
• Pre-Contact History
• Religious History
• Revolutionary History
• Slavery and Abolition
• Southern History
• Urban History
• Western History
• Women's History
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Article contents

Print, the press, and the american revolution.

• Robert G. Parkinson Robert G. Parkinson Binghamton University, SUNY
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.9
• Published online: 03 September 2015

According to David Ramsay, one of the first historians of the American Revolution, “in establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.” Because of the unstable and fragile notions of unity among the thirteen American colonies, print acted as a binding agent that mitigated the chances that the colonies would not support one another when war with Britain broke out in 1775.

Two major types of print dealt with the political process of the American Revolution: pamphlets and newspapers. Pamphlets were one of the most important conveyors of ideas during the imperial crisis. Often written by elites under pseudonyms and published by booksellers, they have long been held by historians as the lifeblood of the American Revolution. There were also three dozen newspaper printers in the American mainland colonies at the start of the Revolution, each producing a four-page issue every week. These weekly papers, or one-sheet broadsides that appeared in American cities even more frequently, were the most important communication avenue to keep colonists informed of events hundreds of miles away. Because of the structure of the newspaper business in the 18th century, the stories that appeared in each paper were “exchanged” from other papers in different cities, creating a uniform effect akin to a modern news wire. The exchange system allowed for the same story to appear across North America, and it provided the Revolutionaries with a method to shore up that fragile sense of unity. It is difficult to imagine American independence—as a popular idea let alone a possible policy decision—without understanding how print worked in colonial America in the mid-18th century.

• Common Sense
• freedom of the press
• Sons of Liberty

According to one of the first historians of the Revolution, “in establishing American independence, the pen and press had merit equal to that of the sword.” 1 Print—whether the trade in books, the number of weekly newspapers, or the mass of pamphlets, broadsides, and other imprints—increased dramatically in the middle of the 18th century, with the general trend of economic prosperity and growing cultural norms about “refinement” and “improvement.” In the 1760s, print became a contested site of imperial reform with the Stamp Act, when Parliament chose texts as the locus of the constitutional debate over the colonies’ place in the empire and their responsibility in sharing tax burdens. The Stamp Act and the colonists’ resistance politicized print—and printers—in new ways. For the remainder of the imperial crisis, print remained at the center of the colonial resistance movement, connecting disparate resistance groups to one another, and providing the most reliable communications network across the Atlantic littoral. Newspapers, pamphlets, and broadsides were, indeed, the lifeblood of American resistance. Because of the unstable and fragile notions of unity among the thirteen mainland American colonies, print acted as a binding agent that mitigated the chances that the colonies would not support one another when war with Britain broke out in 1775.

Two major types of print shaped the political processes of the American Revolution: pamphlets and newspapers. Pamphlets became strategic conveyors of ideas during the imperial crisis. Often written by elites under pseudonyms, they have long been held up by historians as agents of change in and of themselves—that texts like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense or John Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania , to name two of the most famous, are often seen as actors themselves, driving the resistance movement forward. There were also three dozen newspapers active on the American mainland at the start of the Revolution, each producing a four-page issue once a week. Although these papers earlier in the 18th century had focused on news from European capitals and courts, with the burgeoning imperial crisis they began to feature news from other colonies. These weekly papers were the most important communication avenue that kept colonists informed of events hundreds of miles away. It is difficult to imagine American independence—as a popular idea let alone a potential policy decision—without understanding how print worked in colonial America in the later decades of the 18th century.

As Bernard Bailyn wrote in the foreword to his 1965 book, Pamphlets of the American Revolution , there were more than four hundred pamphlets published in the colonies on the imperial controversy up through 1776, and nearly four times that number by war’s end in 1783. 2 These pamphlets varied in their theme and approach, including tracts of constitutional theory or history, sermons and orations, correspondence, literary pieces, and political debate. Bailyn originally decided to print seventy-two of these in a significant project that began with fourteen dated 1750–1765. In a two-hundred-page general introduction to what promised to be a multivolume effort, Bailyn developed an interpretation about the content of what was to follow, an analysis that he would deepen a few years later in the seminal Ideological Origins of the American Revolution ( 1967 ).

According to Bailyn, the pamphlets—“booklets consisting of a few printer’s sheets, folded in various ways so as to make various sizes and numbers of pages and sold . . . for a few pence, at most a shilling or two”—were the “most important and characteristic writing of the American Revolution.” 3 They were normally small but quite flexible in size, ranging from ten to fifty pages in length. Because of this flexibility and cheap cost, they were printed everywhere. Bailyn found them especially grouped around three moments during the controversy: the Stamp Act crisis ( 1765–1766 ), the Townshend Duties and Boston Massacre ( 1767–1770 ), and the Boston Tea Party and Parliament’s response in the Coercive Acts ( 1774 ). In them, he argued, were the most creative and powerful arguments that drove the Anglo-American controversy to war and independence. No empty vessels of propaganda or intentional deceit, the political pamphlets clarified the abstract constitutional issues and sharpened American response, according to Bailyn.

The pamphlets channeled and focused colonial resistance by framing dissent via appeals to history and political experience. The pamphleteers often invoked the lessons from the fall of the Roman republic, the political strife of the English Civil War, and the libertarian warnings from those who opposed the administration of Robert Walpole in the early 1700s. They blended the political theories from republicans stretching back to the ancient world with English writers from the 17th and 18th centuries. Together, they instructed the colonial public that political and personal liberty were in jeopardy because British imperial reformers sought to strip them of their natural rights, especially the right to consent to a government that could hear and understand them. Without representation, American colonists were political dependents who lacked any form of redress. Many of the pamphlets assumed a significant amount of knowledge of recent and ancient history, as well as sophisticated understandings of constitutional and legal relationships. The most successful, however, were those who aimed their rhetoric to a larger reading public. Tom Paine’s Common Sense , is, of course, the classic example. Paine eschewed a learned style and posture and instead embraced vernacular language and forwarded arguments drawn from more readily understood sources, especially the Bible.

Pamphlets that supported the Crown appeared within a few months of one another in late 1774 and early 1775 . From the Stamp Act in 1765 until this point, loyalists had dismissed the patriot movement as inconsequential and unpopular, viewing their street protests and constitutional arguments as, apparently, not worth the effort of refutation. Once the First Continental Congress met in September– October 1774 and, especially, after loyalists saw the wide popularity of the Continental Association (the extensive, general boycott that was to be binding in all colonies) passed by that body, they suddenly realized this effort was worthwhile after all. Pamphlets by Samuel Seabury, Thomas Chandler, and Daniel Leonard all appeared during this frenzied moment, trying to halt the wave of patriot support, but it was largely too late. Although the patriots took their efforts seriously—John Adams (writing as “Novanglus”) saw it to engage Leonard (writing as “Massachusettensis”) point-by-point in extended newspaper exchanges—the loyalists had waited too long to present their side to the colonial public.

The key political pamphlets that supported resistance from 1765 to 1776 are: James Otis, Rights of British Colonies Asserted and Proved (Boston, 1764 ); Richard Bland, Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies (Williamsburg, 1766 ); John Dickinson, Letters of a Farmer in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1768 ); James Warren, Oration to Commemorate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, 1770 (Boston, 1772 ); Thomas Jefferson, A Summary View of the Rights of British Americans (Williamsburg, 1774 ); Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia, 1776 ); and John Adams, Thoughts on Government (Philadelphia, 1776 ).

The key political pamphlets that opposed colonial resistance from 1765 to 1776 are: Samuel Seabury, The Congress Canvassed (New York, 1774 ); Thomas B. Chandler, A Friendly Address to All Reasonable Americans (New York, 1774 ); Daniel Leonard, Origin of the American Contest . . . by Massachusettensis (Boston, 1775 ); Charles Inglis, The Deceiver Unmasked (New York, 1776 ); and James Chalmers, Plain Truth (Philadelphia, 1776 ).

Newspapers and the American Revolution

For much of the 18th century colonial newspaper printers published content that was mostly related to the affairs of government, whether proclamations, laws, orders, or money. This was by necessity; because of weak markets, tight credit, scare supplies, poor transportation, and irregular labor, printers who did not have a connection to government contracts had a near impossible time making ends meet. 4 Most colonial printers lived very precarious economic lives. Their social status was low—they worked hard, and with their hands—but their information largely came from gentlemen. They depended on the circles of gentle folk, but were not welcome in them. 5 The columns of their usually four-page weekly newspaper issues were filled with information from England and Europe before mid-century, usually stories taken from London papers. From their newspapers colonists knew far more about the goings-on at the courts and capitals of Europe than they did about one another. Printers depended on their colleagues in other cities for news: they sent free copies of their papers across the Atlantic for the purposes of the “exchanges”—the clipping of news items from one paper and placing it in your own issue. They also depended on local gentlemen and city officials to come into their shops bearing information of public import, whether a portion of a private letter that they volunteered to be anonymously extracted for public consumption, or documents with bearing on public concern that they ordered sent to the printer for publication. Printers were not seekers but receivers of information in the late 18th century. The “exchanges,” however, acted as a powerful tool for political mobilization. Because they acted in many ways like a modern newswire, carrying the same story almost intact from city to city, the “exchanges” provided a form of simultaneity and shared political experience. The exchange system provided the members of the colonial resistance movement with a method to shore up a very inchoate and unstable sense of intercolonial unity. Crafty patriot writers understood and used the “exchange” system to great advantage to get certain key messages or images that fostered resistance out to a wide continental public to foster support they would have otherwise had difficulty building.

Reliance on government largesse shifted in the 1760s, as political items, stories, and essays about the burgeoning “imperial crisis” appeared more frequently. Starting in the 1760s the number of newspapers rose significantly, doubling between 1763 and 1775 , and then doubling again from 1775 to 1790. 6 Political engagement also led to a shift away from the traditional efforts by newspaper printers earlier in the century to keep their columns open to both sides of debates. After the Stamp Act—whether because of personal political leanings or because they thought it best to suit their market niche—printers began to abandon the ideal of neutrality to embrace or reject colonial resistance of British imperial reform. 7 A few printers, including William Goddard (Providence), William Bradford (Philadelphia), Peter Timothy (Charleston), John Holt (New York City), Benjamin Edes and John Gill (Boston) joined in the “cause” in various ways, either by becoming members of the Sons of Liberty, opening their print shops for political meetings, or publishing a wide array of stories, essays, and items that supported the cause. On the other hand, a few other printers, including James Rivington, Richard Draper, and Robert Wells, made their newspapers available for loyalists to submit essays that criticized patriot resistance efforts.

Anonymity was a key feature of publication in the late 18th century. Authors of essays that either appeared in pamphlet form or were serialized across several weekly issues of newspapers often appeared under a pseudonym to protect all involved parties: the writer, the publisher, and the concept of a “free press.” But with printers taking increasingly polarized political stances—and popular understanding of the role of newspaper printers in the burgeoning “imperial crisis” shifting—the effectiveness of the shield of pseudonyms faltered.

For example, what happened at the end of 1767 between the printers of the Boston Gazette and Boston Chronicle illuminates the increasing political pressure on newspaper publishers, and the suddenness by which a confrontation could now escalate into violence. From its opening issue that year, the Boston Chronicle , published by recent Scot emigrant John Mein and his partner John Fleeming, provoked the city’s opponents of imperial reform. Mein and Fleeming started the Chronicle with an attack on two of the patriots’ favorite British leaders, the Earl of Chatham and the Marquis of Rockingham. Naturally, the Boston radicals who paid close attention to matters of print, that is, Samuel Adams and James Otis, fought back in their dedicated organ, Edes and Gill’s Boston Gazette . Under the cover of a pseudonym, Otis wrote an essay slandering Mein as a Jacobite. Soon an outraged Mein burst into the Gazette office demanding the contributor’s name, but got no satisfaction. Still fuming, a few nights later he caned his Gazette colleague John Gill on a Boston street. 8 Several weeks later, Samuel Adams, writing as “Populus,” described this clubbing not as a private affair between the two printers but instead a “Spaniard-like Attempt” to restrict press freedom. 9

Criminal charges and severe fines did not deter Mein. Nearly two years later, Mein and Fleeming sought to embarrass the Sons of Liberty once again, this time by revealing the caprice and self-interest that they thought really actuated the non-importation boycott the Sons had organized to resist the Townshend Duties. The Chronicle featured fifty-five lists of shipping manifests revealing the names of merchants who broke the non-importation agreement, including many who had actually signed the boycott. In response it was many upset Bostonians who embraced vigilantism this time. Mein and Fleeming had published the lists to suggest the boycott was really an effort to eliminate business competition on the part of merchants sympathetic to the Sons. Now they had to stuff pistols in their pockets to walk the streets of Boston. 10 In October the Boston town meeting condemned Mein as an enemy of his country, and a few days later a large crowd confronted the offending printers on King Street, producing a scuffle that left Mein bruised, Fleeming’s pistol empty, and a few dozen angry Bostonians facing British bayonets. Mein at first took shelter in the guardhouse, but, when Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson did not offer vigorous support, the truculent printer departed for England.

Evidence of a growing polarization and politicization, the clash between the Boston Gazette and Boston Chronicle was also about naming names. Mein wanted the Gazette printers to tell him who called him a Jacobite; his own paper’s revealing of the identities of importers animated the crowd and forced the Chronicle printer into exile. Anonymity was itself a transforming concept during the imperial crisis. Long a key feature of 18th-century print culture, with the republican claims of the patriots, anonymity took on a new significance in print, one that allowed for a broader inclusion of the public, and, by implication, the possibility of greater purchase by the people at large. As a rule, contributors to the newspapers shielded themselves with pseudonyms, often judiciously employed to cast themselves as public defenders (“Populus,” “Salus Populi,” “Rusticus”) or guardians of ancient liberty and virtue (“Mucius Scaevola,” “Cato,” “Nestor,” “Neoptelemus”). As one literary scholar has suggested, by adopting such identities those “guardians” were then not real , individual inhabitants of Boston or Philadelphia, with particular social interests, but universal promoters of republican liberty. 11 Analysts often point to the destruction of the concept of deference—a staple of 18th-century social structure—as a sign of the Revolution’s radicalness. The shift in the understanding of anonymity in print was a key factor in decoupling social status from political authority. That shift helped undermine deference as an organizing concept of American social and political culture.

Printers, then, mediated several fluid and rapidly changing concepts of both their professions and colonial politics before the Revolution. They were the keepers of very important political secrets. They alone knew who had submitted a manuscript for publication; only they could pierce the republican fiction of anonymity. Often, this position was precarious. As political pressure increased in the 1760s and 1770s, the impulse to throw off these veils was occasionally very strong. Printers periodically found themselves or their property in harm’s way if they refused to bow to the will of angry demands that they confess.

