Reproduction Colonial Press, Franklin Court Printing Office, Philadelphia

A close look at how a wooden hand press actually works, on one of the two reproduction 18th-century presses in the re-created printing office at Franklin Court. The iron bar on the right turns the screw; the screw drives the platen down onto the inked forme of type lying on the bed below. The pressman then cranks the bed back out, peels off the sheet and the beater re-inks the type with leather ink balls for the next pull. The office sits in Independence National Historical Park, on the site where Franklin lived late in his life. He had bought the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729 and began Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732, and his grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache ran a newspaper office next door in the 1790s.