A non-profit organization, the Museum was incorporated in 1978 as The Friends of The Museum of Printing, Inc., to save printing equipment and library materials associated with arcane technologies. The history of printing has changed dramatically during the last 200 years, moving away from letterpress printing to photographic and electronic technologies. We tell the stories of these changes using one of the world's largest collections of printing hardware.
The ground floor of our 25,000 sq. ft. building contains two 90-foot galleries, a large lobby, a library and access to the library's archival stacks (four floors). The Robert L. Richter Memorial Library is named after one of the two people who began the museum effort. The second floor contains a large meeting room, offices and additional future display space.
Gallery One contains a timeline history of the manufacturing of letters. The journey starts in the foundry era, which reaches back 500 years. A guide explains the transition from hand-setting individual sorts of foundry type to mechanized hot-metal typesetting and discusses the Linotype, Monotype and Ludlow linecasting machines. Along the tour route you'll find a Monophoto and an Intertype Fotosetter, machines which attempted to use linecasting technology to transition to phototypesetting, only to fail in competition with the electronically-driven phototypesetters. Then you'll come upon strike-on typesetters, machines designed to produce inexpensive type which could be married to the expanding offset printing market. You'll move on to phototypesetters, where Massachusetts hi-tech companies played a dominant role. The last chapter of this type story is digital.
Contributions to the Museum are tax deductible (the Museum is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization), and are always welcome.
