Tales from the

Printing Office
In 2018, it is easy to print something that we wrote or that we want to read. We can buy books at a
bookstore, or go online and find what we are looking for. In the 1830s, it took longer to print a page than
it does today. Let’s explore the hard work it took for printers in the 1800s to produce a printed book,
newspaper, or flyer!

A small town printing office like the one you find here at Old Sturbridge Village would not have printed a newspaper like the Hartford Courant! Newspapers
need subscribers, or people who buy the newspaper. They also need businesses that advertise in the paper. There weren’t enough people or businesses in a town
like Sturbridge to make any money off of a newspaper. Instead, our printing office might have printed things like books, invitations, and something called broadsides,
which is like a poster or an ad.

Today, we can write stories or papers on the computer using a keyboard. Then we press print to have those
words printed on paper. But how did people print out stories before electricity?

A first step would be to set type. Type in the printing office was
a rectangular piece of metal or wood with a letter at one end.
That letter would be backwards! The type was in large boxes
with compartments for each of the letters or punctuation
marks, like periods and question marks. The boxes were called
cases. The upper case held—you guessed it!—capital letters!
The lower case held the small letters. Printers would have more
e’s than z’s since the letter e are more common than z. Today
our computers have lots of different fonts that look fancy, plain,
or silly. A rural print shop in the 1800s had 15 to 20 different
fonts. Typesetters, or the people who set the type, could set
about 1000 to 2000 pieces of type per hour. Remember, all those letters would have to be cleaned and put away, too!

After all the words were set, the pages were printed on a large printing press. Remember, there was no electricity. This
means that the press was operated by people—three people, to be exact! Together the three men printed between 240
and 300 sheets an hour. An apprentice hung up all the sheets to dry. The ink was a sticky mixture made from oil, rosin—a
tree sap—and lamp black, which is like soot. The ink needed plenty of time to dry. Paper in the 1830s was made from
recycled cloth rags, not wood pulp like we use today.

A printing office like ours had several people working in it. The employees would have worked
12-hour days, six days a week! Some of those people were apprentices. Apprentices were teenage
boys who lived with the printer’s family for a few years, learning the art of printing. There were
also journeymen, who were older and more skilled than apprentices. There might have been some
women who worked in the printing office, too. Women sewed together books and sometimes did
proofreading, or checking for mistakes in the stories. The print shop would have been one of the
only places you might find women and girls working in the 1800s.

Printing offices also often sold books. Ministers,

doctors, and lawyers bought the most books.
School teachers also bought school books from
the printing office, and townspeople bought
almanacs. Almanacs have information about the
weather, farmers’ planting dates, and gardening
advice.

All in all, the printer’s day was a busy day. Printers

were paid pretty well for the time, about $1.25 to
$1.50 a day. They definitely deserved it after their
long hours and work with all those tiny, backwards
letters! Even though there are many differences
between printing today and in the past, words
were still made just one letter at a time.

nieonline.com/courantnie
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.
Discover New England Living History! RI.3.2-3, 7; 4.2-3; 5.2, 8; 6.1, 7