John Gill would not be the only one to suffer from this increasing imperative; throughout the Revolution several printers on both sides of the imperial question found themselves or their property at risk. In 1776 , when New York Packet printer Samuel Loudon dared to advertise the publication of a pamphlet that answered Tom Paine’s Common Sense and called the “scheme of Independence ruinous and delusive,” the Mechanics Committee, a radical patriot group created in 1774 out of the Sons of Liberty, summoned the printer to explain his behavior and reveal the author’s identity. 12 Loudon refused to tell the committee the Anglican rector of Trinity Church, Charles Inglis, had written the pamphlet, so six members of the committee went to his shop and, in Loudon’s words, “nailed and sealed up the printed sheets in boxes, except a few which were drying in an empty house, which they locked, and took the key with them.” 13 They warned Loudon to stop publishing the pamphlet, or else his “personal safety might be endangered.” Although he “promised to comply,” this pledge “availed nothing for my security.” Late the next night, forty men returned, broke into his office, grabbed all fifteen hundred copies of Inglis’s pamphlet, “carried them into the commons, and there burned them.” 14

The highly charged content of those publications, whether the weekly newspapers or pamphlets like The Deceiver Unmasked , also fueled partisanship. The imperial crisis witnessed what one scholar has called the advent of the “exposé” in America. 15 As printers increasingly gave space to contributors who claimed they were unmasking corruption or conspiracy, they aided in the disintegration of established concepts of what kept a press “free.” The most impassioned publications of the 1760s–1770s—Dickinson’s Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, the chronicle of soldiers’ abuses known as the “Journal of Occurrences,” Paul Revere’s engraving of the Boston Massacre, and Thomas Hutchinson’s private letters—all centered on revealing or dramatizing the government’s true aims of stripping American colonists of their liberties. There were not two sides to “truth.” Either behind pseudonyms or not, the patriot writers or artists who brought these plots to light claimed they were heroic servants of the people, informants seeking to protect an unwitting public from tyranny’s stealthy advance. This was not a debate. So framed, it was also a difficult position to counter. At the same time, the appearance of each of these “exposés” also represented a choice by the printers themselves. By giving space to the “truth”—and, by extension, to the protection of the people’s rights—they took a side that changed the older values of press freedom forever. A free or open press, they decided, did not have to allow equal space for opposing viewpoints that they characterized as endorsing lies and tyranny.

Print was an essential factor in pushing the colonists toward revolution even if it was not sufficient to cause the Revolution. Benjamin Franklin, it should not surprise, grasped perfectly the power of newspapers. “By the press we can speak to nations,” the printer-turned-politician wrote a friend in 1782. Thanks to newspapers, Franklin concluded, political leaders could not only “strike while the iron is hot” but also stoke fires by “continually striking.” 16 Those bundles of newspapers—dropped off at crossroad inns and subscribers’ rural estates in the countryside, distributed among urban taverns and gathering places in the cities, imported into the army camps—had the potential to be potent tools of revolutionary mobilization. Patriot leaders from the mid-1760s through the Treaty of Paris spent a great deal of time and, more illuminating, moneysupporting all kinds of print: subsidizing printers, aiding in paper supplies, contributing private correspondence to newspapers, ordering the publication of certain documents, treating printing presses as military contraband, sending pamphlets in diplomatic packets, arranging for illustrations for a child’s book of British atrocities. The journals of the proceedings of patriot political authorities at all levels, from local committees of safety, to state legislatures, to the Continental Congress, give evidence that they saw their actions as intertwined with printers. The working men and women attached to American print shops—the riders carrying papers to the countryside, the apprentices and slaves working the press, the journeymen assembling types, for example—were essential to the Revolution too.

A Guide to Newspapers during the American Revolution

On April 19, 1775, there were thirty-seven active newspapers in the colonies. When Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781, there were thirty-five. Of those original thirty-seven papers that printed the news of Lexington and Concord, only twenty made it through the war and very few of those were able to continue publishing a paper each week. This number would ebb and flow. War exacerbated printers’ capacity to secure ready supplies of materials, especially paper. Seventeen prewar prints would expire during the fighting while eighteen new ventures were started but were also discontinued at some point. The mean number for active newspapers between 1775 and 1783 is thirty-five; the approximate number of thirty-five holds up throughout the war’s duration.

In Boston, the engagements at Lexington and Concord instantly upended the city’s newspaper production. Three prints that defended the Ministry closed that month. Patriot papers, including Benjamin Edes and John Gill’s radical Boston Gazette and Isaiah Thomas’s Massachusetts Spy had to suspend publication as they fled to the countryside. On May 3, Thomas continued to print from Worcester, where he would stay throughout the remainder of the war. Edes also brought out the Boston Gazette again from Watertown on June 5. When the British evacuated Boston in March 1776 , the Boston Gazette again took up residence in the city, but the important Edes and Gill partnership had not survived the move out of Boston. John Gill started his own pro-American organ, the Continental Journal , in May. A fifth paper, Powers and Willis’s New England Chronicle became the Independent Chronicle in 1776 . In 1778 Edward Draper and John Folsom started another Boston paper, the Independent Ledger . For much of the war Boston boasted six prints. When one closed, another, like James White and Thomas Adams’s Boston Evening Post (which ran from October 1778 to March 1780 ) opened. Outside Boston, John Mycall published the Essex Journal in Newburyport from 1775 to early 1777 . In all, Massachusetts boasted of six long-lasting and important papers that supported the Revolution, with the Massachusetts Spy , Boston Gazette , and Continental Journal being the most significant.

Newspapers in Connecticut enjoyed the most stability during the war. The same four papers that contained the news of Lexington also reprinted the Treaty of Paris. Since the mid-18th century the powerful Green family dominated the colony’s print business. During the Revolution they operated the Connecticut Gazette in New London (Timothy Green) and the Connecticut Journal in New Haven (Thomas and Samuel Green). Ebenezer Watson and later George Goodwin and Barzillai Hudson ran the Green-founded Connecticut Courant in Hartford. None suffered suspensions or dislocations. The fourth, the Norwich Packet , had begun in 1773 by John Trumbull and two brothers, Alexander and James Robertson. In May 1776 , the Robertsons, who were loyalists from Scotland, went to New York, leaving Trumbull to operate the paper alone, which he did until 1802 .

If Connecticut was the land of steady print habits, the other New England provinces, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, were the opposite. Robert Fowle had published the New Hampshire Gazette in Portsmouth since his uncle had begun the business in 1756 . In 1776 , however, New Hampshire authorities suspected Fowle of counterfeiting and printing items against the “cause.” The Gazette ceased publication on January 9. A few months later Benjamin Dearborn picked up printing in Portsmouth with the Freeman’s Journal which operated until 1778 when Robert’s uncle Daniel took over and changed the name of the print back to the New Hampshire Gazette . The war’s intrusion also hampered the press in Rhode Island. John Carter, one of Franklin’s apprentices, was able to maintain his Whiggish Providence Gazette throughout the war. Solomon Southwick and the Newport Mercury were less lucky. In November 1775 , fearing an impending invasion, Southwick moved his materials out of his Newport office. A year later, when the British did occupy the city, he was forced to bury his press and types for four years. A patriot, Southwick tried to keep active by printing on a borrowed press in Attleborough and Providence in the interim, but the Newport Mercury lay dormant until January 1780 when Henry Barber carried on.

Southwick’s problems were minor compared to the experiences of New York’s printers. At the outbreak of war there were three papers in New York City: John Holt’s New York Journal , Hugh Gaine’s New York Gazette & Weekly Mercury , and James Rivington’s New York Gazetteer . Holt supported the Revolutionaries, Gaine equivocated, and Rivington was popularly known as the leading Tory printer in the colonies. In August 1775 , James Anderson began a second patriot press, the New York Constitutional Gazette , which brought out a paper three times a week. Another pro-American print began in January 1776 with Samuel Loudon beginning production of the New York Packet . These last two papers had little time to get settled because the British invasion in September 1776 changed everything. Anderson closed permanently, Loudon went to Fishkill, New York, Holt took his types to Kingston, New York (also known as Esopus), and Gaine fled for a few weeks to Newark, New Jersey. While Gaine was in New Jersey, the British army, lacking a paper, commissioned Ambrose Serle to start his own “engine.” Gaine, who had been printing a paper in New York since 1752 , decided after a few weeks that the British market would better serve his financial interests, and he returned to the city on November 11, 1776 , to displace Serle’s nascent operation. Gaine’s decision to turn his coat infuriated the Revolutionaries, and his name would be synonymous with deceit and greed for the remainder of the war. Philip Freneau’s stinging poem, “Hugh Gaine’s Life,” which some patriot printers happily published in 1783, typified this anger.

In occupied New York, papers flourished. In addition to Gaine, Rivington, the well-educated son of a prominent London book-seller, returned in 1777 and reestablished his print tri-weekly, the Robertson brothers from Norwich also began a bi-weekly Royal American Gazette that year, and when William Lewis started the New York Mercury in September 1779 , New York had a combination daily newspaper. Meanwhile, the dispersed patriot papers had a more difficult time outside the city. Outside the main avenues of communication, Loudon still managed to maintain publication of the Packet from Fishkill throughout the war. Holt published from Kingston from July to October 1777 when disaster struck again as the British sacked the town. In May 1778 he resurfaced in even more remote Poughkeepsie, New York, where he struggled to maintain his connections with Governor George Clinton and keep the New York Journal in circulation.

The presence of the British army in New York also meant that New Jersey would be an active theater of violence from 1776 onward. In December 1777 , Isaac Collins, a Quaker who was sponsored by Governor William Livingston and partly financed by the state, founded the New Jersey Gazette in Burlington. A few months later he relocated to Trenton, where he would maintain publication until July 1783 . Sheppard Kollock, a former Continental Army lieutenant, started a second newspaper ( New Jersey Journal ) in Chatham, New Jersey in February 1779 because Washington wanted his troops to have a newspaper while they were in winter quarters in nearby Morristown. Since a large number of Kollock’s subscribers were soldiers, this paper contained a high quotient of war news until the end of hostilities. The sponsorship of newspapers in New Jersey by patriot authorities suggests how they thought about the centrality of print to the war effort. The New Jersey state legislature and governor, the Continental Army, and Continental Congress all expended valuable time and money to put sheets of newsprint in the hands of soldiers and civilians in the zone between Philadelphia and occupied Manhattan.

Since the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia had been the center of colonial print culture. At the war’s outset, there were six English language newspapers being published in Philadelphia. The two oldest prints were the Pennsylvania Gazette and Pennsylvania Journal . David Hall and William Sellers now operated Franklin’s organ, the nearly fifty-year-old Pennsylvania Gazette , while William Bradford—who had branched into coffee houses, marine insurance—still operated the Pennsylvania Journal more than thirty years after its founding. Irish printer John Dunlap had joined them in 1771 with the Pennsylvania Packet , while three more papers, Benjamin Towne’s tri-weekly Pennsylvania Evening Post , Story and David Humphrey’s Pennsylvania Mercury , and John Humphreys Jr.’s Pennsylvania Ledger , began in early 1775 . Bradford and Dunlap were the most active Whigs among their colleagues, Hall and Sellers took a moderate course, John Humphreys tended toward the king, and Towne—like Gaine in New York—fended for himself. Congress spread their printing business around: for example John Dunlap was the first to produce a broadside text of the Declaration of Independence, while Towne had the honor of being the first to insert it in his July 6 issue. Delegates to the Continental Congress who wrote articles and essays sent them to Bradford and Dunlap.

Early on there was some turbulence in the Philadelphia print community. In December 1775 a fire ended the Mercury . The following November, Towne, an Englishman, attacked James Humphreys for being a Tory, a campaign that subsequently drove him out of town. Just as Humphreys fled, it appeared that the British might sweep into Philadelphia and all papers suspended publication except Towne’s Evening Post . Bradford joined the Continental Army as a colonel and fought in New Jersey. After the invasion scare dissipated with Washington’s victories at Trenton and Princeton, Philadelphia papers resumed operations. The following fall, though, Howe’s successful expedition against Philadelphia scattered printers and delegates alike across Pennsylvania. With the occupation, Bradford suspended his Journal , Hall and Sellers followed Congress to York and published there, while Dunlap took the Packet to nearby Lancaster for a period of months. Towne, on the other hand, stayed put, deciding to turn his coat and print a loyalist paper. Humphreys returned to Philadelphia and restarted the Ledger during the nine-month occupation. James Robertson came down from New York to produce a Royal Pennsylvania Gazette from March to May 1778 . When the British left Philadelphia in May, Humphreys closed the Ledger and went along. Apparently attached to the city no matter the political climate, Towne turned his coat back again toward the Revolution and kept his paper alive. Towne’s navigation of choppy political waters earned him disdain among Whigs but not permanent banishment. The Evening Post would soon have the distinction of becoming America’s first daily newspaper. The Gazette and Journal returned from the countryside after the British evacuated, although Thomas Bradford took over production from his aging father who had reprised his role as printer-turned-officer when the British occupied Philadelphia. Later in the war, two volatile prints appeared in Philadelphia, Francis Bailey’s Freeman’s Journal and Eleazer Oswald’s Independent Gazette , which were each attached to political factions surrounding the Pennsylvania constitution. Bailey had previously published the United States Magazine in Philadelphia, which was edited by Hugh Henry Brackenridge and featured the poetry of Philip Freneau.

In Baltimore, the Goddards’ Maryland Journal was constant. Founded by William Goddard but operated by his sister Mary, the Maryland Journal maintained active publishing throughout the war, although it declined in importance after William Goddard backed Charles Lee in his dispute with Washington over the conduct of the war. In 1779 , Mary took on Eleazer Oswald as a partner, which lasted for two years before he left for Philadelphia to begin the Independent Gazetteer . A second paper in Baltimore ran from May 1775 to September 1778 , called Dunlap’s Maryland Gazette . James Hayes subsequently took over for Dunlap and continued it in Baltimore for a year. Another of the Connecticut Green printers, Jonas Green, had established a Maryland Gazette in Annapolis in 1745 . During the war it was an important paper operated by his son Frederick (after his wife Anne Catherine had kept it active for five years in the 1760s–1770s). It too suffered a sixteen-month suspension from December 1777 to April 1779 .

Confusion reigns about Revolutionary newspapers in 18th-century Virginia because they all shared the same name. In April 1775 there were four Virginia Gazettes , three in Williamsburg and one in Norfolk. John Pinkney had inherited a press from Clementina Rind in 1774 , which he operated in Williamsburg until February 3, 1776 . Alexander Purdie, a Scot, had a paper that he ran from early 1775 until his death in April 1779, when his nephew John Clarkson and one of Purdie’s printers, Augustine Davis, continued the press until December 1780 . John Dixon and William Hunter operated one Virginia Gazette that had been established in 1751 . When Hunter decided to throw his lot in with the British in December 1778 , Dixon (who would eventually become mayor of Williamsburg) took on a new partner, Thomas Nicholson, and continued until April 1780 . British invasions that year wreaked havoc on the press. Clarkson and Davis’s Gazette folded and Dixon and Nicholson transferred their operation to the safety of Richmond, where they would print until May 1781 . The surrender of Cornwallis allowed the submerged press to resurface, and two new versions of the Virginia Gazette appeared in Richmond at the end of 1781 : one by Nicholson and William Prentis, and a second by James Hayes.

