A 1953 Heidelberg press comes to stay ...

It wasn't easy to move our new 2,300-pound behemoth into the Museum Print Shop, but eventually printer Ed Shunney was able to check it out (8). The Museum had a large collection of printing presses of various sizes and shapes, but no Heidelbergs until this one arrived on June 21. Developed in the 1930s, the Heidelberg was the first letterpress to feature automatic paper feed, making the printing process faster and safer. The Heidelberg, Shunney says, represents "the end of an era." It was the last major development in platen press technology and its manufacture ceased in the 1960s. That was about 110 years after the invention of the first platen press, George Gordon's "Dream Machine," which, fittingly, we also have.

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