The first four editions of McGuffey’s Readers were printed from the actual type, as all books were once printed; but before 1840 the readers were produced from stereotyped plates.  The use of such plates enabled the publisher to secure greater accuracy in the work and also enabled him to present books that in successive editions should be exactly the same in substance as those already in use.  Since that date electrotype plates have displaced stereotypes, as they afford a sharper, clearer impression and endure more wear.

In a First Reader printed in the fall of 1841 there are two pages of advertising matter in which Truman & Smith claimed to have sold 700,000 of the Eclectic Series.  This book is bound with board sides and a muslin back and a careful defense of this binding is made, claiming that the muslin is “much more durable than the thin tender leather usually put upon books of this class.”  This statement was unquestionably true.  The leather referred to was of sheepskin and of very little strength, but it took very many years to convince the public of the untruth of the saying, “There is nothing like leather.”

[Dr. Pinneo, Editor]

It is said that Mr. Smith, in the early days of his career as a publisher, himself made the changes and corrections which experience showed were needed; but, about 1843, he employed Dr. Timothy Stone Pinneo to act under his direction in literary matters.

[Dr. Pinneo’s Work]

Dr. Pinneo was the eldest son of the Rev. Bezaleel Pinneo, an early graduate of Dartmouth College, who was for more than half a century pastor of the First Congregational Church in Milford, Conn.  Dr. Pinneo was born at Milford in February, 1804.  His mother was a woman of culture, Mary, only daughter of the Rev. Timothy Stone of Lebanon, Conn., a graduate of Yale College.  Dr. Pinneo graduated at Yale in the class of 1824.  A severe illness in the winter after his graduation made it necessary for him to spend his winters in the South until his health was sufficiently restored to enable him to pursue the study of medicine.  He taught for a time in the Charlotte Hall Institute, Maryland, and then removed to Ohio.  He acted one year as professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in Marietta College.  He studied medicine in Cincinnati and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the Ohio Medical College in 1843.  On June 1, 1848, he married Jeanette Linsley, daughter of Rev. Dr. Joel H. Linsley, at one time president of Marietta College.  Dr. Pinneo was for eighteen years a resident in Cincinnati.  In 1862 he went to Greenwich, Conn., where he was occupied in literary work and in the conduct of a boys’ boarding school.  In 1885, after his wife’s death, he removed to Norwalk, Conn., where he died August 2, 1893.  Two daughters and a son survived him.  Dr. Pinneo contributed materially to the revisions of McGuffey’s Readers made in 1843 and in 1853; but both these revisions passed through the hands