PrintingNews.com

Pennsylvania has Ben Franklin—arguably the most famous printer in American history. However, New Yorkers also hold an important place in the history of the industry, and the state remains key to the success of printing even in our modern world. In this issue of Printing News, we look at some of the lesser known but more interesting people and organizations that played (or still play) a key role in keeping New York in the forefront of printing. Some you may know; others are less familiar. Here they are, in alphabetical order, not according to importance:

The American Printing History Association—Founded in 1974, this New York-based organization was founded "to encourage the study of printing history and its related arts and skills, including calligraphy, typefounding, typography, paper making, bookbinding, illustration, and publishing." Meetings are held from time to time, often at The Grolier Club in Manhattan.

William Bradford—Born in Barwell, Leicestershire, England in 1663, William Bradford apprenticed to the leading Quaker publisher of his day in London, and then emigrated to Philadelphia in 1685. There he was imprisoned in 1692 after a series of problems with both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Upon his release in 1693, Bradford moved to New York to become Printer to the King. Until 1710, Bradford's press was busy publishing mostly public documents and anti-Quaker tracts. That year, he produced the first edition of the Book of Common Prayer to have been printed in America, under contract to Trinity Church. In 1725, Bradford produced the first newspaper printed in New York, the New York Gazette. Technically, the first newspaper printed in New York was the London Gazette, but this was merely a domestic reprint of the British publication. Despite clearly qualifying as the father of printing in New York, Bradford, who died in 1752 at the then astounding age of 90, is probably best known for his affiliation with John Peter Zenger.

Frederic William Goudy—This prolific type designer began his work as a printer in a Chicago suburb, but relocated first to Boston, and then to New York in the 1920s. In 1925, Goudy moved to Marlborough-on-Hudson, where he opened his own type foundry. By the time of his death in 1947, he had designed some 120 typefaces, and published 59 literary works dealing with the subject. Just before he died, Goudy was present at a Goudyana exhibit at the Library of Congress in Washington. His most widely used typeface is probably Goudy Old Style.

Horace Greeley—The first president of the New York Typographical Union No. 6, Greeley was both politician and editor of the New York Tribune. An advocate of liberal settlement policies in the mid-1800s, Greeley advised the ambitious to "Go West, young man." The phrase, most often (but incorrectly) attributed to Greeley, was actually written by John Soule in the Terre Haute Express in 1851. Greeley's Tribune boasted Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as correspondents, and branded him as a progressive promoting all sorts of reform.

From 1948 to 1849 he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from the New York 6th district. When the new Republican Party was founded in 1854, the Tribune, under Greeley's leadership, became the unofficial platform for the party, and vigorously fought the extension of slavery. On the eve of the Civil War, the circulation of the Tribune—which was distributed nationwide—approached 300,000.

Frederic Eugene Ives—From 1874 to 1878, Ives was in charge of the photographic laboratory at Cornell University in Ithaca. A pioneer of color and stereoscopic photography, in 1878 Ives was issued a patent for halftone letterpress printing, extending the halftone photoengraving work done earlier by others. In 1885, he demonstrated a system of natural color photography at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

James Lenox—In 1847, James Lenox paid the astounding sum of £500 (then $2,500) for a copy of the Bible printed by Johannes Gutenberg—the first Gutenberg Bible to be brought to the new world. Lenox's winning bid was executed in London by an agent, who paid £500 only after the auction was bid up by another agent, who went well beyond the £300 authorized by the buyer he represented. Lenox was so disturbed by the events that he initially declined to retrieve the Gutenberg Bible from the New York Custom House, where the value, including commissions and duties, had been set at $3,000. Finally, Lenox relented, and the Gutenberg Bible became the cornerstone of an incredible literary collection, which now resides in the New York Public Library. Of the 180 known copies of the Gutenberg Bible, four now are in New York.