On Wednesday, September 7, our media class walked only 5 minutes from Oyler to The Cincinnati Type and Print Museum, on the corner of State and 8th street.

We met two workers named Jacob Simpson and Gary Walton; Jacob is the curator and Gary is the museum’s founder & director. Both are also volunteers with BLOC. They were very nice and showed us some new things about the printing world. Like, before the Gutenberg Press was invented in 1440, it would take 15 months for a scribe to hand-write a Bible (the world’s most sold book). After, it only took the Gutenberg Press 3-5 years to create 180 copies of the Bible. Gary reminded all of us that the reason for most things in the world is money; and the speed that books could be printed was a huge business and social success because it put books in the hands of more people.

Also, Gary showed us why uppercase and lowercase letters are called uppercase and lowercase: Gutenberg would store his “big” letters in an upper case, and his “small” letters in the lower case.

They even showed us how to melt metal letters in a linotype machine, another printing invention that sped up the process and came in the 19th century. We got to play a working piano that was printed on a piece of paper and finally, we printed our own Cincinnati postcards!

Here’s some pictures from our trip to the Type & Print Museum. As you can see by the smiles we had a great time even though it was a short trip, it was still fun to see how things are made in the type and print world – and how historical decisions were extremely money-driven.

Gallery • 16 Photos

Find details about taking a tour and check out more information on the museum here: https://www.cincinnatitypeprintmuseum.org/