Famous Printers

Benjamin Franklin was a Founding Father of the United States and a polymath. He was an author, printer, political theorist, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. As a scientist, he contributed significantly to the American Enlightenment and the history of physics, especially electricity. He invented the lightning rod.

Orville Wright was born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1871. Though less known than his brother Wilbur, Orville had equal influence on creating the first airplane.

Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (April 25, 1817 – April 26, 1879) was a French printer, bookseller, and inventor who lived in Paris. He invented the phonautograph, the earliest known sound recording device, which France patented on March 25, 1857.

Wilbur Wright (April 16, 1867 – May 30, 1912) was the older of the Wright brothers. The other brother was Orville. The two Americans invented and built the world's first successful airplane. They also made the first controlled, powered, and sustained heavier-than-air human flight on December 17, 1903.

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg (c. 1400 – February 3, 1468) was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, inventor, printer, and publisher. He introduced printing to Europe using the printing press. His mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution, ushering in the modern period of human history. This invention played a role in the Renaissance, Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the scientific revolution.

Johanna Drucker was born May 30, 1952. She is an American author, book artist, visual theorist, and cultural critic. Her writing documents and critiques visual language, including letterforms, typography, visual poetry, art, and digital aesthetics. She holds the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professorship in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA.

Léo Ferré (August 24, 1916 – July 14, 1993) was a French-born Monégasque poet, composer, and live performer. His career dominated France after the Second World War until his death. He released about forty albums, composing most of the music and lyrics. Ferré released many hit singles between 1960 and the mid-seventies. Some of his songs became classics of the French chanson repertoire, such as "Avec le temps," "C'est extra," "Jolie Môme," and "Paris canaille."

Samuel Richardson (19 August 1689 – 4 July 1761) was an English writer and printer. He wrote three epistolary novels: *Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded* (1740), *Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady* (1748), and *The History of Sir Charles Grandison* (1753). Richardson printed almost 500 works, including journals and magazines. He collaborated with London bookseller Andrew Millar on several occasions. He apprenticed to a printer at a very early age.

Agustín Vicente Zamorano (1798–1842) was a printer, soldier, and provisional Comandante General in the north of Alta California.

William Jasper Blackburn (July 24, 1820 – November 10, 1899) was an American printer, publisher, and politician. He served in the United States House of Representatives from northwestern Louisiana from July 18, 1868, to March 3, 1869. Blackburn was a Republican during Reconstruction and served in the Louisiana State Senate from 1874 to 1878.

John Marvin Hunter (March 18, 1880 – June 29, 1957) was an author, historian, journalist, and printer. Hunter founded the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera, Texas. The museum opened in 1933 and holds about 40,000 artifacts of the American West. The museum is named for Hunter's *Frontier Times* magazine, first published in 1923.

William Blades (5 December 1824 – 27 April 1890) was an English printer and bibliographer. He was born in Clapham, London.

James Adam Bede (January 13, 1856 – April 11, 1942) was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Minnesota.

Theodore Low De Vinne (December 25, 1828 – February 16, 1914) was an American printer and scholarly author on typography. De Vinne significantly improved American printing.

Washington Montgomery Bartlett (February 29, 1824 – September 12, 1887) served as the 20th mayor of San Francisco, California, from 1883 to 1887. He was also the 16th governor of California and remained the only Jewish governor of California.

David Atwood (December 15, 1815 – December 11, 1889) was a nineteenth-century American politician, publisher, editor, and printer from Wisconsin. He represented Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives during the 2nd and 3rd sessions of the 41st Congress.

Leo Alcide Kerouac wrote.

Benjamin Leopold Farjeon (12 May 1838 – 23 July 1903) was an English novelist, playwright, printer, and journalist. Farjeon produced a huge body of work as an author.

Francis Wayland Palmer (October 11, 1827 – December 3, 1907) was a nineteenth-century politician, publisher, printer, editor, and proprietor from New York, Iowa, and Illinois.

George Phineas Gordon (April 21, 1810 – January 27, 1878) invented the basic design for the Gordon Letterpress, making him an American inventor, printer, and businessman. He was born in Salem, New Hampshire, where his family lived for over a hundred years. Gordon studied in New Hampshire and Boston before moving to New York to become an apprentice printer. After learning the trade, he opened his own printing shop. Around 1835, he began experimenting with press design and filed his first patent.

Edward Everett Cox (December 29, 1867 – April 1, 1931) was an American newspaper publisher. He started Blackford County's first daily newspaper in Hartford City, Indiana. Cox is considered one of the most influential forces in journalism in Blackford County and supported the Democratic Party. As publisher and editor, he also served as chairman of the eleventh congressional district, county chairman of the Democratic Party, school board member, and postmaster. His newspapers provided a voice for the Democratic Party for nearly 40 years.

William Bigler (January 1, 1814 – August 9, 1880) was an American politician and Democrat. He served as the 12th Governor of Pennsylvania from 1852 to 1855. He later became a U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania from 1856 until 1861.

Hans Wolff Glaser was a printer, block-cutter, woodcut tinter, and publisher from Nuremberg, Germany. He produced prints between 1540 and 1572, and he died in June 1573. Glaser is known for printing a broadsheet news article on April 14, 1561. The article described a mass sighting of a celestial event or unidentified flying objects over Nuremberg that occurred on April 4 of the same year. This broadsheet, illustrated with a woodcut engraving and text, is kept at the Zentralbibliothek Zürich in Zurich, Switzerland.

