ustxtxb_obs_1984_12_14_50_00070-00000_000.pdf

SHAKESPEARE, 1623 GUTENBERG BIBLE 1452 IFILJITURA PRESS, INC. 1714 S. Congress P.O. Box 3485 Ausfin, Texas 78764 JOHANN GUTENBERG 1398-1468 VICTOR HUGO once called printing “mankind’s greatest invention,” for not until Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press did education become possible for more than the extremely wealthy and the favored . few. For example, shortly before Gutenberg perfected his printing press, Cosimo de Medici, the Florentine banker and art patron, wanted to form . a library for his favorite foundation. He asked Vespasiano to take charge of the project. Vespasiano directed 55 scribes for nearly two years in the laborious task of copying 200 volumes for de Medici’s.library. Most of the early books were on religious topics, painstakingly copied by monks, and almost always written in Latin. GUTENBERG PRESS DURER woodcut, Apocalypse, 1498 HUMAN ANATOMY, 1553 IN 1671 Virginia’s colonialgovernor, Sir William Berkeley, wrote in his Report: “I THANK GOD we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these three hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the government.” THE .FIRST printing press in North America was set up in 1639 by Stephen Day in Cambridge, Mass. The first job printed on this press was the single sheet Oatb of a Free Man; the second was An Almanack C _alculated for New England by William Pierce. No copy of either of these exists now. However, 11 copies are still in existence of The Whole Booke of Psahnes, which Day printed in 1640. HAND-SET TYPE IN COMPOSING STICK IN 1663 the same Cambridge press was used to print a remarkable version of the Bible, with the entire text translated into Massachusetts Indian language by the Rev. John Eliot. LINOTYPE invented 1886 F.1:714:1644.11.4; rxi Ft, WHOLE BOOKE OF PSALMSS F-2 Fonlisi/ Turatxrao %scout r.\( !r4 r hertonro is ole:sed difcoinfc et. :41/ e ering na only rn. livittibx,, but sire Eta c Ingion suipert Pianos in r 0.crcbu el God. ll ii..4 4Z’111://ri niosc. ta. C.Iliog 4j”.1 1;;’4″ rnvovino nowt& /own v. i -,lre arrof.k Jojway,…le an iv mr.+7 IN it:. fogp\(dmv. .deo , r T , 7;3 -ELEVEN YEARS LATER t first press in Virginia was set up Williamsburg, but Sir With promptly shut it down before first publication was off the pre FIRST PRESS IN U.S., 1639 7,4W,*77,” 141101101010.4PiOnt. 110* IN 1954 the well-known Texas liberal and printer Mark Adams printed the first issue of The Texas Observer with the help of his printer friend, Bill McAfee. Bill continued to help Mark with the Observer, when needed, for the next four years. When Mark Adams moved his press to Marble Falls in 1958, Futura Press, a new printing company which Bill McAfee had established earlier that year, became the printer for the Observer. WE TAKE GREAT PLEASURE in having had the opportunity,’ for the past 30 years, to play a part in the crusading journalism of The Texas Observer.