Old-fashioned printing technology brought to life on the Web

Of course, as Gutenburg would tell you (if he were alive ... and spoke English), manual mechanical reproduction has also had a rather profound impact on the dissemination of text, and the Briar Press hosts an online collection of just over 200 hand-operated printing presses - ranging from a reproduction of Gutenberg's own creation, circa 1400, to the 1972 "Heidelberg Windmill." (A machine that wouldn't look out of place in the underground laboratory of a B-movie mad scientist.)

This virtual shrine to hot type spans not only time, but size - as examples run the gamut from tabletop, and even 'palm-sized' models, to free-standing assemblies weighing in at over 1,000 pounds. Dedicated fans looking for specific artifacts can use a keyword search or browse through such classifications as product name, year of manufacture, and type of mechanism (lever, rail, platen, etc.). Each press is given its own page, a full-screen portrait, and whatever history is available on the model. Potentially unfamiliar terms are linked to a pop-up glossary.

Though for the most part, this site is more likely to hold the long-term attention of the letterpress enthusiast (an admittedly select group), even the mildly curious can find a shorter visit worthwhile. Some of the machines catalogued in the Museum section are works of art in their own right, and the Museum's collection of Eleven presses that made history demonstrates both how much and how little the practice has evolved over 500 or so years. If your visit leaves you feeling drawn to the world of manual typesetting, a Classifieds section might have just the starter unit you need to launch that traditional home-printing operation. And for those content to remain in the digital realm, Cuts and Caps offers more than 450 free downloadable printer's ornaments, borders, bookplates and decorative capital letters - just in case you might want to add a bit of class to that next interoffice memo.

While the convenience and efficiency of digital alternatives can't be denied (I know I've given up my darkroom for Photoshop), there's still an attraction to the traditional methods - a tactile component, and the feeling of a human rather than a machine producing the art. Regardless of the speed of progress, all the methods described in these sites are still widely used, and it seems likely that someone somewhere will always choose them over more modern alternatives. For the rest of us, the Web has preserved another morsel of history for the greater good.

What is a Print can be found at http://www.moma.org/whatisaprint, with the Briar Press at http://www.briarpress.org/briarpress/.

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