Bohn, in his admirable survey of the origin and progress of modern printing, gives us a full and accurate account, from the earliest evidences and conjectures relating to antiquity to the latter part of the nineteenth century, confining himself, however, to European developments.  But before the middle of the sixteenth century printing was introduced into Spanish America.  Existing books show that in Mexico there was a press as early as 1540; but it is impossible to name positively the first book printed on this continent.  North of Mexico the first press was used, 1639, by an English Non-conformist clergyman named Glover.  In 1660 a printer with press and types was sent from England by the corporation for propagating the gospel among the Indians of New England in the Indian language.  This press was taken to a printing-house already established at Cambridge, Mass.  It was not until several years later that the use of a press in Boston was permitted by the colonial government, and until near the end of the seventeenth century no presses were set up in the colonies outside of Massachusetts.

In 1685 printing began in Pennsylvania, a few years later in New York, and in Connecticut in 1709.  From 1685 to 1693 William Bradford, an English Quaker, conducted a press in Philadelphia, and in the latter year he removed his plant to New York.  He was the first notable American printer, and became official printer for Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Maryland.  His first book was an almanac for 1686.  In 1725 he founded the New York Gazette, the first newspaper in New York.  But the first newspaper published in the English colonies was the Boston News-Letter, founded in 1704 by John Campbell, a bookseller and postmaster in Boston.  Only four American periodicals had been established when, in 1729, Benjamin Franklin, who was already printer to the Pennsylvania Assembly, became proprietor and editor of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

Until the last quarter of the eighteenth century the progress of printing in America was slow.  But in 1784 the first daily newspaper, the American Daily Advertiser, was issued in Philadelphia, and from this time periodical publications multiplied and the printing of books increased, until the agency and influence of the press became as marked in the United States as in the leading countries of Europe.

Even since the time when Bohn wrote, the progress made in various branches of the printer’s art has been such as might have astonished that famous publisher of so many standard works.  Recent improvements for increasing the capacity of the press, and often the quality of its productions, are quite comparable to those which our own time has seen in other departments of industry, as in the applications of electricity and the like.  In addition to the further development of stereotyping, there has been marvellous improvement in nearly all the machinery and processes of printing.  This is especially marked in rapid color-printing, and in the successors of inadequate typesetting-machines—­in the linotype, the monotype, the typograph, etc.