In the Deep South, newspaper coverage was sparse. North Carolina boasted two papers in 1775 , the Cape Fear Mercury and North Carolina Gazette . Since copies of neither have been well preserved, the best estimate is that the Wilmington Cape Fear Mercury ceased publication in September 1775 . Shortly afterwards, its printer, Adam Boyd, joined the Continental Army. A second paper, the North Carolina Gazette, was printed sporadically by James Davis in New Bern until November 1778 . James Johnston operated the only paper in Georgia, Savannah’s Georgia Gazette , beginning in 1763 . Apparently disaffected to the Revolution, Johnston discontinued the paper in February 1776 , only to revive it as the Royal Georgia Gazette in January 1779 after the British occupied the city. He maintained that paper until the British evacuated in 1782 but was able to stay in Savannah when his name was placed on a list of those loyalists who were allowed to remain if they paid a fine. In January 1783 , he established the Gazette of the State of Georgia .

The presence of the British Army in South Carolina interfered with newspaper production more than anywhere else. Whereas printers in New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island adjusted their production to the upheaval of war, Charleston printers did not. After 1780 , no pro-American newspaper was published south of Williamsburg. The impact of this print vacuum is seldom appreciated (because difficult to quantify) in scholars’ interpretations for why the war in the south turned into a brutal civil war in the early 1780s. If print was essential to organizing and garnering support for the war in the 1770s in the northern and middle colonies, then it stands to reason that the lack of it in the south—or the robust appearance of British papers—also contributed to the fraying of patriot support in the Deep South. Three papers reported the news of Lexington, Peter Timothy’s South Carolina Gazette , the South Carolina & American General Gazette printed by Robert Wells and his son John, and Charles Crouch’s South Carolina Gazette & Country Journal . Soon after word of war in Massachusetts reached South Carolina, the conflict’s effects began to take their toll. Robert Wells left for England right away, never to return. In August 1775 , Crouch discontinued the Country Journal and subsequently died en route to New York. Timothy, Crouch’s brother-in-law, the most ardently Whig of the South Carolina printers, and the son of another Franklin apprentice, also folded his shop in December 1775 . John Wells Jr. alone carried on publication, invasion scares in 1776 and 1779 notwithstanding. Timothy returned with a new name, the Gazette of the State of South Carolina , in April 1777 , giving the Revolutionaries two organs in the South—until the British siege disrupted everything in early 1780 . When the city fell in March Timothy was taken prisoner and sent to St. Augustine. The following year he would perish in a sea accident. Despite the fact that he had purposely added “Jr.” to his name in order to distance himself from his loyalist family and had fought at Savannah in 1779 , John Wells Jr. decided to protect his property by remaining in Charleston and his paper became the Royal Gazette . After the war this decision forced him to take his press to Nassau and found the Bahama Gazette . New York printer James Robertson arrived with Cornwallis and, along with two partners, established the Royal South Carolina Gazette in June 1780 . Both Wells and Robertson’s papers ran as long as the British occupation.

By 1783 , the travails of war (especially in the South) had diminished the number of newspapers to thirty, with twelve in New England and thirteen in the middle states. Several printers had managed to weather the storm and kept turning out papers for subscribers. New titles also emerged by war’s end, most notably Eleazer Oswald’s radical Independent Gazetteer , one of the only Philadelphia newspapers to publish criticisms of the Constitution in 1788 . In the first years of the “more perfect union,” however, the appearance of new newspapers exploded, with an average of twenty separate papers being founded in each year of the early republic, a massive efflorescence aided in part by their being subsidized by the federal government in the form of low postal rates. Print in the 1790s would be far more specialized, with printers becoming even more embedded in professional politics. 17

Discussion of the Literature

Ever since the early historian of the Revolution David Ramsay made his 1789 pronouncement about the “pen and press” having “merit equal to that of the sword,” print has enjoyed a central place in interpretations of the Revolution’s causes and consequences. Whiggish nationalist historians in the 19th century celebrated print as a carrier of the Revolution’s noble ideas and high-minded principles. Skeptical, Progressive historians in the early decades of the 1900s argued that newspapers and pamphlets were rather simply mechanisms of self-interested politicians. They were not carriers of ideals but rather tools of propaganda to dupe an unsuspecting public into ratifying policies that lined the pockets of political and economic elites. Samuel Adams, according to John C. Miller’s 1936 book Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda , manipulated print to get the Boston crowds to do his bidding. In his 1940 study Propaganda and the American Revolution , Philip Davidson contended that because the Revolution was “at best but the work of an aggressive minority,” patriot leaders needed a “conscious, systemic effort” (xiv)—to convince the public to follow their lead. One Progressive historian, Arthur Meier Schlesinger, published a central text about the role of print in the Revolution in 1957 . His Prelude to Independence moved past the instrumental Progressive interpretation that saw the patriots as false prophets. For Schlesinger, the printers were essential to moving the Revolution forward, and they also believed in the broader deals articulated in the newspaper essays and pamphlets that they sent forth from their print shops each week.

In the 1960s, Bernard Bailyn, himself reacting against the Progressive interpretation of self-interest and conflict, planned a major study of the ideology that underpinned the prodigious number of political pamphlets that appeared during the imperial crisis, the first volume of which, Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1765 appeared in 1965 . Two years later, Bailyn extended this interpretation in a celebrated, prize-winning volume titled Ideological Origins of the American Revolution , which not only took ideas seriously (and not merely dismissing the pamphlets as empty expressions of propaganda), but also by implication the medium in which they appeared as well. A few years later, the American Antiquarian Society—the central repository for early American print since its founding in 1812—invited Bailyn to coedit a volume of essays on print and press freedom in commemoration of the bicentennial, which was soon published with the title The Press and the American Revolution . One of the essayists in that volume, Stephen Botein, had recently published an extended, seminal essay in the journal Perspectives in American History , entitled “‘Meer Mechanics’ and an Open Press: The Business and Political Practices of Colonial American Printers.”

In 2001 , Jeffrey Pasley, a former news reporter turned historian, published “ The Tyranny of Printers ,” a study that took the efforts of newspaper publishers very seriously and at their word. Pasley sought not to explain the role of press in the Revolution but used the 1770s as his starting point to explore the central role of newspaper printers in the political life of the early American republic, especially in the creation of political parties. For Pasley, the Revolution did not lead to the politicization of newspapers or their printers as previous historians suggested, instead pointing to the 1790s as the turning point rather than the 1760s. For him, it was the preferences of the public at large that encouraged precarious printers to choose sides in the Revolution rather than the printers’ own political principles.

In the face of all these studies that took Ramsay’s aphorism as a starting point, in 2007 Trish Loughran published The Republic in Print . Loughran argued that the ability of print to carry ideas as previous historians asserted was impossible in the 1700s. Lacking industrialized, steam-powered presses, there was simply no way hundreds of thousands of people read Common Sense in 1776 , she argued. The capacity to produce and deliver the number of texts that would be required for print to do what historians suggested it did (i.e., cause and sustain the Revolution) was not viable in the 1770s. An iconoclastic study, The Republic in Print offers the first major dissent in more than two centuries about whether print was indeed central (for good or ill) in the coming and consequences of the American Revolution. Loughran’s emphasis on materiality is refreshing, but it suffers from postindustrial expectations. Although it is certainly wise to doubt Tom Paine’s boasts of hundreds of thousands of copies of Common Sense flooding every household in America, that should not translate into interpretations that print—in its preindustrial, hand-pressed, horse-carried form—was therefore scarce and ineffective. Print’s influence was hardly limited to the initial purchaser or reader, but was often shared in taverns, coffeehouses, and other public spaces, where it also crossed into oral cultures. A final word on Loughran’s iconoclasm should come from Ambrose Serle, a member of Lord Howe’s staff when the British occupied New York City in 1776 . In a letter back to the British secretary of state, Serle opined “among other engines, which have raised the present commotions none has had a more extensive or stronger influence than the Newspapers of the respective colonies. One is astonished to see with what Avidity they are sought after, and how implicitly they are believed by the great Bulk of the People.” 18 Serle believed the biggest mistake the British had made was not taking print seriously. He soon started a royalist newspaper in New York City to rectify this blunder. Serle, for one, would be quite surprised to read Loughran’s book.

Literary scholar Russ Castronovo’s book Propaganda 1776 embraces the old problem of propaganda once again, but instead of seeing the patriots in 20th-century guises (Sam Adams as America’s Joseph Goebbels), he sees them as propagators—a useful term that 18th-century farmers would have recognized. They used print to grow more patriots. According to Castronovo, the particular nature of print, with its inherent ability to carry emotion over wide spaces, pushed the Revolution faster than it might have gone otherwise. Here, it seems, the interpretation of print as a genuine motivator of hearts and minds at the heart of the Revolutionary movement has returned to a position in the historiography that David Ramsay would appreciate.

Primary Sources

Relevant primary sources include: Clarence Brigham, History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690–1820 (2 vols., Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1947 ); Charles Lathem, ed., Chronological Tables of American Newspapers, 1690–1850 (Barre, MA: American Antiquarian Society and Barre Publishers, 1972 ); Frank Moore, The Diary of the American Revolution, 1775–1781 (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967 [ 1876 ]); and Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, With a Biography of Printers & An Account of Newspapers (New York: Weathervane Press, 1970 [ 1874 ]).

Links to Digital Materials

Index to Virginia Gazettes

American Antiquarian Society Digital Images Archive

American Archives : documents from 1774 to 1776, including many letters that would become newspaper “reports,” compiled by Peter Force in the 1830s–1840s.

American Historical Newspapers (Readex; by subscription)

Rag Linen : collector Todd Andrlik’s blog on Revolutionary era newspapers, including many images.

Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800 (Readex; by subscription)

Historical Periodicals Collection, 1691-1820 (EBSCO; by subscription)

The Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution : collection of 150 pamphlets of the American Revolution, of which 74 are scanned and available at Princeton University Digital Library.

“ The Coming of the Revolution, 1764-1776 ”: an online exhibit by the Massachusetts Historical Society, containing many printed images.

Further Reading

• Amory, Hugh , and David D. Hall , eds. A History of the Book in America: Volume 1: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
• Bailyn, Bernard . Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1765. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965.
• Bailyn, Bernard , and John B. Hench , eds. The Press and the American Revolution. Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 1980.
• Botein, Stephen . “‘Meer Mechanics’ and an Open Press: The Business and Political Strategies of Colonial American Printers.” Perspectives in American History 9 (1975): 127–225.
• Castronovo, Russ . Propaganda 1776: Secrets, Leaks, and Revolutionary Communication in Early America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.
• Clark, Charles E. The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665–1740. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
• Davidson, Philip . Propaganda and the American Revolution . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1940.
• Loughran, Trish . The Republic in Print: Print Culture in the Age of U.S. Nation Building, 1770–1870. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
• Monaghan, E. Jennifer . Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.
• Pasley, Jeffrey L. “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2001.
• Schlesinger, Arthur Meier, Sr. Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764–1776. New York: Vintage, 1957.
• Warner, Michael . The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.

1. David Ramsay , The History of the American Revolution , ed. Lester H. Cohen, 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1990) , vol. 2, 633–634. Originally published in 1789.

2. Bernard Bailyn , Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), vii, 8 .

3. Ibid. , 3 .

4. David D. Hall , “The Atlantic Economy in the Eighteenth Century,” in A History of the Book in America: Volume 1: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World , ed. Hugh Amory and David D. Hall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 155 , 163.

5. Stephen Botein , “‘Meer Mechanics’ and an Open Press: The Business and Political Strategies of Colonial American Printers,” Perspectives in American History 9 (1975): 150–151.

6. Charles E. Clark, “Early American Journalism: News and Opinion in the Popular Press,” in History of the Book in America , ed. Amory and Hall, vol. 1, 359.

7. Botein, “Meer Mechanics,” 211–225.

8. For more see Hiller Zobel , The Boston Massacre (New York: Norton, 1970), 66–67 , and Richard Archer , As If an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 147–148 .

9. Boston Gazette , February 1, 1768.

10. Zobel, Boston Massacre , 152–163; Archer, As If an Enemy’s Country , 162–163; and Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr ., Prelude to Independence: The Newspaper War on Britain, 1764–1776 (New York: Vintage, 1957), 105–108 .

11. Michael Warner , The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), 34–72 .

12. Schlesinger, Prelude to Independence , 257.

13. Memorial of Samuel Loudon to the New York Committee of Safety, 20 March 1776, in American Archives 4th series, ed. Peter Force (Washington, DC, 1839), vol. 5, 439.

14. Ibid. , 5: 440.

15. Thomas C. Leonard , “News for a Revolution: The Exposé in America, 1768–1773,” Journal of American History 67 (June 1980): 26–40 .

16. Benjamin Franklin to Richard Price, Passy, 13 June 1782, in Papers of Benjamin Franklin , ed. William Wilcox (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959–), vol. 37, 472–473 .

17. Pasley, “Tyranny of Printers,” 47–48, 404.

18. Ambrose Serle to the Earl of Dartmouth, 25 July 1776, in Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773–1783 , ed. Benjamin F. Stevens (Wilmington, DE: Mellifont, 1970), vol. 24, 2040–2046 .

Related Articles

• The American War for Independence as a Revolutionary War
• A Military History of the American Revolution, 1754–1783

Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, American History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 17 April 2024

• Cookie Policy
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility
• [66.249.64.20|185.80.150.64]
• 185.80.150.64

Character limit 500 /500

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

History of Printing: From Gutenberg to the Laser Printer

The ultimate cause of much historical, social and cultural change is the gradual accumulation of knowledge of the environment. Human beings use the materials in their environment to meet their needs and increased human knowledge of the environment enables human needs to be met in a more efficient manner. Humans have a need to communicate, as they are social beings, and the development of printing enabled them to communicate in a more efficient manner. The human environment has a particular structure so that human knowledge of the environment is acquired in a particular order. The simplest knowledge is acquired first and more complex knowledge is acquired later. Inevitably, printing was invented after the invention of writing, as it is a more efficient way of writing. Printing, as developed in Europe in the 15th century, also required the prior invention of paper, the knowledge of which had spread from China, and of moveable metal type, inks and presses. The order of discovery determined the course of human social and cultural history as knowledge of new and more efficient means of communication, resulted in the spread of new scientific ideas and technology, and in the development of new social and ideological ideas, such as the reformation, the enlightenment and democracy. This means human social and cultural history, has to follow a particular course, a course that is determined by the structure of the human environment.

