Printing Trade News


Book Description




Chicago Business and Industry


Book Description

"Collection of essays drawn from the Encyclopedia of Chicago"--introduction.




Chicago: Its History and its Builders, Volume 4


Book Description

Maybe there has never been a more comprehensive work on the history of Chicago than the five volumes written by Josiah S. Currey - and possibly there will never be. Without making this work a catalogue or a mere list of dates or distracting the reader and losing his attention, he builds a bridge for every historically interested reader. The history of Windy City is not only particularly interesting to her citizens, but also important for the understanding of the history of the West. This volume is number four out of five and features hundreds of biographies of the most important Chicago citizens.




Commerce


Book Description




The Encyclopedia of Chicago


Book Description

A comprehensive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago encompasses more than 1,400 entries on such topics as neighborhoods, ethnic groups, cultural institutions, and business history, and furnishes interpretive essays on the literary images of Chicago, the built environment, and the city's sports culture.










Steam-Powered Knowledge


Book Description

With the overwhelming amount of new information that bombards us each day, it is perhaps difficult to imagine a time when the widespread availability of the printed word was a novelty. In early nineteenth-century Britain, print was not novel—Gutenberg’s printing press had been around for nearly four centuries—but printed matter was still a rare and relatively expensive luxury. All this changed, however, as publishers began employing new technologies to astounding effect, mass-producing instructive and educational books and magazines and revolutionizing how knowledge was disseminated to the general public. In Steam-Powered Knowledge, Aileen Fyfe explores the activities of William Chambers and the W. & R. Chambers publishing firm during its formative years, documenting for the first time how new technologies were integrated into existing business systems. Chambers was one of the first publishers to abandon traditional skills associated with hand printing, instead favoring the latest innovations in printing processes and machinery: machine-made paper, stereotyping, and, especially, printing machines driven by steam power. The mid-nineteenth century also witnessed dramatic advances in transportation, and Chambers used proliferating railway networks and steamship routes to speed up communication and distribution. As a result, his high-tech publishing firm became an exemplar of commercial success by 1850 and outlived all of its rivals in the business of cheap instructive print. Fyfe follows Chambers’s journey from small-time bookseller and self-trained hand-press printer to wealthy and successful publisher of popular educational books on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrating along the way the profound effects of his and his fellow publishers’ willingness, or unwillingness, to incorporate these technological innovations into their businesses.