Catalogue of the Exhibition - Printing

National Technical Museum, Prague 2018, 221 pages, 165x245 mm, ISBN 978-80-7037-289-0 The publication informs the reader about the history of printing, about the creation of the NTM’s collection of printing, as well as about it being exhibited in the past. The main part of the book is devoted to the present exhibition of printing at the NTM and to the exhibits. The catalogue is supplemented by the lists of the used literature and of all exhibits. The exhibition of printing was opened in 2011, one hundred years after opening the first permanent graphic exhibition in the Technical Museum of the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Schwarzenberg Palace at Prague-Hradčany. A dream came true of several generations of printers to present their field to the broad public. The oldest among the exhibits is a wooden bookbinding press from the turn of the 18th century, which was manufactured for the Jesuit printing shop in Prague Klementinum. Not more than 60 such machines have been preserved worldwide. A MAN rotary printing press of 1876 is perhaps the most beautiful of the exhibits. It was the first piece of this type and was purchased for the Governor’s Printing Works in Prague. Just a few similar machines have been preserved in the whole of Europe. A Linotype slug-casting composing machine of 1920 is the most sophisticated one. It was Ottmar Mergenthaler who ingeniously designed it in 1886. An Anger bookbinding press, so-called Amerikánka, arouses admiration for old printers, similarly as a perfectly restored Liliput letterpress of 1887; these machines had a treadle drive and required a great deal of skill and strength.