Related Papers

Bennett Gilbert

This is my current statement of my very long-term research project. It will be a book exploring the history of the philosophical ideas that influenced the earliest development of text and image printing in Europe c. 1370-1440. This dynamo of change, including typography and engraving, which is collectively called "printing"-sometimes called the first industrial complex-is conventionally said to have arisen rather abruptly around 1445 and then rapidly spread down the Rhine and through Europe, with little constraint and with no evident conceptual framework from the previous phase of European culture. Early printing has long been studied from the points of view of history of technology, socio-cultural history, and economic history. But an approach through the history of ideas and intellectual history has not been attempted, with a couple of thin exceptions, and so will be almost completely new in the field. Yet we know that ideas, including abstract concepts, are highly dynamic, readily spreading great influence. My researches apply this principle to the period before the deployment of print through the historiographic methods of the history of ideas and intellectual history applied to very late Medieval and very early Renaissance concepts of nature and humankind. Impressum is not a history of the book or printing history or history of technology project; rather, it is an unconventional study of a fresh area in intellectual history and the history of philosophy that can extend and deepen book history, art history, Western cultural history, and the history of communication. The intellectual history questions about the inception of typography include: what conceptions contributed to make the attraction of replicative techniques so powerful in this period as to motivate the invention of new media? What ideas allowed for the experiments in craft technique that initiated the massive infusion of texts and images in Western culture beginning c. 1450? To address these questions, I examine the changes in several central philosophical ideas in this period prior to the first printed texts and how these ideas might have been taken up by the new technology. It is unlikely that many new fragments of early printing or pieces of printing equipment will be discovered, but philosophy and theology in the period is so massively documented that it can be a rich field for study of the invention of printing. Therefore I suggest that we approach this question of "pre-print" by observing the successive and branching ideas in late scholasticism that constellated in the invention and deployment of replicative technologies. Printing involved impress of the original of text, image, and data into copies by a cluster of technologies that ultimately created a system of storage, diffusion, and retrieval. Putting part of the origin of the age of printed communication into the context of philosophical ideas will show that at its start it involved, on the part of the person or persons who invented the craft and on the part of those who developed and used it, general moral and philosophical concepts.

The European World 1500-1800, ed. Beat Kumin

Angela McShane

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics

David Kaufer

Tracing the sociocultural influence of any technology is fraught with problems. First, many of the influences cited are likely to be too large and diffuse to be tested under experimental conditions in the laboratory. Second, the technology is likely to be, at most, an accessory to many other influencing factors rather than a singular cause. Third, insofar as the technology can be isolated as a factor of influence, the direction of the influence is often two way. The technology may cause changes in sociocultural states, but existing sociocultural states are also likely to result in the technology being used and evolved in unanticipated ways.

The matter I am going to present you grows from a long-term research project I started early in 2014. The problem I set myself is, how to deepen our understanding of the role of the book as an access-point to the history of the formation of values and meaning in Western culture. For the diffusion of texts and images by human, then mechanical, and now electrical and nuclear power, has been a central project of the humanities throughout its history. It may even be said with justice that this is its defining activity.

In order to distribute our thoughts and feelings, we must make intelligible and distributable copies of them. From approximately 1375 to 1450, certain Europeans started fully mechanized replication of texts and images, based on predecessor “smaller” technologies. What they started became the most powerful means for the distribution, storage, and retrieval of knowledge in history, up until the invention of digital means. We have scant information about the initiation of print technologies in the period up to Gutenberg, and the picture of Gutenberg that we have has become a great deal more complicated than hitherto. There has not been, however, an approach to the “pre-printing” period in terms of the history of idea or intellectual history. After a brief survey of established approaches, this essay argues that distribution by impression, or print, is bound up with ancient metaphors for understanding communication by the making of multiples. I suggest that there is a rich field of study for printing history in the sophisticated concepts of reality that medieval and late Scholastic philosophy developed. These concepts helped to express and develop a desire or need for communication that led to the technology of replicating texts and images for wide and continued distribution.

Connor Lauer

Economic historians chasing the holy grail of their discipline have suggested innumerable explanations for the eighteenth to nineteenth century industrial revolution in the West, a process of both “little” and “great” divergence. This paper continues in such a – perhaps futile, but also fruitful – vein. It sketches a line from the development of the metal movable-type printing press in the fifteenth century to the proliferation of the new form of print and the unique occurrence of industrial capitalism. Consequently, this paper combines econometrics and statistical analysis, qualitative historical and comparative research, and philosophy of communication and innovation in defending the thesis. It hypothesizes that the industrial revolution and advent of modern capitalism uniquely occurred when, where, and in the manner it did because of a variety of proximate factors, but which themselves are derived from the development of the movable-type printing press and its corresponding communicative revolution. Ultimately, the following provides a novel contribution in economic history by considering the media studies/communicative argument, a peripheral and understudied aspect of economic history, elevating the development of the printing press as the first truly mass media that had important consequences for the development of the modern world.

Zeeshantaran Zeeshan

Cristina Dondi , Geri Della Rocca de Candal , Alessandra Panzanelli , Sabrina Minuzzi , Matilde Malaspina , Birgit Mikus

Day One: The cost of living and the cost of books in 15th-century Europe Day Two: The transmission of texts in print and the distribution and reception of books Day Three: Illustration and digital tools

Praxis International Journal of Social Science and Literature

Koustav Nag

Printmaking has a long and rich history that dates back thousands of years. The earliest forms of printmaking were developed in ancient china, where the artist would create prints using wood blocks as early as the 7th century. However, in the 15th century in Europe, printmaking began to develop into a proper art form. Johannesburg was a German goldsmith printer and inventor widely credited with movable type printing in the mid-15th century. In 1455 Bible was the first important Book in history. In the 16th century, Goa was the first place in India where printing technology started during the British period. Initially, it was used for religious printing and some commercial printing, like religious posters, pamphlets etc. later 20th century, this printing process transformed into fine art printmaking techniques. It became an educational part of developing printing technology and technician. This printing technology became a curriculum for the Art & Craft College, like Madras art college, Kolkata Govt. Art and Craft College, J.J art college, Lahore art college (now in Pakistan), and another essential college is Kala Bhavana under the Visva Bharati University. From post-colonial to contemporary times, printing to printmaking evolved in many ways. Most places academically followed the colonial curriculum, but commercial printing technology rapidly changed. Academically Visva Bharati University Santiniketan develops new technology for the students.

Finally 44 years after publication, the file reproduction of Colin Clair's fundamental work reappears here. This lavishly illustrated book is a detailed account of the story of printing from moveable type from the 15th century, the time of Gutenberg, to the present day. The author describes the development of the craft in a variety of European countries, and all the major innovations and printers are considered chronologically and in detail. Particular emphasis is given to the 15th and 16th centuries, the period when early difficulties were being overcome and technical knowledge was rapidly increasing.

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

The printed image in the west: history and techniques.

Battle of the Nude Men

Antonio Pollaiuolo

Foliate Ornament

Master W with Key

(Liber chronicarum) Registrum huius operis libri cronicarum cum figuris et ymagibus ab inicio mundi

Written by Hartmann Schedel

Fasciculo di medicina

Possibly Johannes de Ketham

The Witches

Hans Baldung (called Hans Baldung Grien)

The Judgment of Paris; he is sitting at left with Venus, Juno and Pallas Athena, a winged victory above; in the upper section the Sun in his chariot preceeded by Castor and Pollux on horseback; at lower right two river gods and a naiad above whom Jupiter, an eagle, Ganymede, Diana and another Goddess

Marcantonio Raimondi

Landscape with a Double Spruce

Albrecht Altdorfer

Parmigianino (Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola)

The Apollo Belvedere from the Vatican his left hand resting on the tree trunk around which coils a python

The Nymph of Fontainebleau

René Boyvin

Martyrdom of St. Lawrence

Cornelis Cort

Villa Almerico (Villa Rotunda), from I quattro libri dell'architettura di Andrea Palladio (Book 2, page 19)

Andrea Palladio

New Inventions of Modern Times [Nova Reperta], The Invention of Book Printing, plate 4

Jan Collaert I

Beggar Leaning on a Stick, Facing Left

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn)

Hesperides sive de Malorum Aureorum cultura et usu. Libri Quatuor

Written by Giovanni Battista Ferrari

Myologie Complette en Couleur et Grandeur Naturelle

Joseph Guichard Duverney

Various Roman Ionic capitals compared with Greek examples from Le Roy [S. Maria in Trastevere, S. Paoplo fuori le Mura, S. Clemente, etc.], tab. 20 from "Della Magnificenza e d'Architettura de'Romani" (On the Grandeur and the Architecture of the Romans by Gio. Battista Piranesi, Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of London)

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

The Satyr's Family

Jean Honoré Fragonard

Apollo and the Muses on Parnassus

Raphael Morghen

Seated Giant

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

Day (Le Jour), from the series, Dreams (Songes), plate VI

Odilon Redon

Maternal Caress

Mary Cassatt

Wendy Thompson Department of Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Ar

October 2003

In an environment permeated by almost infinitely multiplied images—in newspapers and magazines, on billboards and computer screens—it is hard to imagine a world in which every image was unique. Yet prior to the fifteenth century, images were not only one-of-a-kind but rare, generally found locked away in palaces, to which few had access, or affixed to the wall of a church. The technology of printmaking, which first fell into place around 1400, suddenly made it possible for hundreds or even thousands of essentially identical images to be produced from a single matrix of carved wood or metal. When this invention was followed in the mid-fifteenth century by the introduction of movable type, so that the first printed books could be produced, the possibilities for the spread of knowledge and ideas expanded in an unprecedented manner. The study of science was advanced through accurate transmission of the forms of medicinal herbs and the results of anatomical investigations ( 38.52 ; 28.52.2 ); the art of engineering took a great leap forward as detailed diagrams of newly invented machines were duplicated and dispersed throughout Europe, accompanied by instructions. Yet for all the far-reaching results of the capacity to multiply images, the initial demand driving the early print market was the desire for playing cards and inexpensive devotional images . Prints provided a means of mass-producing these objects that brought them within the reach of even the poorest members of society.

By the early sixteenth century, the potential of the print medium was being fully exploited and had a decisive impact on the history of art. Prints replaced drawn medieval model books as an inexhaustible source of motifs—figures in every position ( 17.50.99 ; 19.74.1 ), architectural models ( 41.100.126.19 ), ornamental designs ( 29.16.1 ; of 49.95.41 )—that could be incorporated into other works of art. The Renaissance revival of classical antiquity was fueled by prints that spread knowledge of ancient Roman buildings and sculpture ( 49.97.114 ) throughout Europe. Prints provided a new outlet for artists to explore their own interests, whether in classical antiquity ( 1986.1159 ; 41.71.1.7(28) ; 1996.328.2 ), tales of magic and witchcraft ( 41.1.201 ), landscape ( 1993.1097 ), everyday life ( 26.72.156 ; 1979.525.1 ; 16.2.5 ), or fantastic visions ( 35.42 ; 20.30.6 ). Woodcuts, engravings, and etchings also publicized the inventions of painters ( 49.97.537 ), spread knowledge of new styles ( 32.105 ), and facilitated stylistic comparisons.

While many of the techniques necessary to produce prints were known before the fifteenth century, it was the widespread availability of paper that made printmaking feasible. The first paper mills in Germany and Italy opened by the 1390s, around the same time that the first woodcuts were produced. By the middle of the fifteenth century, prints were also being produced using the intaglio (cut or incised) technique.

In the intaglio process, the lines cut into a metal plate are filled with ink, the surface of the plate is wiped clean, and dampened paper is pressed against the plate with such pressure that it is forced into the grooves and picks up the ink. Although some early intaglio prints appear to have been produced by rubbing the paper against the plate, perhaps with a metal spoon, in most cases the pressure required to force the paper into the finely cut lines entailed the use of a special press equipped with rollers ( 49.95.870[10] ). Three intaglio processes were in use during the Renaissance: drypoint , engraving , and etching , but engraving was by far the most popular. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, etching became the preferred medium of painters and of innovative printmakers such as Rembrandt , Stefano della Bella ( 59.570.379.3 ), and Piranesi , while engraving came to be used primarily for reproducing paintings and sculpture ( 28.22.36 ), and for book illustration ( 67.828 ).

As printmakers searched for new ways to introduce shades of gray into the typically black and white print, new techniques were developed. Mezzotint , invented in the seventeenth century, became especially popular in the eighteenth, a period of great experimentation. Many new techniques evolved in the eighteenth century to enable prints to mimic the appearance of drawings. Aquatint , which approximated the appearance of wash drawings, was the most popular. Printmaking in the nineteenth century was characterized by an even greater variety of media. Many artists found ways to introduce color into their prints and experimented with combined techniques ( 21.46.1 ), while an entirely new method of printing, lithography , allowed artists the most direct means of creating multiple images from drawing ( 20.17.2 ).

Thompson, Wendy. “The Printed Image in the West: History and Techniques.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prnt/hd_prnt.htm (October 2003)

Further Reading

Griffiths, Antony. Prints and Printmaking: An Introduction to the History and Techniques . London: British Museum Publications, 1996.

Hults, Linda C. The Print in the Western World: An Introductory History . Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996.

Platzker, David, and Elizabeth Wyckoff. Hard Pressed: 600 Years of Prints and Process . Exhibition catalogue. New York: Hudson Hill Press, 2000.

