The World’s Oldest Printing Presses
During a trip to Belgium in May, I visited a printing press museum in Antwerp. There I saw the two oldest printing presses in the world. Dating from around 1600, they stand as witnesses from early in the revolution of the printed word that transformed the world. Forget if the walls could talk, these two presses have been party to many words.
The Plantin-Moretus Museum, located in the former residence and shop of 16th-century printers, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Among its collections on display are lots of important and interesting books from that time, including a Biblia Polyglotta (a Bible printed in five languages), a Gutenberg Bible, the first modern atlas, and lots of books with impressive drawings made from carving in reverse into the printing blocks.
Sixteenth-century Antwerp was one of the great cities of the world. More populous then than London, it grew prosperous as the main shipping base connecting Europe with spices from Asia and sugar from the Americas. Languages from around the world mingled in this city like a modern-day Babel. The wealth and diversity of ideas, along with a culture more tolerant than much of Europe at the time, made it an ideal capital of printing. In fact, many books (including copies of William Tyndale’s Bible translation) were printed in Antwerp and smuggled into England.
Christophe Plantin embodied this side of the city as nearly 2,500 books were printed with his name on them, from Reformation texts to books with travel accounts to instructional works on anatomy and botany. As Michael Pye wrote in Europe’s Babylon: The Rise and Fall of Antwerp’s Golden Age, Plantin was “the lodestar of the Northern Renaissance” and Antwerp was “the city which had made possible his business as a publisher, printer, and also humanist.”
“The same factors that made the city unstable and defiant, the clandestine flow of information, the reluctance to impose uncomfortable imperial laws, the weakness of local guilds, the availability of money, and the influence of foreign merchants in an empire which otherwise put a high value on every kind of orthodoxy, all this allowed Plantin his career,” Pye explained. “He fitted the Antwerp community of merchant humanists for whom knowledge was an ambition, not just one more ornamental habit.”
Violent fighting during the Reformation and the capture of the city by Catholic Spanish forces led many to flee. The population dropped to less than half and didn’t recover to its 16th-century peak for another 300 years. Amsterdam replaced Antwerp as the region’s shipping hub and as the key city known for tolerance. Many printers similarly left to Amsterdam or elsewhere either because of their Protestant beliefs or a desire to work in a city with the freedom to print a greater variety of texts.
As one who loves books, I found the printing press museum fascinating. The impact of political, economic, and religious changes on the printing industry are important. I also find it interesting to see how books and periodicals used to be printed — a system radically different from my own experiences. Yet, when Word&Way started in 1896, my predecessors created our publication with a press that would’ve had more in common with those of the 16th-century printers in Belgium than with the process I use today.
The first issues of Word&Way have virtually no images other than a fancy drawing on the top of the first page around our publication’s name. Over time, technological advances and consumer desires brought more images, then eventually color and changes in paper. Now, most of our readers consume our work entirely online, from A Public Witness, our website, podcasts, or social media.
Our founding editors had to lay out the letters for each page to print. I have in my office a few Word&Way printing blocks from the middle of the last century (so not even the older, more difficult style). It’s hard for me to even imagine crafting a publication like that today, even after going through the museum in Antwerp. When we go to print, our graphic designer and I construct it completely on computers and then upload it online. The mission remains, but the process is completely different.
Our mission isn’t the only thing that’s continued even as the publication methods evolved. Just like when we started over 128 years ago, we depend on the support of our loyal readers. We’re glad to have you here reading and sharing our pieces. We’re especially thankful to our paid subscribers who make our award-winning journalism possible. You can join that group by subscribing now. We’ll even give you a special 15% discount if you subscribe this week.
If you’d like to give an end-year donation, you can make a tax-deductible gift online. And if you’re struggling to find the perfect gift for someone on your list, you could give them a subscription to A Public Witness. Or if you really want to go old school, you could get them a kit to build a printing press.
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor