Virtual Printing Press Project

The Virtual Printing Press is a project begun by Gabriel Egan (Loughborough) and Ian Gadd (Bath Spa) in October 2008 that aims to create a virtual model of a ‘hand press’ or ‘common press’ for use in teaching and in research. Here’s their contribution about it to snapshot #8. All images courtesy of Kate Boardman.

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Aims

Between 1450 and c.1800, the wooden hand press was the standard type of printing press used in the West. We don’t know exactly what the first presses (as used by Gutenberg and his successors) looked like; however, by drawing directly on contemporary illustrations and surviving examples of the presses themselves, we do know that, from the sixteenth through to eighteenth centuries, the form of the printing press did not significantly change. In other words, we can say with certainty what kind of press was used to print Shakespeare and Swift, Newton and Linnaeus, Descartes and Kant. It is this kind of press that the Virtual Printing Press project will construct.

In teaching literature and history students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) how the hand press worked, tutors usually rely on photographs taken from relevant textbooks. However, these photographs are limiting: as the press is a complex three-dimensional machine standing over two metres in height, there are obvious problems of perspective, scale and detail in relying on a photograph. Students may be fortunate enough to be able to visit a real printing press and, on rare occasions, the press may be even be demonstrated for them. However, again, there are limits to how full an encounter this can be: students are unlikely to be able to work directly with the press, may only spend a short period of time examining it, and are unable – obviously – to take the press apart to see how exactly it works.

The Virtual Printing Press project aims to remedy these shortcomings by placing a highly accurate model of a hand press into the virtual classroom. Tutors and students can examine it thoroughly, from all angles; it can be taken apart; it can be interacted with; it can be returned to and reused.

The long term goal of the project is to create a working model of the hand press that is sufficiently accurate (in terms of the physical characteristics of the press) for scholars to use it for testing certain hypotheses about printing practice from the period.

Pilot study

Thanks to the good offices of Brett Lucas at the English Subject Centre, the project secured a grant of £5,000 to build a ‘massing model’. Graham Hibbert (Leeds Metropolitan) was approached to be the modeller. In consultation with him, and with Drew Baker of King’s Visualisation Lab at King’s College London, we decided to build the press in Second Life. However, the aim is to make a model that could be imported into a variety of other virtual worlds; also, if we are to achieve the level of interactivity we would like, we will need to develop our own platform.

Working directly from detailed plans made of an early eighteenth-century press held by the Smithsonian, Graham has now created a full model of the press. Because of the complexity of the press’s construction and the limits of SL’s prims, the model has been scaled at 1” to 1m, although we hope to be able to scale it down by a quarter.

A version of this press is available on the Loughborough University island.

Next steps

Following feedback from our printing press consultant, Alan May (who built the press that featured in the recent Stephen Fry documentary on Gutenberg), Graham is making some minor adjustments; he is also working on some limited interactivity. Once he’s ready with this, a new version of the press will be built on the Loughborough island.

Apart from labels for each part of the press, there are currently no supporting materials to guide visitors; we aim to provide some notes.

We were planning to use the press in our teaching this year, but the timing didn’t quite work out. In particular, Gabriel was hoping to incorporate the press directly into a printing course he was running, and so use the students to help develop that supporting material. This will be something for next year.

We have circulated details of the press on various academic listservs and generated a lot of positive feedback although it seems that few if any of the scholars had any experience with SL before, and a number baulked at having to sign up for an account and download special software.

Given the success of the pilot project, we aim to begin developing a major funding bid, ideally with an engineering department.

Resources

Second Life site: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Loughborough%20Uni%20II/116/142/21
Project site, including fly-thrus: http://www.virtualprintingpress.com/
Press blueprints: Elizabeth Harris, The common press : being a record, description & delineation of the early eighteenth-century handpress in the Smithsonian Institution, with a history & documentation of the press (1978)