Additional Essays by Wendy Thompson

• Thompson, Wendy. “ The Printed Image in the West: Drypoint .” (October 2003)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Poets in Italian Mythological Prints .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Poets, Lovers, and Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ The Printed Image in the West: Etching .” (October 2003)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) .” (October 2003)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Woodcut Book Illustration in Renaissance Italy: Florence in the 1490s .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Woodcut Book Illustration in Renaissance Italy: The First Illustrated Books .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Woodcut Book Illustration in Renaissance Italy: Venice in the 1490s .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Woodcut Book Illustration in Renaissance Italy: Venice in the Sixteenth Century .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ The Printed Image in the West: Engraving .” (October 2003)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ Lovers in Italian Mythological Prints .” (October 2004)
• Thompson, Wendy. “ The Printed Image in the West: Woodcut .” (October 2003)

Related Essays

• The Printed Image in the West: Aquatint
• The Printed Image in the West: Drypoint
• The Printed Image in the West: Engraving
• The Printed Image in the West: Etching
• The Printed Image in the West: Woodcut
• Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
• The Art of the Book in the Middle Ages
• Etching in Eighteenth-Century France: Artists and Amateurs
• Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778)
• The Graphic Art of Max Klinger
• Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617)
• Letterforms and Writing in Contemporary Art
• Lithography in the Nineteenth Century
• Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641): Works on Paper
• Pierre Didot the Elder (1761–1853)
• Poets, Lovers, and Heroes in Italian Mythological Prints
• The Postwar Print Renaissance in America
• The Print in the Nineteenth Century
• Printmaking in Mexico, 1900–1950
• Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669): Prints
• Textile Production in Europe: Printed, 1600–1800
• Woodcut Book Illustration in Renaissance Italy: The First Illustrated Books
• Wordplay in Twentieth-Century Prints
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1400–1600 A.D.
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1600–1800 A.D.
• Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 1800–1900 A.D.
• France, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Iberian Peninsula, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Low Countries, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Low Countries, 1600–1800 A.D.
• The United States and Canada, 1800–1900 A.D.
• Venice and Northern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Ancient Roman Art
• Architecture
• Classical Period
• Classical Ruins
• High Renaissance
• Icon / Iconoclasm
• Northern Renaissance
• Printmaking
• Renaissance Art
• School of Fontainebleau
• Scientific Instrument

Artist or Maker

• Altdorfer, Albrecht
• Baldung, Hans
• Boyvin, Rene
• Cassatt, Mary
• Chrieger, Johann
• Collaert , Jan, I
• Cort, Cornelis
• Daumier, Honoré
• De Ketham, Johannes
• Dürer, Albrecht
• Fiorentino, Rosso
• Fragonard, Jean Honoré
• Gautier-Dagoty, Jacques-Fabien
• Krieger, Christoph
• Manili, Sebastiano
• Master W with the Key
• Mengs, Anton Raphael
• Milan, Pierre
• Morghen, Raphael
• Palladio, Andrea
• Parmigianino
• Piranesi, Giovanni Battista
• Pleydenwurff, Wilhelm
• Pollaiuolo, Antonio
• Poussin, Nicolas
• Raimondi, Marcantonio
• Redon, Odilon
• Reni, Guido
• Stefano della Bella
• Van Der Straet, Jan, called Stradanus
• Van Rijn, Rembrandt
• Wolgemut, Michael

Online Features

• 82nd & Fifth: “Altered States” by Nadine Orenstein
• 82nd & Fifth: “Exposure” by Freyda Spira
• 82nd & Fifth: “Fantasy” by Femke Speelberg
• The Artist Project: “Nicola López on works on paper”
• The Artist Project: “Enrique Chagoya on Goya’s Los Caprichos “
• The Artist Project: “Luis Camnitzer on Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etchings”
• The Artist Project: “Natalie Frank on Käthe Kollwitz”
• The Artist Project: “Zoe Beloff on Édouard Manet’s Civil War (Guerre Civile) “
• Connections: “The Master Class” by Jack Laughner

Subscribe to this podcast

Listen&Learn: The History of Printing

Pre-listening vocabulary

• print: to transfer text to paper mechanically
• carve: to cut shapes into something
• character: a letter or symbol in a written language
• revolutionize: to change something completely
• accessible: easy for people to get or use
• prompt: to cause something to happen

Listening activity

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:25 — 1.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | More

Gapfill exercise

Comprehension questions, discussion/essay questions.

• How has our access to information changed in recent years? How do you think it will continue to change in the future?

Printing has shaped the world in many ways. The first printed texts date back to 6th century China, when monks printed messages using carved wood and ink. In the 11th century, a Chinese inventor named Bi Sheng created a moveable type press, which made it easier to quickly copy texts. However, Bi Sheng’s invention did not become immediately popular . This was because it was difficult to include enough Chinese characters to communicate every kind of message. Around 300 years later, German inventor Johannes Gutenberg developed a printing press for European languages . The Gutenberg press revolutionized written information in Europe. It made books, news, and religious texts accessible to everyone. This spread of information also prompted many more technological advancements throughout history.

You may also like:

• Listen&Learn: History of Writing
• Listening Practice in American English
• How Inquiry-based Learning Can Enhance Your ESL Lessons

Congratulations on your informations. they are valuable for us. thanks a lot!

Thanks for the sharing it with us

We’ve passed from paper to screens and probably in the future we’ll use holograms or virtual reality.

It is really a good way to practice listening, vocabulary and reading, as well as writing in English. Thanks a million for sharing it.

very interesting!

Thank you for sharing it with us,

Leave a comment

Email * (not published)

History of Printing essay

Man has always felt the urge to somehow immortalize thoughts, ideas and beliefs. Since time immemorial, material of matters that concern man has been placed on various surfaces through a variety of means. Even before there was writing, man has had experience with art (Apex Learning 2006). Cave paintings of bison dating to around 25,000 BC have been found. However, for the purposes of the discussion, printing shall relate to images, text and symbols mechanically or electronically placed upon a medium and intended to be transferred onto another surface.

In lieu of the foregoing scope of printing, cave paintings do not constitute printed material. According to Peter Mercer’s rendition of the history of printing, it began circa 594 when the Chinese began the practice of printing from a negative relief (Mercer ~). The process, as it was known then, dealt with carving out letters and images onto a block of wood in reverse – somewhat akin to the idea of creating a mirror image of the finished product. The block is then immersed in a dying medium or ink and subsequently pressed onto paper or some other medium to carry the impression.

The idea is the precursor for mass production and its importance carries weight even in the contemporary world of publishing and printing. Great ideas have a way of surviving its founders, and printing was no exception. The idea of using blocks of wood to carry a negative image found its way to the west through caravan routes (Mercer ~). According Bruce Jones (2000), a salient point in the history of printing in Europe occurred around the 13th to 15th century which marked the increased secularization of the production of books.

This is an important facet in printed material since it paved the way for the invention of printing presses. As a consequence of the Chinese idea of using negatives and the secularization of books, the first books were produced at around the 15th century. In those years, Gutenberg’s made a significant contribution with the invention of the printing press. He adapted the screw printing press from the wine presses used as early as the period of the Roman Empire in the Rhine Valley, using oil-based ink and metal prism matrices (Mercer ~).

Related essays:

• History of Graphic Design essay
• TABLE OF CONTENTS essay
• History Of The Car essay
• Riverbed Modeler Software By, essay

The printing press made for the more efficient transmittal of information and knowledge, which is said to be Gutenberg’s greatest legacy. Books were no longer limited to ecclesiastical institutions and by the 16th century, Mercer reports that more than 9 million books were in circulation. But books were not the only products affected with the invention of the printing press. By the 16th century, advertising also took advantage of the level of efficiency with which printed material can be generated with the aid of Gutenberg’s printing press. Town criers were eventually replaced by fliers produced by these marvelous machines.

Significant improvements in the usability of printing presses were made in the 17th century which allowed for rapid changes in printing plates and the speed at which prints were created (Mercer ~). The result of these advances was newspapers. Lithography is a process that makes use of the immiscibility of grease and water (“lithography” 2006). The process was invented by an Austrian national – Alois Senefelder. His amazing invention spread itself with surprising spread throughout Europe and beyond, and has been received with admiration everywhere (Senefelder 1911).

The process vastly improved printing insofar images are concerned. While words are repetitive by nature and by virtue of fixed alphabet, images, on the other hand, required greater care in its reproduction. Lithography enabled printers to make fine images on paper, so much so that by the 19th century, Senefelder’s method became the preferred technique for quality illustrations in books and magazines (Mercer ~). Up until the beginning of the 19th century, hand-made paper was the usual fare of printing presses. This was an obvious obstacle for the development of modern day high-speed printing presses.

Advances in printing technology apparently inevitably led to the development of other technologies. In this case, by 1903, hand-made paper was being replaced by machine-made paper (Mercer ~). Following economies of scale, the invention of machine-made paper enabled reductions in the cost of producing the paper and at volumes greater than before – volumes which further fuels the drive for more effective and more efficient printing presses. From this point in the history of printing, we see the obvious development in two practical areas necessary for printing: quality and speed.

These factors are so pervasive in printing that, even today, they are relevant measures when one considers the purchase of a printer; that dots-per-inch (DPI) as a measure of quality and pages-per-minute (PPM) as a measure of speed are of utmost import. These are the driving forces behind the development of printing as will further be illustrated in the proceeding discussion. There were no significant changes in the mechanical composition of printing presses since its inception, up until the 19th century.

More than 400 years of printing history would pass before Lord Stanhope replaced the wooden screw printing press to one that utilized an iron-framed lever in 1803. The Earl of Stanhope also invented stereotyping which allowed for the preservation of material slated for reprinting. Stereotyping constituted the use of plaster molds or metal matrices cast after a particular print which saved time when the time came for reprinting (Mercer ~). The machines turned to steam power around the 19th century and to electricity at the start of the 20th.

Advances, then, were made not only with the mechanical features of printing presses, but the power utilized was becoming successively more efficient (Mercer ~). In fact, in 1814, Frederich Koenig’s steam based printing machine equipped with automated paper rollers was invented (Mercer ~). The stream powered machine was adopted by The Times, London in 1820 and the marvelous invention made for increasing productivity by more than 300 percent. When mechanical power was used, printing presses could only produce about 300 copies per hour, with steam power, presses were able to churn out an amazing 1,100 copies per hour.

In 1814, Richard March Hoe developed the revolving perfecting press. The invention again introduced nearly 20 times the efficiency of its predecessor; able to produce about 20,000 impressions in an hour. Paper, too, underwent development during the intervening years of development for the printing press. In 1863, William Bullock was able to perfect a method by which paper is continually fed into the machine (Mercer ~). The difference being that prior to his invention, paper had to be fed sheet by sheet.

Allowing for a continuous feed of paper again vastly improved the speed of the printing process. For more than 4 centuries, advances have been made on printing. Always, the idea was to create faster and more efficient machines. Today, regular consumers are afforded the idea of using personal computers in aid of desktop publishing. Publishers, on the other had, have also taken advantage of electronic printing with the use of software to aid in laying out publications and seeing the finished product even before the machines start running the job.

In the 17th century, 250 impressions per hour can be created; today a regular printer can produce more than 1,000 pages in that same time. Truly, the driving factors in the development of printing technology are speed and quality, and has led to developments not only on the machine utilized to print, but also on the printing methodology, ink and paper which, otherwise, would be major stumbling blocks in the history of printing.

Apex Learning (2006). Prehistoric painting. Retrieved December 21, 2006 from: http://www. beyondbooks. com/art11/2a.asp Jones, B. (2000). Manuscripts, books, and maps: the printing press and the changing world. Retrieved December 21, 2006 from: http://communication. ucsd. edu/bjones/Books/booktext. html Lithography (2006). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved December 21, 2006 from http://www. britannica. com/eb/article-9048518/lithography Mercer, P. (~). History of printing. Retrieved December 21, 2006 from: http://ink. news. com. au/mercury/print_museum/print_history. htm Senefelder, A. (1911). Lithography. New York: Fuchs and Lang Manufacturing Company.

• General Information

History of Moscow

Moscow has seen its fair share of history, from invasions to revolutions : these days it is home to a wealth of culture and is one of the most populated capitals in the world.

The name of the Russian city comes from the river that courses through it, the  Moskva . While the exact date of the founding of the metropolis is unknown, it was first mentioned by name in 1147 , and was a convenient meeting place well accessed by rivers and roads.

Medieval Moscow

This small trading post grew and was fortified over the next few centuries, with churches and monasteries being built. However, the 13th century saw a Mongol invasion burning the city to the ground and killing all who lived there, with Moscow becoming a Grand Duchy within the Mongol Empire. The city prospered and would eventually lead a united Russian army in victory over the Mongols , ending up as capital city by the end of the 15th century.

During the 16th to 17th centuries under the Tsardom of Russia , Moscow's population grew rapidly, and many of the monuments emblematic of the city were constructed, from  Novodevichy Convent  to Saint Basil's Cathedral  and the Kremlin . Despite its growth, it suffered  famine, plagues, attacks by the Crimean Tatars and destructive fires - unsurprising considering much of the city was built of wood.

Discover more on our Walking Tour of Medieval Moscow !

Under the Russian Empire

When  Peter the Great  founded the Russian Empire in 1712 and made Saint Petersburg its capital, Moscow was suddenly relegated to second place and population quickly declined. However, over the ensuing century, the city's infrastructure was built up and connections to the capital were created. When  Napoleon invaded in 1812 , Moscow's inhabitants were evacuated, but not before allegedly setting fire to the city to sabotage the French forces. The city's destruction was claimed as a great success by the Muscovites, and it was quickly rebuilt afterwards: Moscow State University was founded, the Bolshoi Theatre was built, and any number of monuments celebrating the city's victory were put up.

Throughout this time, Moscow was also experiencing a population boom, with a massive influx of peasants moving to the metropolis from rural farms in search of work. In stark contrast to the lavish architecture being built, the city was also filled with poverty-stricken slums, and increasing discontent lead to revolution .

Bolshevik Revolution & Soviet Russia

Mass political and social unrest instigated an attempted revolution in 1905, but it wasn't until 1917 that the movement really took hold of Russia. That year saw the February and October Revolutions , followed by a Civil War  which ended with the  monarchy being abolished , the royal family being executed, and the  Soviet Union being established  by the socialist political party known as the  Bolsheviks . In 1922, the Communist government made  Moscow capital again .

The Russian Army was victorious in defending the city from German offensives in the Battle of Moscow during World War II , and the Soviet leadership left its mark on the capital  over the next five decades. Improved roads, bus, train and metro networks modernised Moscow; high-rise apartments provided a solution to serious housing crisis, and atheist ideology saw the destruction or conversion of over half of the country's churches. Remnants of the Soviet state can still be seen today across much of the city, for example in the statues and artwork throughout the Moscow Metro .

In 1980, Moscow hosted the Summer Olympic Games , an event which was boycotted by the United States and over 60 other countries because of the Soviet-Afghan War. While this increased the Cold War tensions that gripped the two superpowers, there was no denying that Russia was liberalising under leader Mickhail Gorbachev's "perestroika" reforms.

Moscow since 1991

1991 saw the Soviet Union being dissolved, with Moscow remaining capital of the Russian Federation . Enormous population growth since the 1990s means it is now the largest city on the European continent, with over 13 million people living within the city limits alone. Political, economic and social changes have "Westernised" Moscow, which can be seen in the presence of international chains in the city and in the restoration of churches demolished under Stalin, like the  Cathedral of Christ the Saviour .

Intrigued? Our guided walking tours of Soviet Moscow , Communist Moscow and Cold War Bunker 42 will immerse you in the city's fascinating history.

You may also be interested in

Opening times

Learn when shops, museums and other tourist attractions open and close in Moscow, so you can plan to make the most of your trip!

Moscow CityPass

The Moscow CityPass is a tourist card that gives you free entry to more than 40 top attractions in the Russian capital, including the Kremlin and Saint Basil's Cathedral.

Columbia University in the City of New York

Miriam and ira d. wallach art gallery.

• Visitor Information
• Exhibitions
• Publications

Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography

April 30–june 21, 2003.

Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography , an exhibition of 20th-century photographs of Moscow, opens at Columbia University's Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery on Wednesday, April 30, 2003 and remains on display through Saturday, June 21, 2003.

Moscow has been a powerful magnet for many Russian photographers of the 20th century. Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography presents the work of 31 photographers, whose images have defined the visual experience of Moscow from the 1920s to the present. Diverse in form and strategy, the 90 photographs chosen for the exhibition trace the history of Russian documentary photography and offer insight into individual practices. From Aleksandr Rodchenko's constructivist visions and Evgenii Khaldei's humanist landscapes to Igor Moukhin's scenes of urban spectacle and alienation in the works of Russia's key 20th-century photographers, Moscow ventures beyond the expected image as a site of famous landmarks, architectural treasures and dramatic lifestyles.

