Card and Tabletop Presses

In the 1830s, several American presses already were made specifically for card printing. They were followed by other specialist printing devices that were intended to bypass the conventional printer and appeal directly to businessmen: for printing and numbering tickets, dating documents, and marking crates, for example. By the 1870s presses were made not only for shopkeepers, but for amateur printers and for children. Most amateur presses cost under $50—some as little as 50 cents—and produced mediocre printing. The emphasis was on simplicity and portability. Small though they were, most of the presses at first took regular printer’s type because nothing else was available. By about 1880, a special brand of short type was supplied with some of the toy presses.

“Rail presses” (a modern term) were, in their time, the simplest of all: tiny cast-iron presses capable of printing no more than a few short lines on a card. They were often sold in one or two dollar “outfits” consisting of the press, an inking roller, tweezers, ink cans, and boxes of type—all in miniature. Rail presses were produced until early in the twentieth century when they were superseded by even lighter presses made of tin-plated sheet metal, often brightly decorated. These new presses were made to print with the rubber type included in the outfits, and were not strong enough for printers’ lead type.

Presses are listed alphabetically, by common name.