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Breaking the news exhibition

A pop-up dis­play based on the British Library’s Break­ing the News exhi­bi­tion is on view at Edin­burgh’s Cen­tral Library. The dis­plays draw upon each library’s indi­vid­ual col­lec­tion and region­al con­nec­tions to cel­e­brate the val­ue of region­al news in com­mu­ni­ties across the UK. It is on dis­play 4 July — 4 August 2022. Break­ing the News […]

Edinburgh Printmakers open day

Edin­burgh Print­mak­ers is par­tic­i­pat­ing in Scot­land’s Work­shops Week with an Open Day on Sat­ur­day 9th April from 11am-4pm. Activ­i­ties will include print­mak­ing work­shops, talks and print­mak­ing demon­stra­tions. All events and talks will be book­able in advance from Wednes­day 30 March. For more details see the Edin­burgh Print­mak­ers’ website. 

Douglas Foulis

Dou­glas Foulis, of the long-estab­lished pub­lish­ing and bind­ing firm of Hunter & Foulis, died in Decem­ber 2016 at the age of 90. As well as work­ing int he indus­try, he was involved in the work of the Soci­ety of Mas­ter Print­ers’ of Scot­land. Obit­u­ar­ies of him have been pub­lished in the Scots­man and the Herald.

On this day: 1st ever edition of the Scotsman

The Scots­man is 200 years old today. The first ever edi­tion of The Scots­man, or Edin­burgh Polit­i­cal and Lit­er­ary Jour­nal was pro­duced on Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 25 1817, from premis­es in Edin­burgh’s High Street. It was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished week­ly, and became a dai­ly news­pa­per in 1850. The pro­pri­etors announced that their ‘first desire is to be […]

Speedspools is 50!

Har­ry McIn­tosh’s Speed­spools has reached its Gold­en Anniver­say. He has been in busi­ness pro­duc­ing type for 50 years, since 1967 — and for many years to come at the Chep­man and Myl­lar press in Edin­burgh. Congratulations!

Douglas Grant

The Edin­burgh print­er and pub­lish­er, Dou­glas Grant, died in July 2014. He was a sig­nif­i­cant fig­ure in the print­ing and pub­lish­ing indus­try, lat­ter­ly as the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Scot­tish Aca­d­e­m­ic Press. Ear­li­er, he had been the man­ag­ing direc­tor of Oliv­er & Boyd, and was involved in the efforts to save R & R Clark around […]

Allan Waterston

The mil­i­tary career of Edin­burgh print­er, Allan Water­ston, who recent­ly died aged 92, is high­light­ed in the obit­u­ary pub­lished in the Dai­ly Tele­graph. He saw active ser­vice in North Africa, Italy and Aus­tria in World War II. His war ser­vice inter­rupt­ed his stud­ies at the Lon­don Col­lege of Print­ing, and on their final com­ple­tion he […]

Visit to the Chepman and Myllar Press

A recent post on Kei­th Hous­ton’s blog on punc­tu­a­tion marks, ‘Shady Char­ac­ters’ includ­ed an account of his meet­ing with Har­ry McIn­tosh of the Chep­man and Myl­lar press in Edin­burgh. Har­ry McIn­tosh uses the hot met­al Mono­type cast­ing sys­tem for type­set­ting, but uses a com­put­er, rather than a Mono­type key­board to set text. You can visit […]

R & R Clark on YouTube

A film about ‘Edin­burgh print­ers at work and play’ has been put on YouTube. It fea­tures images from the case­room at R & R Clark, and descrip­tions of the social activ­i­ties at the firm. You can watch it here:

Edinburgh’s Industrial Information Revolution

On Thurs­day 24 May 2012 Dr Aileen Fyfe of the Uni­ver­si­ty of St Andrews will give a lec­ture enti­tled Edin­burgh’s Indus­tri­al Infor­ma­tion Rev­o­lu­tion as part of the Under­stand­ing Tech­nol­o­gy series, at Nation­al Muse­ums Scot­land, Cham­bers Street, in coop­er­a­tion with the Insti­tute for the Study of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Inno­va­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh. Her top­ic is […]