Johannes Gutenberg is known as the inventor of perhaps the first printing press. We do not know what kind of press Gutenberg used because he took pains to keep it a secret, but we can guess that his press was framed in wood, and that the “impressing” power was delivered by a screw mechanism operated by a long lever (the bar). These were the unchanging elements of type-printing presses for the next 350 years. For writers in the English language, the term English common press, or simply common press, originally meant that form of press traditionally used in England, as distinct from Continental styles. But after 1800, wood-framed screw presses of all kinds were known as common presses.
On earlier common presses, guide boards, or raised sides, were used to steer the press plank (bed) as it was pulled under the platen for printing. From the middle of the eighteenth century, presses were built without guide boards, presumably because of improvements in that part of the apparatus. Thus, the presence or absence of guide boards can be an indication of the age of a press.1
The wooden press was not perfect. Its screw was an inefficient form of leverage, and the elasticity of the wooden frame robbed it of power. Consequently, the press could deliver only enough pressure to print one half of a full form of type (a full form covered a full sheet of paper). The platen therefore was made only half the size of the typeform. The leading half of the form was turned under it and printed, and then the second half was brought under and printed. The press was known, for this reason, as a two-pull press. On a two-pull common press, two men (a beater, to ink the type, and a puller, to pull the bar) could produce up to 240 sheets printed on one side in an hour. This quantity was called a token and was used as a unit of printer’s salary.
Until 1800, most of the wooden presses used in North America were imported from England. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Americans occasionally built their own presses. John Goodman of Philadelphia set up the first short-lived, press-building business in the 1780s. By 1800 several American press builders were established, and importation came to an end. The chief distinction between American and English presses was particularly in the hose—the device that tied platen and screw together so that the platen would rise and fall but not turn with the screw. In the New World, the elaborate wood-and-iron hose was reduced to a simple four-posted iron cage. Wooden presses were used in North America much longer than in Europe because of their ease of transportation and repair. They were used throughout the nineteenth century, sometimes alongside new iron presses and machines.
Wooden presses and their associated objects are listed in chronological order.
1Philip Gaskell, "The Decline of the Common Press" (Cambridge University Ph.D. Thesis 2902, 1956).
