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Printing and publishing.
The history of printing in
Cambridge shows conclusively that as a centre of the art the city has no rival of its size in the world.
The combined output from the three great establishments, The Riverside Press, The
University Press, and The Athenaeum Press is enormous, and ‘the civilizing and educating influence thus exerted can hardly be exaggerated.’
The first printing in the colonies was done in
Cambridge, and is described in the following extracts from an address made to the members of the Citizens' Trade Association, in 1894, by the late Henry 0.
Houghton.
The first printing in the English-speaking colonies of this country was done here in
Cambridge.
The history of its progress is very interesting.
A clergyman by the name of
Glover left
England with a
printing-press, two or three workmen, and his family, for this country in 1638.
He died on the passage, and the press was set up in January, 1639, in the house of the first president of Harvard College,
Henry Dunster.
This president was a man with an eye to the main chance, and he secured possession of the press by marrying the widow of the man who started from
England with it, and he retained possession of it for many years.
Some years afterwards, when the son of this widow had grown up, he brought suit for the recovery of the press.
The president filed an account current in which he debited himself with an inventory of the press amounting to fourteen hundred and odd pounds sterling.
He credited himself with his wife's board and several other incidental expenses, which looked very much as if he wanted to make as good an offset as possible.
The difference between the two accounts amounted to about one hundred pounds, for which the president acknowledged himself as a debtor.
The matter seems to have been taken out of the court and put into the hands of arbitrators, but there is no record of the president paying over to the heirs the amount adjudged against him. Some time after the receipt of the first press another was sent over by some society instituted for propagating the gospel among the Indians of this continent, and this press also fell into the hands of the president of the college, and the Indians are still unconverted.
President Dunster also seemed to have great political influence, for he had a law passed that all the printing executed in the colonies should be done in
Cambridge.
There was also a law passed by the General Court appointing licensers of the press, and my impression is that the president was appointed on this board also, but of this fact I have not
