History, Natural History & the Arts
Breaking news from Sandy Hill was published at 5 am Monday April 2, 1883, the day the Glens Falls news cycle was cut in half from 24 to 12 hours.
“A bout of fisticuffs occurred at the freight depot yesterday afternoon in which several glove handlers were engaged. No less than forty spectators were present. No damage was done beyond desecration of the Sabbath,” The Morning Star of Glens Falls reported in its debut issue. [Read more…] about In 1883 The Glens Falls News Cycle Was Cut In Half
In 1693, Leicestershire-born immigrant William Bradford was appointed public printer for New York. Living in Pearl Street, Manhattan, he published from his offices in Hanover Square the first book with a New York imprint, entitled New-England’s Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsylvania by Quaker author George Keith.
Between 1725 and 1744, Bradford produced the New-York Gazette, the city’s first newspaper. Lower Manhattan continued to be the center of New York’s printing industry for many years, but by the 1860s the street took on a northern European accent and became known for a different type of leaf – tobacco. [Read more…] about Gompers and Hammerstein: The Cigar Makers Who Transformed Theatre
The NYS Historic Newspapers site provides access to over 10 million pages of content published in local papers over the last two hundred years. If newspapers are the first draft of history, this is the mother of all manuscripts, filled with stories and people from every corner of New York state. [Read more…] about Old NYS Newspapers Online (Podcast)
Before long it will be three hundred years ago that James Franklin started printing the combative New-England Courant, employing his younger brother Benjamin as an apprentice. It set a precedent for independent newspaper publishing in the English colonies.
Demands for freedom of the press were ignored and the paper was suppressed in 1726 – but once ink starts flowing, autonomous thinking cannot be reversed. [Read more…] about In Praise of Printing And A Favorite Ben Franklin Typeface
“The sleighing just now is good and our teamsters are happy. The cotton factory is running full time,” the Ticonderoga Sentinel reported in its debut issue on Feb. 7, 1874. “The band boys are looking for rooms in which to practice.” [Read more…] about Old Ticonderoga Gets A Newspaper, 1874
For the American Revolution to be successful, it needed ideas people could embrace and methods for spreading those ideas. It also needed ways for revolutionaries to coordinate across colonial lines. How did revolutionaries develop and spread their ideas? How did they communicate and coordinate plans of actions?
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, Joseph Adelman, an Assistant Professor of History at Framingham State University and author of Revolutionary Networks: The Business and Politics of Printing the News, 1763-1789 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), joins us to investigate the roles printers and their networks played in developing and spreading ideas of the American Revolution. [Read more…] about Revolutionary Print Networks: Printing the News, 1763-1789