Early 20th-century photographers Boris Ignatovich and Arkadii Shaikhet saw themselves in the vanguard of an emerging mass-media culture, defining with their cameras the visual experience of Soviet modernity. For nearly 70 years, Soviet photography was assigned the duty of maintaining the ideological rigidity of the Soviet State. Yet, as examples of the work of Iakov Khalip, Anatolii Egorov, Mikhail Savin, and Mark Markov-Grinberg show, Soviet photographic practices were much more complex than has been previously acknowledged. The works of these photographers remain intensely compelling to a modernist eye.

Contemporary Russian photographers, such as Lev Melikhov, Valerii Stigneev and Sergei Leontiev, engage with the legacy of the Soviet documentary photography. But for them the documentary is a complex and multivalent genre, which incorporates subjectivity, ambiguity and reflexivity and comments on social and cultural issues without losing sight of the position from which that commentary is made. In the recent photographs by Vladimir Kupriyanov, Igor Moukhin, Anna Gorunova and Pakito Infante, the "real" space of Moscow is replaced by an imaginary and optical spaces of virtuality.

The works in the exhibition are on loan from Moscow's Cultural Center Dom, and many are being shown outside Russia for the first time. In conjunction with the exhibition, the Wallach Art Gallery is publishing an illustrated catalogue with a scholarly essay by the exhibition curator, Nadia Michoustina, a Ph.D. candidate in Columbia University's Department of Slavic Languages. The essay presents a nuanced history of Russian photography of the 20th century, and contributes to an interpretation of extraordinary images.

Watch CBS News

See the full list of past total solar eclipses in the U.S. since 1778

By Kerry Breen

Updated on: April 9, 2024 / 4:36 AM EDT / CBS News

A  rare total solar eclipse was visible in parts of the United States Monday. Those in the path of totality  had the opportunity to see the sun be fully covered by the moon for several minutes.

Total solar eclipses are rare , and aren't often visible from the U.S. The last time one occurred here  was in 2017 , and the U.S. won't see another until 2044 .

Here's a list of all the times a total solar eclipse has been recorded in the United States. 

Total solar eclipse in the U.S. during the 18th century

The first recorded total solar eclipse was in 1778, according to NASA , just a few short years after the United States became an independent country. The eclipse was visible from the Carolinas to New England, and was noted by historical figures like Thomas Jefferson, according to Mount Vernon , the museum established in former President George Washington's estate. Troops in Washington's army also noted the event. 

List of total solar eclipses in the U.S. during the 19th century

1806: The first total solar eclipse of the 1800s occurred in 1806, according to the National Parks Service . The path of that eclipse would have crossed from Arizona, through the Midwest and into New England, according to NASA . 

1869: The next total solar eclipse was recorded in 1869. The path of totality stretched from Alaska to the Carolinas, according to NASA . Photos of the event were published in Harper's Magazine, the service said, the first mass publication to do so. 

1878: The next total solar eclipse occurred in 1878, and the path of totality arced from Alaska through Louisiana, according to NASA . It was studied by an all-woman team of astronomers, according to the parks service, and Thomas Edison himself traveled to see the event, bringing scientific equipment to study the sun's corona during the eclipse. 

List of total solar eclipses in the U.S. during the 20th century

1900: The first eclipse of the 20th century was in 1900, according to the parks service. The path of totality of that eclipse brought it over Wadesboro, North Carolina.

1918: In June 1918, a total solar eclipse was visible from Washington to Florida, according to the parks service. It was the last time a total solar eclipse would be visible across the entire continent for nearly 100 years. 

1925: This was followed by another total solar eclipse in January 1925, which was visible from Minnesota through New England, according to NASA . 

1932: In August 1932, another total solar eclipse was visible in North America. The path of totality for this eclipse was mostly in Canada, according to NASA , but was visible in northern New England including parts of Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. 

1963: The next total solar eclipse in the U.S. wasn't until July 1963. This eclipse was visible in Alaska and parts of northern New England, according to NASA . 

1970: In March 1970, another total solar eclipse was visible from the coast of the Southwest United States. Watch CBS News coverage of that event in the video below:

1979: The last eclipse that NASA recorded in the 20th century took place in 1979. This eclipse was visible in the Pacific Northwest and parts of Idaho and the Dakotas, but the path of totality mostly arced through Canada. 

Total solar eclipses in the U.S. during the 21st century so far

Only two total solar eclipses have been visible from the United States during the 21st century. The first was the total solar eclipse of 2017 , which was visible across the country . This was the first time such an event had occurred since 1918, and millions gathered to watch . 

The April 8, 2024, eclipse was the next total solar eclipse visible in the U.S. The path of totality for this eclipse stretched from Texas to the Northeast. The eclipse started  on Mexico's Pacific coast at just after 11 a.m. PDT before traveling across the U.S. and into Canada. The eclipse left North America around 5:19 p.m. EDT. 

The eclipse attracted millions of spectators. Some areas where the event was most visible declared local states of emergency to account for the number of expected visitors. 

When will the next total solar eclipse be visible in the U.S.?

After the April 8 eclipse, the U.S. won't see another total solar eclipse for decades. The next total solar eclipse visible from the United States will occur in August 2044. 

Total solar eclipses typically happen every one to three years somewhere around the globe, but the events are often only visible from Earth's poles or from the middle of the ocean. 

Kerry Breen is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. A graduate of New York University's Arthur L. Carter School of Journalism, she previously worked at NBC News' TODAY Digital. She covers current events, breaking news and issues including substance use.

More from CBS News

Mark Cuban shares his 9-figure tax bill on IRS due day

First 7 jurors seated in Trump trial as judge warns former president

Senators call for renewed Havana Syndrome assessment after 60 Minutes report

The key players to know in the Trump "hush money" trial

IEC Ready to Print Ballot Papers for 2024 Elections

W ith the finalisation of the list of candidates contesting seats in the 2024 National and Provincial Elections (NPE2024), the Electoral Commission (IEC) can now go ahead with the printing of ballot papers for the elections.

"The 27.79 million registered voters will receive three ballot papers to elect candidates to represent them in the National Assembly and Provincial Legislatures," IEC Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Sy Mamabolo said on Tuesday in Centurion.

Addressing a media briefing, Mamabolo said the use of the three ballots follows the amendment of the Electoral Act, which was signed into law in April 2023.

"This amendment revised the electoral system to allow independent candidates to contest in the regional (province-to-national) tier of the National Assembly and the Provincial Legislatures. Although the phenomenon of three ballots will be familiar to voters in various local municipalities, it will be new to voters in metropolitan areas and for the first time in general elections for national and provinces.

"There are a total of 400 contested seats in the National Assembly. The proportional representation compensatory 200 seats will be contested by political parties only and there is a dedicated ballot paper for this tier of the National Assembly.

"The remaining regional or province-to-national 200 seats will be contested by independent candidates and political parties. This tier of the National Assembly will also have a dedicated ballot paper," he said.

This means that National Assembly elections will be based on two ballot papers - a national ballot and the newly introduced regional or province-to-national ballot.

"Therefore, in respect of the elections of the National Assembly voters may elect a preferred party on the national ballot and elect another preferred party or independent on the regional ballot. However, in respect of provincial elections, voters will elect a preferred party or independent candidate on a single provincial ballot," the CEO said.

Mamabolo explained how the three ballot papers would work.

It will consist of a list of political parties vying for seats for 200 seats in the National Assembly.

"This ballot will be used to vote for political parties. There are currently 52 parties who will be on this ballot and the configuration will be a dual column. The Regional or Province-to-National Ballots will have political parties and independents candidates contesting for the seats reserved for each province in the National Assembly.

"Voters will use this ballot to elect a political party or an independent candidate to represent them in the National Assembly. The number of contestants range from 30 to 44 on regional ballots. The configuration of this ballot is single column," he said.

The Provincial Ballots are unique to each province and include parties and independent candidates competing for seats in each respective provincial legislature.

"This ballot will allow voters to choose either a political party or an independent candidate to represent them in provincial legislatures. The number of contestants range from 24 to 45 on the provincial legislatures ballots," the CEO said.

The Commission has decided that the design of the ballot papers will be underpinned by the following identifiers:

• Full registered name of the party.
• The photograph of the registered party leader.
• Registered abbreviated name of the party.
• The registered emblem or symbol of the party.

In respect of independent candidates, the ballot papers will have:

• The name of the independent;
• The photograph bearing the face of the independent and
• The word "INDEPENDENT."

The Commission has urged voters to carefully review and mark each of these three ballot papers before depositing them into the ballot box.

"Our appeal to voters is to remember that they can only put one mark on each ballot, more than one mark will result in a spoiled ballot and will not [count]. The Universal Ballot Template (UBT), whose dimensions are benchmarked against the longest ballot paper, is in production and will be available in all voting stations.

"The UBT can be used by blind and partially sighted people, low-vision users, people who are dyslexic, and people with motor and neuron conditions which do not allow for a steady hand," Mamabolo said.

Voters have been reminded that they may only vote at a voting station at which they are registered.

"Voters who will inevitably be away from their voting districts on Election Day, 29 May 2024, may give a Section 24A notice of their intention to vote at another identified voting station by no later than 17 May 2024," the CEO said.

Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Travel and Tourism Industry — The History of Moscow City

The History of Moscow City

• Categories: Russia Travel and Tourism Industry

About this sample

Words: 614 |

Published: Feb 12, 2019

Words: 614 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr Jacklynne

Verified writer

• Expert in: Geography & Travel

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

13 pages / 6011 words

2 pages / 1003 words

6 pages / 3010 words

4 pages / 2143 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Travel and Tourism Industry

Traveling has always been a significant part of my life. From a young age, I have been fortunate enough to explore different cultures, experience new traditions, and immerse myself in the beauty of our world. My passion for [...]

Travelling is a topic that has been debated for centuries, with some arguing that it is a waste of time and money, while others believe that it is an essential part of life. In this essay, I will argue that travelling is not [...]

Traveling is an enriching experience that allows individuals to explore new cultures, meet people from different backgrounds, and broaden their perspectives. In the summer of 2019, I had the opportunity to embark on an amazing [...]

Travelling has always been an exhilarating experience for me, and my recent trip to Rome was no exception. The ancient city, with its rich history and breathtaking architecture, left a lasting impression on me. It was a journey [...]

When planning a business trip all aspects and decisions rely heavily on the budget set by the company for the trip. Once Sandfords have confirmed the location careful consideration should be used to choose the travel method and [...]

Place is one of the most complicated issues in geographical studies. Place refers to both sides of human and physical geography. There is not clear understand about the place and sometimes refer to local, area, point, region, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• climate change

America’s Young Farmers Are Burning Out. I Quit, Too

I n 2023, Scott Chang-Fleeman—a young farmer like me—put down his shovel. A post on his Instagram read, “Shao Shan Farm, in its current form, is going on indefinite hiatus.” From the outside, the burgeoning farm had the makeup of one that could stand the test of time. In reality, his experience of farm ownership was wrought with challenges.

A farmer in his late 20s, Chang-Fleeman started Shao Shan Farm in 2019 to reconnect with his roots and provide a source of locally grown heritage Asian vegetables to the Bay Area. He quickly secured a clientele and fan base—two of the greatest hurdles of starting a farm—and became the go-to for San Francisco’s high-end Asian eateries.

But after four years of creative pivots to withstand unexpected hurdles that included financial stress, severe drought, and a global pandemic, Chang-Fleeman made a choice that many young farmers are considering: to leave farming behind. Why he left and what could have kept him on the land are critical questions we must address if we are to have a sustainable and food-secure future.

The USDA Census of Agriculture reported that in 2017, nearly 1 in 4 of the 3.4 million agricultural producers in the US were new and beginning farmers. Many of these new farmers are doing exactly what it seems American agriculture needs: starting small farms. According to the most recent data from the Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) in 2019 , farms with annual sales of less than $100,000 accounted for about 85% of all U.S. farms. And though not all of these small-scale farms are necessarily organic, small farms are more likely to grow a diversity of crop types, use methods that reduce negative impacts on the climate, increase carbon sequestration, and tend to be more resilient in the face of climate change.

Read More: How Extreme Weather Is Affecting Small Farmers Across the U.S.

There has been a growing interest among younger people in recent years in sustainable and organic farming practices, as well as in local food systems. This interest has led people in their 20s and 30s to enter into small-scale farming, particularly in niche markets such as organic produce, specialty crops, and direct-to-consumer sales.

As a result, both congressional Democrats and Republicans have maintained that encouraging young people to farm is of utmost importance in ensuring the stability of our food system. But getting young people into farming may not be the problem. Keeping them on the farm may be the hardest part.

I should know. I quit too.

Chang-Fleeman got his start in agriculture right out of college, where he spent several years working at the on-campus farm. As a third-generation Chinese American, he noticed a distinct lack of Asian vegetables at local farmers markets, particularly those that were grown organically, and suspected there would be a demand should a supply exist. He started trialing some varieties, and his suspicions were quickly affirmed when samples of his choy sum caught the attention of chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s, a contemporary Chinese eatery with a Michelin star in the heart of San Francisco’s Chinatown. Jew provided some seed funds for what was to become Shao Shan Farm in 2019.

During the first year running his farm, Chang-Fleeman focused his sales on his relationships with local restaurants, while attending some farmers' markets sales to supplement income. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, he lost all of his restaurant accounts overnight.

Like many farmers at that time, he pivoted to a CSA model, offering farm boxes that provide a household with an assortment of vegetables for the week.

“So literally over a night, I reworked my crop plan” he told me. “Just to get through that year, or through that season, not knowing how long [the pandemic was going to] last.”

As if a global pandemic wasn’t enough, in 2021, California entered a drought, and he lost the ability to irrigate his crops come mid-summer, which meant a hard stop for production.

“I was hoping to hit some sort of a rhythm, and every year felt a bit like starting from scratch,” Chang-Fleeman reflected.

Throughout farm ownership, he worked side jobs to compensate for the slow build of business income and the fact that he could only afford to pay himself a monthly salary of $2,000. He regularly worked 90 hours a week. At the same time, farm expenses were on the rise.

“The cost of our packaging went up like three times in one year and the cost of the produce didn't change,” he explained. “Our operating expenses went up like 30%, after COVID.”

In four short years, Chang-Fleeman experienced an avalanche of extenuating circumstances that would bring most farm businesses to their knees. But the thing that finally catalyzed the closing of his business was burnout. He relayed the experience of the exhaustion and stress building over time until he reached a breaking point. “If I don’t stop now, it’s going to kill me,” he recalled thinking.

Chang-Fleeman’s burnout reminded me of my own story. In the fall of 2018, I took what ended up being a two-month medical leave from an organic farm I managed in Northern California in order to try to try to resolve a set of weird symptoms that included dizzy spells and heart palpitations. If you know anything about farming, fall is not the time to be absent. It’s peak harvest time and the culmination of all of your work is underway. But as my medical anomaly continued to worsen, I came no closer to getting back to work. After many doctor visits, several trips to the specialist, a flurry of blood tests, and a week of heart monitoring, it took one Xanax to solve the mystery.

