History

Printing witnessed enormous technological change during the nineteenth century, initiating the age of mass media. An explosion of print culture was matched by an increasing literate readership. Some magazines and serialised instalments of novels sold hundreds of thousands of copies. Key developments in printing technology included Friedrich Koenig’s invention of the steam-powered cylindrical printing press in 1811 and photographic processes being used to make illustrations from 1826. London was very much at the heart of Victorian print culture. The Times was the first newspaper to begin using the steam-powered press from 1814.