The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

considered the first method of mass production. Its output was a large number of
consistent commodities and, “the assembly line of movable types made possible a
product that was uniform and as repeatable as a scientific experiment.” 60 The press
made books and other printed material, “the first modern-style, mass-produced,
industrial commodity.” 61 As such a commercial product, the book and the spread of
printed material was closely tied to mercantile capitalism and was a key aspect of a
“consumer revolution” taking place in the British-American colonies in the
eighteenth century. 62
Although printing began as a government-sponsored and government-
controlled operation, it became more of a commercial business as time passed.
Government support was crucial for the establishment of the first printing
operation in each of the British-American colonies, but commercially competitive
presses came earlier to the larger urban centers in the colonies to the north of the
Chesapeake. Cambridge, Massachusetts had a second press by 1665, which was
soon relocated to Boston. Philadelphia had a printing press by 1685, a second press
by 1723, and Benjamin Franklin and a partner started a third press in 1728. New
York had its first press in 1692, and a second by 1726. 63 Without a large, urban,
commercial business center, printing in the colony of Virginia came later, required
continued government support, and competition in the field did not come until
60 Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1962), 125, and Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The
Technologizing of the Word (New York: Methuen, 1982) 118-119.
61 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Revised ed. (New York: Verso, 1991), 34.
62 T. H. Breen, Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American
Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), especially xvi, and 133. Amory and Hall,
Colonial Book, 6-7.
63 Wroth, Colonial Printer, 16-18, 29, and 31.Thomas, History of Printing, 362-365 and 461.
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Originally published as Memoires De La Vie Privee … (Paris:
Benjamin Franklin, 1791. Reprint, Fairbanks, AK: Project Gutenberg, 1994).
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