Read More: ‘ They’re Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.’ Small American Farmers Are Nearing Extinction

The prolonged physical stress that I had been harboring at work had triggered the onset of panic disorder, a nervous system affliction that had led me into a near-chronic state of fight or flight mode, causing a swath of physical symptoms not typically associated with “anxiety.”

For me, this was a wake-up call. I turned to a slew of Western and naturopathic remedies to alleviate my symptoms, but ultimately, removing the stressors of farm management was the thing that allowed me to, mostly, reach a nervous system balance. Even still, six years later, I’m constantly navigating the ‘new normal’ of this diagnosis.

A pilot study conducted by agriculture researcher Josie Rudolphi and her colleagues in 2020 found that of 170 participants, approximately 71% met the criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder. By comparison, in the US, an estimated 18% of adults experience an anxiety disorder. Rudolphi’s work indicates that these disorders maybe three times more prevalent in young farmer and rancher populations.

This rang true as I went from farm to farm trying to figure out what so often goes wrong in a new farm operation. Again and again mental health was a through-line. Collette Walsh, owner of a cut-flower operation in Braddock, PA, put it to me bluntly: "I usually get to a point in late August or early September, where there’s a week where I just cry.”

How can we build a farming economy that helps young farmers not only stay, but also thrive on the land? The Farm Bill , a federal package of legislation that provides funding for agricultural programs, is one route. As the reboot of the Farm Bill approaches, it’s a critical time to ask these questions and advocate for policies that support young farmers and the barriers they’re facing in maintaining a long-lasting career in agriculture.

Take for instance, Jac Wypler, Farmer Mental Health Director at the National Young Farmer Coalition (Young Farmers), who oversees the Northeast region’s Farmer and Rancher Stress Assistance Network (FRSAN). The organization was established by the Farm Bill in 2018 to develop a service provider network for farmers, ranchers, and other agricultural workers that was dedicated to mental well-being. Through the network of service providers she directs, called “Cultivemos,” Wypler and her colleagues utilize a multi-tiered approach to address mental health in farming spaces. Cultivemos partners provide direct support in moments of stress and crisis as well as peer-to-peer support spaces.

An expanded (and subsidized) program that scales efforts like Cultivemos to a size commensurate with the young work force is clearly needed. But it’s only part of the picture.

“While we believe that it is important to make sure that farms, farmers, and farmworkers are getting direct support around their mental health,” Wypler explained. “We need to alleviate what is causing them stress.” 

Cultivemos works to address the structural root causes of stress which can include climate change, land prices, and systemic racism, to name a few. They focus on communities that are disproportionately harmed by these structural root causes, specifically Black, Indigenous, and other farmers of color. Finally, they seek to make this impact by regranting funding directly into the hands of these farmers.

“The way I think of regranting is that the USDA and these large institutions are the Mississippi River of funding.” Wypler says. “We’re trying to get the funding into these smaller rivers and tributaries to disperse these funds and shift that power dynamic and leadership dynamic.”

The next Farm Bill cycle will be critical in ensuring this work is continued. In November of 2023, lawmakers signed a stopgap funding bill that allows for a one-year extension on the 2018 Farm Bill. Lawmakers are currently in deliberations over the bill until September when it will be up for a vote. Young Farmers underscores the importance of the appropriations process, which is when program areas that are authorized in the farm bill are allocated funding.

Back-to-the-landism has waxed and waned throughout the last hundred years, booming in the pre-Depression years of the 1930s, dying in the war years and then storming back in the 60s and 70s. When my generation’s own farming revolution came along in the early 2000s, I was similarly swept up. I imagined when I chose to farm that the path would be lifelong. What I hadn’t accounted for, as a determined, starry-eyed changemaker, was the toll that a decade of farming through wildfires, evacuations, floods, power outages, and a global pandemic would take on my mental health.

Don’t get me wrong:  I was happy working hard with my two feet planted firmly on the land. In a better world I and people like Scott Chang-Fleeman would have kept getting our hands dirty, making an honest, if modest, living providing good and wholesome food in synch with the rhythms of the planet.

But to borrow a word from the world of ecology, being a young farmer in today’s economy is “unsustainable.” The numbers don’t work economically and, eventually, any mind trying to square this un-squarable circle is going to break. The economic, physical and mental challenges are all interconnected.

It’s hard to find an American, Republican or Democrat, red or blue state resident that doesn’t want more young hands on the land. We all rightly see agriculture as a pathway to personal fulfillment and a way to make our food supply healthier and more secure. But words and intentions can only do so much. We must answer these very real problems with very real subsidy.

If we don’t, my generation might be the last to think of going “back-to-the-land” as something actually worth doing.

More Must-Reads From TIME

• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• The Revolution of Yulia Navalnaya
• 6 Compliments That Land Every Time
• Stop Looking for Your Forever Home
• If You're Dating Right Now , You're Brave: Column
• The AI That Could Heal a Divided Internet
• Fallout Is a Brilliant Model for the Future of Video Game Adaptations
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

J.D. Vance: The Math on Ukraine Doesn’t Add Up

By J. D. Vance

Mr. Vance, a Republican, is the junior senator from Ohio.

President Biden wants the world to believe that the biggest obstacle facing Ukraine is Republicans and our lack of commitment to the global community. This is wrong.

Ukraine’s challenge is not the G.O.P.; it’s math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide. This reality must inform any future Ukraine policy, from further congressional aid to the diplomatic course set by the president.

The Biden administration has applied increasing pressure on Republicans to pass a supplemental aid package of more than $60 billion to Ukraine. I voted against this package in the Senate and remain opposed to virtually any proposal for the United States to continue funding this war. Mr. Biden has failed to articulate even basic facts about what Ukraine needs and how this aid will change the reality on the ground.

The most fundamental question: How much does Ukraine need and how much can we actually provide? Mr. Biden suggests that a $60 billion supplemental means the difference between victory and defeat in a major war between Russia and Ukraine. That is also wrong. This $60 billion is a fraction of what it would take to turn the tide in Ukraine’s favor. But this is not just a matter of dollars. Fundamentally, we lack the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.

Consider our ability to produce 155-millimeter artillery shells. Last year, Ukraine’s defense minister estimated that the country’s base-line requirement for these shells was over four million per year but that it could fire up to seven million if that many were available. Since the start of the conflict, the United States has gone to great lengths to ramp up production of 155-millimeter shells. We’ve roughly doubled our capacity and can now produce 360,000 per year — less than a tenth of what Ukraine says it needs. The administration’s goal is to get this to 1.2 million — 30 percent of what’s needed — by the end of 2025. This would cost the American taxpayers dearly while yielding an unpleasantly familiar result: failure abroad.

Just this week, the top American military commander in Europe argued that absent further security assistance, Russia could soon have a 10-to-1 artillery advantage over Ukraine. What didn’t gather as many headlines is that Russia’s current advantage is at least 5 to 1, even after all the money we have poured into the conflict. Neither of these ratios plausibly leads to Ukrainian victory.

Proponents of American aid to Ukraine have argued that our approach has been a boon to our own economy, creating jobs here in the factories that manufacture weapons. But our national security interests can be — and often are — separate from our economic interests. The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict.

The story is the same when we look at other munitions. Take the Patriot missile system — our premier air defense weapon. It’s of such importance in this war that Ukraine’s foreign minister has specifically demanded them. That’s because in March alone, Russia reportedly launched over 3,000 guided aerial bombs, 600 drones and 400 missiles at Ukraine. To fend off these attacks, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and others have indicated they need thousands of Patriot interceptors per year. The problem is this: The United States only manufactures 550 per year. If we pass the supplemental aid package currently being considered in Congress, we could potentially increase annual production to 650, but that’s still less than a third of what Ukraine requires.

These weapons are not only needed by Ukraine. If China were to set its sights on Taiwan, the Patriot missile system would be critical to its defense. In fact, the United States has promised to send Taiwan nearly $900 million worth of Patriot missiles, but delivery of those weapons and other essential resources has been severely delayed, partly because of shortages caused by the war in Ukraine.

If that sounds bad, Ukraine’s manpower situation is even worse. Here are the basics: Russia has nearly four times the population of Ukraine. Ukraine needs upward of half a million new recruits, but hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men have already fled the country. The average Ukrainian soldier is roughly 43 years old , and many soldiers have already served two years at the front with few, if any, opportunities to stop fighting. After two years of conflict, there are some villages with almost no men left. The Ukrainian military has resorted to coercing men into service, and women have staged protests to demand the return of their husbands and fathers after long years of service at the front. This newspaper reported one instance in which the Ukrainian military attempted to conscript a man with a diagnosed mental disability.

Many in Washington seem to think that hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have gone to war with a song in their heart and are happy to label any thought to the contrary Russian propaganda. But major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic are reporting that the situation on the ground in Ukraine is grim.

These basic mathematical realities were true, but contestable, at the outset of the war. They were obvious and incontestable a year ago, when American leadership worked closely with Mr. Zelensky to undertake a disastrous counteroffensive. The bad news is that accepting brute reality would have been most useful last spring, before the Ukrainians launched that extremely costly and unsuccessful military campaign. The good news is that even now, a defensive strategy can work. Digging in with old-fashioned ditches, cement and land mines are what enabled Russia to weather Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive. Our allies in Europe could better support such a strategy, as well. While some European countries have provided considerable resources, the burden of military support has thus far fallen heaviest on the United States.

By committing to a defensive strategy, Ukraine can preserve its precious military manpower, stop the bleeding and provide time for negotiations to commence. But this would require both the American and Ukrainian leadership to accept that Mr. Zelensky’s stated goal for the war — a return to 1991 boundaries — is fantastical.

The White House has said time and again that it can’t negotiate with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. This is absurd. The Biden administration has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war. The sooner Americans confront this truth, the sooner we can fix this mess and broker for peace.

J.D. Vance ( @JDVance1 ), a Republican, is the junior senator from Ohio.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

World Heritage Day 2024: All You Need To Know, Monuments To Visit

World heritage day 2024: its objective is to inspire people and local communities to value cultural heritage in their lives..

World Heritage Day 2024: The day is celebrated on April 18 every year.

The International Day for Monuments and Sites, also known as World Heritage Day, is observed on April 18. The day was first celebrated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1983. The aim is to promote awareness about the cultural heritage and diversity on the planet.

Promoted Listen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.com

Its objective is to inspire people and local communities to value cultural heritage in their lives. Along with monument preservation, the day also aims to increase public awareness of the diversity and vulnerability of cultural heritage.

Theme Of World Heritage Day

Since 1983, the International Council on Monuments and Sites has set a theme around which events are centred on the day. The theme for World Heritage Day 2024 is "Disasters & Conflicts Through the Lens of the Venice Charter". 

"The Venice Charter emerged in 1964, two decades after WWII and in an age that promised limitless progress and economic development. Six decades later, we face a climate emergency, a growing number of natural disasters as well as conflicts destroying cultural sites and displacing communities on a massive scale. ICOMOS will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Venice Charter in 2024, which will feature as a key narrative to ICOMOS events through the year. The IDMS will kick off the official celebration, leading up to the anniversary of the Venice Charter on 31 May," the organisation said on its website.

Monuments In India

India is home to a total of 3691 monuments and sites. Of these 40 are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. As we observe World Heritage Day 2024, let's take a look at some historical monuments that you can visit in India to mark the occasion

• Qutub Minar
• Humayun's Tomb
• Temples at Hampi
• Sanchi Stupa
• Ajanta and Ellora Caves
• Khajuraho Temples

Track Budget 2023 and get Latest News Live on NDTV.com.

Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world .

Track Latest News and Election Results Coverage Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world.

Watch Live News:

Three Rhode Island power players just launched a political nonprofit

The group’s goal is to “influence policy makers and constituents to work for progressive change in housing, education, labor, and health care, particularly women’s health care,” according to incorporation papers.

We’re still a few months away from Rhode Island’s elections taking center stage, but three of the best-known insiders in the state have just launched a new nonprofit “social welfare” organization that they believe will play a big role in local politics for years to come.

Kate Coyne-McCoy, a former executive director of the state Democratic Party, George Zainyeh, who was chief of staff to former governor Lincoln Chafee and is now one of the most influential lobbyists on Smith Hill, and Patti Doyle, a top communications pro for just about everyone, formed Better RI NOW on April 8.

The group’s plans are still vague, but its goal is to “influence policy makers and constituents to work for progressive change in housing, education, labor, and health care, particularly women’s health care,” according to incorporation papers.

Advertisement

Asked to expand on the group’s goals, Doyle said the group plans to raise money, but won’t directly endorse candidates for office. She said “we can let voters know which candidates stand for issues important to them.”

”The three of us have been active in public policy for a while, we witness the ongoing national dialogue, and just want to be additive to a local conversation on a variety of key issues,” Doyle said.

Stepping back: Coyne-McCoy, Zainyeh, Doyle aren’t necessarily household names to the average Rhode Islander, but they’re a powerful trifecta in political circles. Doyle said the group plans to focus on the congressional delegation and statewide offices.

US Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and US Representatives Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo are all on the ballot this year, although all three are heavy favorites to be reelected (especially in a presidential election year). It’s more intriguing to think about the role Better RI NOW might play in 2026 in Rhode Island.

This story first appeared in Rhode Map, our free newsletter about Rhode Island that also contains information about local events, links to interesting stories, and more. If you’d like to receive it via e-mail Monday through Friday, you can sign up here.

Dan McGowan can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @danmcgowan .

Windows 11, version 23H2

April 9, 2024—kb5036893 (os builds 22621.3447 and 22631.3447).

