The Museum of Printing (MoP), located in

Haverhill, Massachusetts Haverhill ( ) is a city in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. Haverhill is located north of Boston on the New Hampshire border and about from the Atlantic Ocean. The population was 67,787 at the 2020 United States census. Located o ...

, is a museum dedicated to preserving the history of

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ...

technologies and practices, the

graphic arts A category of fine art, graphic art covers a broad range of visual artistic expression, typically two-dimensional graphics, i.e. produced on a flat surface,

History

In 1978, a group of New England printers and publishers mobilized to preserve

hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mo ...

equipment which was being replaced by the ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...

'' newspaper. For the first 18 years, the growing collection was dispersed in various warehouses and spaces inaccessible to the public. In 1997, some of the collection was first opened to view in space formerly occupied by the

Textile Museum A textile museum is a museum with exhibits relating to the history and art of textiles, including: * Textile industries and manufacturing, often located in former factories or buildings involved in the design and production of yarn, cloth, and cl ...

North Andover, Massachusetts North Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the 2020 census, the population was 30,915. History Native Americans inhabited what is now northeastern Massachusetts for thousands of years prior to European colonizati ...

. In 2016,

Rochester Institute of Technology The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) is a private university, private research university in Henrietta, New York, a suburb of Rochester, New York, Rochester. It was founded in 1829. It is one of only two institute of technology, institut ...

Professor Emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Frank Romano acquired and donated a former electrical supplies building in

to house the museum. The core of the collection was contributed by Romano, who spent his career in the development of the modern printing business. He contributed 6,000 books from his personal library, plus many classic machines, including early

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...

computers contributed by

Steve Jobs Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder o ...

. The typewriter collection has been the setting and facilitator of at least one successful

marriage proposal A marriage proposal is a custom or ritual, common in Western cultures, in which one member of a couple asks the other for their hand in marriage. If accepted, it marks the initiation of engagement, a mutual promise of later marriage. Norms a ...

, in 2020.

Collection

The displays include a number of historic machines and related artifacts: *Early Gutenberg-style hand-powered

printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...

es, progressing to small hand-operated presses used in the early 20th century * Linotype "hot metal" typecasting machine *

Xerox 914 The Xerox 914 was the first successful commercial photocopying, plain paper copier. Introduced in 1959 by the Xerox, Haloid/Xerox company, it revolutionized the document-copying industry. The culmination of inventor Chester Carlson's work on the ...

photocopier,

mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator or stencil machine) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a co ...

spirit duplicator A spirit duplicator (also Rexograph and Ditto machine in North America, Banda machine and Fordigraph machine in the U.K. and Australia) is a printing method invented in 1923 by Wilhelm Ritzerfeld, which was used for most of the 20th century. Th ...

s, and

blueprint A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842. The process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...

copiers *

Typewriter A typewriter is a Machine, mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of Button (control), keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an i ...

s, including composing typewriters such as the IBM Selectric Composer *A complex mechanical

Chinese typewriter Typewriters that can type Chinese characters were invented in the early 20th century. Written Chinese is a logographic writing system, and facilitating the use of thousands of Chinese characters requires more complex engineering than for a writi ...

with thousands of characters *

Photolithography Photolithography (also known as optical lithography) is a process used in the manufacturing of integrated circuits. It involves using light to transfer a pattern onto a substrate, typically a silicon wafer. The process begins with a photosensiti ...

and hand-engraving equipment *

Bindery Bindery refers to a studio, workshop or factory where sheets of (usually) paper are fastened together to make books, but also where gold and other decorative elements are added to the exterior of books, where boxes or slipcases for books are made ...

, finishing, and mailing equipment *A full-size

drum scanner Drum scanners are a type of image scanner that capture image information with photomultiplier, photomultiplier tubes (PMT), rather than the charge-coupled device (CCD) arrays found in flatbed scanners and inexpensive film scanners. "Reflective an ...

* Phototypesetters (claimed to be the largest collection in the world) *

Desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...

setups such as the original

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

and

Laserwriter The LaserWriter is a laser printer with built-in PostScript interpreter sold by Apple, Inc. from 1985 to 1988. It was one of the first laser printers available to the mass market. In combination with WYSIWYG publishing software like PageMaker ...

printer *Various data storage media used with printing, such as

magnetic tape Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic storage made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. It was developed in Germany in 1928, based on the earlier magnetic wire recording from Denmark. Devices that use magnetic ...

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

s, and specialized optical cartridges *Many different metal, optical, digital, and wood typefonts, including over 2500 wooden display fonts There is an extensive library of 7,000 books, periodicals, and media related to the history of paper and printing.

Programs

Operation of classic printing equipment is demonstrated, as well as exhibitions and hands-on workshops by artists who use printing technologies. In 2018, the museum celebrated a "

QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

" Festival, featuring typewriters and their history and culture. There are art galleries, meeting spaces, and a museum store on premises. The store offers books, souvenirs, and classic printing artifacts.

Gallery

File:Typecasting mould.jpg, Typecasting mold File:Printing press 14.jpg, Ornately-decorated Columbian press File:19th century printing presses in museum display.jpg, Hand-powered 19th century letterpresses File:Platen press 10.jpg, Display of small portable presses File:Ludlow Type Caster.jpg, Ludlow typecaster setup File:Type files with typecases.jpg, Collection of metal typefonts File:Unitype typesetting machine ("cold type").jpg, Unitype "cold metal" typesetter File:MOP linotype 8, right side 2.jpg, Linotype "hot metal" typesetter File:MOP linotype, assembler entrance plate.jpg, Detail of Linotype mechanism File:Hammond typewriter (1).jpg, Hammond typewriter (c. 1913) File:Mimeograph in MOP.jpg,

Mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator or stencil machine) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a co ...

office duplicating machine File:Platen press 8.jpg, Museum store

References

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Museum of Printing Buildings and structures in Haverhill, Massachusetts Printing in the United States Industry museums in Massachusetts Museums in Essex County, Massachusetts Printing museums in the United States