Marco Coltellini (24 May 1724, Montepulciano – November 1777, Saint Petersburg) was an Italian opera tenor, librettist, and printer. He began his career in the Church but left after fathering four daughters. Coltellini established a printing shop in Livorno to publish works by Enlightenment figures like Francesco Algarotti and Cesare Beccaria. He showed great interest in opera. He met Metastasio (the leading librettist of opera seria), Christoph Willibald Gluck, Ranieri de' Calzabigi, and Giacomo Durazzo, all involved in the reform of Italian opera.

James Halford "Jim" Ramsay was an Australian politician. He was a Liberal Party member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly, representing Balwyn. Ramsay also served as a minister in the cabinets of Dick Hamer and Lindsay Thompson.

Joseph Hamilton was an American printer, newspaper editor, and life insurance agent from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He served two one-year terms in the Wisconsin State Assembly: 1874 as a member of the People's Reform Party (also known as the Liberal Reform Party), and 1877 as a Democrat.

William Levi Crawford lived from September 10, 1911, to January 25, 1984. He was an American publisher and editor.

Harry "Ward" Ritchie was an American printer, book collector, and writer of about 100 books. He participated in the "Golden Age" of fine printing in Southern California. From 1932 to 1974, he operated the Ward Ritchie Press, which focused on books about cooking and Western Americana. Ritchie also founded the Rounce & Coffin Club, a group of Southern California book collectors that began meeting in 1931. Throughout his career, Ritchie designed about 750 books, including works by poets Robinson Jeffers, Carl Sandburg, Archibald MacLeish, Carlyle MacIntyre, and librarian Lawr.

Samuel Woodworth lived from January 13, 1784, to December 9, 1842. He was an American author, literary journalist, playwright, librettist, and poet.

Lawrence Tierney was a police officer and printer. He was also the father of Lawrence Tierney.

Adrian Wilson (1923 – 3 February 1988) was an influential book designer. He authored the classic 1967 work, The Design of Books.

John Nichols (2 February 1745 – 26 November 1826) was an English printer, author, and antiquary. He edited the Gentleman's Magazine for nearly 40 years. Nichols wrote a county history of Leicestershire and two compendia of biographical material about his literary contemporaries. He also helped produce the first complete publication of Domesday Book in 1783.

James Parker was a prominent colonial American printer and publisher.

Albertus Willem Sijthoff lived from June 30, 1829, to July 29, 1913. He was a prominent Dutch publisher from Leiden, Netherlands.

William Marshall was an English Protestant reformer, printer, and translator.

John William Parker was an English publisher and printer.

John William Parker was the eldest son of English publisher and printer John William Parker.

Tomás Pinpin was a printer, writer, and publisher from Abucay, a municipality in the province of Bataan, Philippines. He was the first Filipino printer and is sometimes called the "Prince of the Filipino Printers." Pinpin published and printed the book "Librong Pagaaralan nang mga Tagalog nang Uicang Castilla" in 1610, entirely written by himself in old Tagalog orthography.

Edward White worked as a London printer and stationer for over forty years. His shop was located at the Sign of the Gun in the booksellers' district of St Paul's Churchyard. He sold anonymous works and books by Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene, Anthony Munday, and Christopher Marlowe. Between 1594 and 1611, he sold all three quartos of William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.

Thomas Curson Hansard (November 6, 1776 – May 5, 1833) was an English pressman, son of printer Luke Hansard. In 1803, he established a press in Paternoster Row. That same year, William Cobbett began printing the Parliamentary Debates. Initially, these reports came from newspaper accounts of parliamentary debate. Hansard started printing Cobbett's reports in 1809. Together, they published a pamphlet describing German mercenaries flogging British soldiers for mutiny and their imprisonment in King's Bench.

Brian Ullman works as both a printer and a clown.

Danny Pope is a bespoke photographic printer and restorer. He has printed works for photographers including Andrew Catlin, David Hiscock, Linda McCartney, Gian Paolo Barbieri, Calum Colvin, Tim Page, Corinne Day, Ian McKell, Brian Aris, Eve Arnold, The Douglas Brothers, Terry O’Neil, David Bailey, Barry Lategan, and Terence Donovan. Panorama Magazine called Danny the "Master of Polopan Printing". Danny won the Ilford Printer of the Year Award in 1993 as the first color printer to do so.

William Bradford (May 20, 1660 – May 23, 1752) was an early English printer in North America. He is known as the pioneer printer of the Middle Colonies and headed a family that published for 140 years. Bradford also faced controversies regarding freedom of the press.

John Rose Battley, JP FRSA (November 26, 1880 – November 1, 1952), was a British printer, company director, and Labour Party politician. He served on the London County Council. Battley was Member of Parliament for Clapham for one five-year term. He was a noted pacifist and conscientious objector.

Lydia Bailey worked as a printer in Philadelphia from 1808 to 1861.

Daniel Fowle (c. 1715 – June 1787) was an American printer during and before the American Revolution. He founded The New Hampshire Gazette.

Ernst Vögelin was a 16th-century German pioneer book printer. Vögelin was born in Konstanz. He studied in Leipzig and married Valentin Bapst, the first Leipzig printer's daughter. Vögelin took over his shop and expanded it to include a type foundry, publishing house, and a bookstore. By 1559, his shop became the largest print shop in eastern Germany. Due to debt and accusations of Calvinism, Vögelin left the town in 1576 and moved to Neustadt in 1579. His sons, Gothard, Philip, and Walentin ran the shop later. Their shop in Heidelberg was the first to print Johannes Kepler.

William Hunter published books, newspapers, and printed materials for the colony of Virginia.