With the overwhelming amount of new information that bombards us each
day, it is perhaps difficult to imagine a time when the widespread
availability of the printed word was a novelty. In early
nineteenth-century Britain, print was not novel--Gutenberg's printing
press had been around for nearly four centuries--but printed matter was
still a rare and relatively expensive luxury. All this changed, however,
as publishers began employing new technologies to astounding effect,
mass-producing instructive and educational books and magazines and
revolutionizing how knowledge was disseminated to the general public.
In Steam-Powered Knowledge, Aileen Fyfe explores the activities of
William Chambers and the W. & R. Chambers publishing firm during its
formative years, documenting for the first time how new technologies
were integrated into existing business systems. Chambers was one of the
first publishers to abandon traditional skills associated with hand
printing, instead favoring the latest innovations in printing processes
and machinery: machine-made paper, stereotyping, and, especially,
printing machines driven by steam power. The mid-nineteenth century also
witnessed dramatic advances in transportation, and Chambers used
proliferating railway networks and steamship routes to speed up
communication and distribution. As a result, his high-tech publishing
firm became an exemplar of commercial success by 1850 and outlived all
of its rivals in the business of cheap instructive print. Fyfe follows
Chambers's journey from small-time bookseller and self-trained
hand-press printer to wealthy and successful publisher of popular
educational books on both sides of the Atlantic, demonstrating along the
way the profound effects of his and his fellow publishers' willingness,
or unwillingness, to incorporate these technological innovations into
their businesses.