• March 26, 2024—KB5035942 (OS Builds 22621.3374 and 22631.3374) Preview
• March 12, 2024—KB5035853 (OS Builds 22621.3296 and 22631.3296)
• February 29, 2024—KB5034848 (OS Builds 22621.3235 and 22631.3235) Preview
• February 13, 2024—KB5034765 (OS Builds 22621.3155 and 22631.3155)
• January 23, 2024—KB5034204 (OS Builds 22621.3085 and 22631.3085) Preview
• January 9, 2024—KB5034123 (OS Builds 22621.3007 and 22631.3007)
• December 12, 2023—KB5033375 (OS Builds 22621.2861 and 22631.2861)
• December 4, 2023—KB5032288 (OS Builds 22621.2792 and 22631.2792) Preview
• November 14, 2023—KB5032190 (OS Builds 22621.2715 and 22631.2715)
• October 31, 2023—KB5031455 (OS Builds 22621.2506 and 22631.2506) Preview

Windows 11, version 22H2

• October 10, 2023—KB5031354 (OS Build 22621.2428)
• September 26, 2023—KB5030310 (OS Build 22621.2361) Preview
• September 12, 2023—KB5030219 (OS Build 22621.2283)
• August 22, 2023—KB5029351 (OS Build 22621.2215) Preview
• August 8, 2023—KB5029263 (OS Build 22621.2134)
• July 26, 2023—KB5028254 (OS Build 22621.2070) Preview
• July 11, 2023—KB5028185 (OS Build 22621.1992)
• June 27, 2023—KB5027303 (OS Build 22621.1928) Preview
• June 13, 2023—KB5027231 (OS Build 22621.1848)
• May 24, 2023—KB5026446 (OS Build 22621.1778) Preview
• May 9, 2023—KB5026372 (OS Build 22621.1702)
• April 25, 2023—KB5025305 (OS Build 22621.1635) Preview
• April 11, 2023—KB5025239 (OS Build 22621.1555)
• March 28, 2023—KB5023778 (OS Build 22621.1485) Preview
• March 14, 2023—KB5023706 (OS Build 22621.1413)
• February 28, 2023—KB5022913 (OS Build 22621.1344) Preview
• February 14, 2023—KB5022845 (OS Build 22621.1265)
• January 26, 2023—KB5022360 (OS Build 22621.1194) Preview
• January 10, 2023—KB5022303 (OS Build 22621.1105)
• December 13, 2022—KB5021255 (OS Build 22621.963)
• November 29, 2022—KB5020044 (OS Build 22621.900) Preview
• November 8, 2022—KB5019980 (OS Build 22621.819)
• October 25, 2022—KB5018496 (OS Build 22621.755) Preview
• October 18, 2022—KB5019509 (OS Build 22621.675) Out-of-band
• October 11, 2022—KB5018427 (OS Build 22621.674)
• September 30, 2022—KB5017389 (OS Build 22621.608) Preview
• Windows 11, version 21H2
• April 9, 2024—KB5036894 (OS Build 22000.2899)
• March 12, 2024—KB5035854 (OS Build 22000.2836)
• February 13, 2024—KB5034766 (OS Build 22000.2777)
• January 9, 2024—KB5034121 (OS Build 22000.2713)
• December 12, 2023—KB5033369 (OS Build 22000.2652)
• November 14, 2023—KB5032192 (OS Build 22000.2600)
• October 10, 2023—KB5031358 (OS Build 22000.2538)
• September 26, 2023—KB5030301 (OS Build 22000.2482) Preview
• September 12, 2023—KB5030217 (OS Build 22000.2416)
• August 22, 2023—KB5029332 (OS Build 22000.2360) Preview
• August 8, 2023—KB5029253 (OS Build 22000.2295)
• July 25, 2023—KB5028245 (OS Build 22000.2245) Preview
• July 11, 2023—KB5028182 (OS Build 22000.2176)
• June 28, 2023—KB5027292 (OS Build 22000.2124) Preview
• June 13, 2023—KB5027223 (OS Build 22000.2057)
• May 23, 2023—KB5026436 (OS Build 22000.2003) Preview
• May 9, 2023—KB5026368 (OS Build 22000.1936)
• April 25, 2023—KB5025298 (OS Build 22000.1880) Preview
• April 11, 2023—KB5025224 (OS Build 22000.1817)
• March 28, 2023—KB5023774 (OS Build 22000.1761) Preview
• March 14, 2023—KB5023698 (OS Build 22000.1696)
• February 21, 2023—KB5022905 (OS Build 22000.1641) Preview
• February 14, 2023—KB5022836 (OS Build 22000.1574)
• January 19, 2023—KB5019274 (OS Build 22000.1516) Preview
• January 10, 2023—KB5022287 (OS Build 22000.1455)
• December 13, 2022—KB5021234 (OS Build 22000.1335)
• November 15, 2022—KB5019157 (OS Build 22000.1281) Preview
• November 8, 2022—KB5019961 (OS Build 22000.1219)
• October 25, 2022—KB5018483 (OS Build 22000.1165) Preview
• October 17, 2022—KB5020387 (OS Build 22000.1100) Out-of-band
• October 11, 2022—KB5018418 (OS Build 22000.1098)
• September 20, 2022—KB5017383 (OS Build 22000.1042) Preview
• September 13, 2022—KB5017328 (OS Build 22000.978)
• August 25, 2022—KB5016691 (OS Build 22000.918) Preview
• August 9, 2022—KB5016629 (OS Build 22000.856)
• July 21, 2022—KB5015882 (OS Build 22000.832) Preview
• July 12, 2022—KB5015814 (OS Build 22000.795)
• June 23, 2022—KB5014668 (OS Build 22000.778) Preview
• June 20, 2022—KB5016138 (OS Build 22000.740) Out-of-band
• June 14, 2022—KB5014697 (OS Build 22000.739)
• May 24, 2022—KB5014019 (OS Build 22000.708) Preview
• May 10, 2022—KB5013943 (OS Build 22000.675)
• April 25, 2022—KB5012643 (OS Build 22000.652) Preview
• April 12, 2022—KB5012592 (OS Build 22000.613)
• March 28, 2022—KB5011563 (OS Build 22000.593) Preview
• March 8, 2022—KB5011493 (OS Build 22000.556)
• February 15, 2022—KB5010414 (OS Build 22000.527) Preview
• February 8, 2022—KB5010386 (OS Build 22000.493)
• January 25, 2022—KB5008353 (OS Build 22000.469) Preview
• January 17, 2022—KB5010795 (OS Build 22000.438) Out-of-band
• January 11, 2022—KB5009566 (OS Build 22000.434)
• December 14, 2021—KB5008215 (OS Build 22000.376)
• November 22, 2021—KB5007262 (OS Build 22000.348) Preview
• November 9, 2021—KB5007215 (OS Build 22000.318)
• October 21, 2021—KB5006746 (OS Build 22000.282) Preview
• October 12, 2021—KB5006674 (OS Build 22000.258)

Release Date:

OS Builds 22621.3447 and 22631.3447

2/27/24 IMPORTANT: New dates for the end of non-security updates for Windows 11, version 22H2

The new end date is June 24, 2025 for Windows 11, version 22H2 Enterprise and Education editions. Home and Pro editions of version 22H2 will receive non-security preview updates until June, 26, 2024. 

After these dates, only cumulative monthly security updates will continue for the supported editions of Windows 11, version 22H2. The initial date communicated for this change was February 27, 2024. Based on user feedback, this date has been changed so more customers can take advantage of our continuous innovations . 

For information about Windows update terminology, see the article about the  types of Windows updates  and the  monthly quality update types . For an overview of Windows 11, version 23H2, see its update history page . 

Note  Follow  @WindowsUpdate  to find out when new content is published to the Windows release health dashboard.         

Tip:  The content is within collapsible sections. Click or tap the category name to expand the section.

Voice access

New! You can now use voice access with the following languages:

French (France, Canada)

Spanish (Spain, Mexico)

When you turn on voice access for the first time, Windows will ask you to download a speech model. You might not find a speech model that matches your display language. You can still use voice access in English (US). You can always choose a different language from Settings > Language on the voice access bar.

New! You can now use all voice access features on multiple displays. These include number and grid overlays that, in the past, you could only use on the primary display. While you are using the grid overlay on a screen, you can quickly switch to another display. To do that, use the alphabet or NATO phonetic in your command. For example, “B” or “Bravo” are both valid for the display that is assigned that letter.

New! This update introducesvoice shortcuts or custom commands. You can use them to create your own commands in the supported English dialects. To start, say “what can I say” and click the “Voice shortcuts” tab on the left panel. You can also use the command “show voice shortcuts” to open the Voice shortcuts page. Click Create new shortcut . Use your voice or other input to create a command. Give it a name and select one or more actions. After you fill in the necessary information, click Create . Your command is now ready to use. To view all the voice shortcuts you have created, go to the command help page or use the voice command, “show voice shortcuts.”

New! You can now listen to a preview of the ten natural voices before you download them. See the Narrator section of the September 2023 update for the list. These voices use modern , on-device text-to-speech. Once you download them, they work without an internet connection. However, to listen to a preview, you need an internet connection. To add and use one of the natural voices, follow the steps below.

To open Narrator settings, press the WIN+CTRL+N hotkey.

Under Narrator’s voice, select Add , which is next to Add natural voices .

Select the voice you want to install. You can install all voices, but you must install them one at a time.

The preview will play automatically as you browse the list.

If you like the preview, click Download and Install . The new voice downloads and is ready for use in a few minutes, depending on your internet download speed.

In Narrator settings, select your preferred voice from the menu in Narrator’s voice > Choose a voice .

New! This update adds a new keyboard command to move between the images on a screen. Now, you can use the keys G or Shift+G to move forward or backward between images in Scan mode (Narrator key+space bar).

New! This update improves Narrator’s detection of text in images, which includes handwriting. It also improves the descriptions of images. To use this feature, you must have an active internet connection. You must also turn on the setting to get image descriptions in Narrator settings. To try this experience, select an image and press the Narrator key+CTRL+D.

New! In Microsoft Word, Narrator will announce the presence of bookmarks and draft or resolved comments. It also tells you if accessibility suggestions exist when it reads text in the file.

New! You can now use voice access to open applications, dictate text, and interact with elements on the screen. You can also use your voice to command Narrator. For example, you can tell it to, “speak faster,” “read next line,” and so on. To get started, search for “voice access” in Windows search and set it up.

Windows share

New! This update changes the apps that appear in the Windows share window. The account you use to sign in affects the apps that are in “Share using.” For example, if you use a Microsoft account (MSA) to sign in, you will see Microsoft Teams (free). When you use a Microsoft Entra ID account (formerly Azure Active Directory) to sign in, your Microsoft Teams (work or school) contacts show instead.

New! The Windows share window now supports sharing with WhatsApp in the “Share using” section. If you do not have WhatsApp installed, you can install it from the Windows share window.

Nearby Share

New! This update affects how Nearby Share turns on and off. You can use quick settings or the Settings app to turn on Nearby Share. If you do and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are off, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth will turn on to make Nearby Share work as you expect. If you turn off Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, Nearby Share turns off as well.

New! This update improves Nearby Share transfer speed for users on the same network. Before, users had to be on the same private network. Now, users must be on the same public or private network. You can use quick settings to turn on Nearby Share. Right-click a local file in File Explorer and choose “Share.” Then choose to share to a device listed in Nearby Share in the Windows share window.

New! You can now give your device a more friendly name to identify it when sharing. Go to Settings > System > Nearby sharing . There, you can rename your device.

New! This update helps you to learn about the Cast feature and discover when it is available; see the examples in the list below. To cast means to send content that is on your device’s screen to a nearby PC, TV, or other external displays. This happens wirelessly.

You might often switch between windows to complete a task or use Snap Assist to organize your screen space. When you multitask like this, a notification will suggest that you use Cast.

The Cast flyout menu in quick settings gives you more help to find nearby displays, fix connections, and more.

Snap Layouts

New! This update adds suggestions to   Snap Layouts .  They help you to instantly snap multiple app windows together.

New! You can hover over the minimize or maximize button of an app (WIN+Z) to open the layout box. When you do, app icons will display various layout options. Use them to help you to choose the best layout option.

Windows 365 Boot

New! This update adds dedicated mode for Windows 365 Boot . When you sign in on your company-owned device, doing that also signs you in to your Windows 365 Cloud PC. This occurs using passwordless authentication, like Windows Hello for Business.

New! This new dedicated mode also provides the fast account switcher experience. With it, you can quickly switch profiles and sign in. You can also personalize the experience for your username and password. This includes choosing a custom display picture for the lock screen, storing your username, and more.

New! A company can customize what users see on the screen when they sign in to Windows 365 Boot. In shared mode, you can add company branding from Microsoft Intune.

New! This update adds a fail fast mechanism for Windows 365 Boot. It helps while you are signing in to your Cloud PC. Thesmart logic tells you to address network issues or complete app setup so that Windows 365 Boot does not fail.

New! You can now manage the settings of your physical (local) PC from your Cloud PC. Windows 365 Boot makes it easy to directly access and manage sound, display, and other device settings.

Windows 365 Switch

New! It is now easier for Windows 365 Switch to disconnect. You can use your local PC to disconnect from your Cloud PC. Go to Local PC > Task view . Right-click the Cloud PC button and select Disconnect . This update also adds tooltips to the Cloud PC Start menu. They appear on the options for disconnecting and signing out and help you to learn how each one works.

New! This update adds desktop indicators for Windows 365 Switch.You will see the term “Cloud PC” and “Local PC” on the desktop indicator when you switch between them.

New! The time to connect to Windows 365 Frontline Cloud PC from Windows 365 Switch might be long. While you wait, the screen will show you the connection status and the timeout indicator for the Cloud PC. If there is an error, use the new copy button on the error screen to copy the correlation ID. This helps to address the issue faster.

 Improvements

Note:  To view the list of addressed issues, click or tap the OS name to expand the collapsible section.

Important:  Use EKB  KB5027397  to update to Windows 11, version 23H2.

This security update includes quality improvements. Key changes include: 

This build includes all the improvements in Windows 11, version 22H2.

No additional issues are documented for this release.

This security update includes improvements that were a part of update KB5035942  (released March 26, 2024). When you install this KB:  

This update makes miscellaneous security improvements to internal OS functionality. No additional issues were documented for this release.

If you installed earlier updates, only the new updates contained in this package will be downloaded and installed on your device.

For more information about security vulnerabilities, please refer to the Security Update Guide website and the April 2024 Security Updates .

Windows 11 servicing stack update - 22621.3447 and 22631.3447

This update makes quality improvements to the servicing stack, which is the component that installs Windows updates. Servicing stack updates (SSU) ensure that you have a robust and reliable servicing stack so that your devices can receive and install Microsoft updates.

Known issues in this update

Microsoft is not currently aware of any issues with this update.

How to get this update

Before installing this update

Microsoft combines the latest servicing stack update (SSU) for your operating system with the latest cumulative update (LCU). For general information about SSUs, see Servicing stack updates  and  Servicing Stack Updates (SSU): Frequently Asked Questions . 

Install this update

If you want to remove the LCU

To remove the LCU after installing the combined SSU and LCU package, use the DISM/Remove-Package command line option with the LCU package name as the argument. You can find the package name by using this command: DISM /online /get-packages .

Running Windows Update Standalone Installer ( wusa.exe ) with the /uninstall switch on the combined package will not work because the combined package contains the SSU. You cannot remove the SSU from the system after installation.

File information

For a list of the files that are provided in this update, download the  file information for cumulative update 5036893 . 

For a list of the files that are provided in the servicing stack update, download the  file information for the SSU - versions 22621.3447 and 22631.3447 .  

Need more help?

Want more options.

Explore subscription benefits, browse training courses, learn how to secure your device, and more.

Microsoft 365 subscription benefits

Microsoft 365 training

Microsoft security

Accessibility center

Communities help you ask and answer questions, give feedback, and hear from experts with rich knowledge.

Ask the Microsoft Community

Microsoft Tech Community

Windows Insiders

Microsoft 365 Insiders

Was this information helpful?

Thank you for your feedback.