Once upon a time
A long long time ago
A really long time ago...
The first letterpress was invented by a group of hunters near the North Pole, on the current Alaskan side of the Bering Strait.

In a generous mood, the hunters who lived in this treacherous region of the globe wanted to share their mastery of several spear-throwing techniques with other like-minded folk. So, they spread the word by publishing, Mammoth Hunters Weekly. And, a mammoth task it was…

Great sequoias were pared down to toothpicks by their weekly ritual of milling the Great tree in order to make flat boards, on which to carve the mirror image of their native language to spread the techniques thru' the wood block prints. While nothing as fancy as the Japanese wood block printing few thousand years later, one letter misspelled and the whole block had to be thrown into the bonfire. Sure that kept them warm but sick of having to redo these blocks, in a fit of rage, one hunter whacked his buddy with the block on his head, breaking it into smithereens - the block, not the guy's head!

This was the moment when the moveable system of type was invented... Now they can arrange the precut letters into words and sentenses instead of cutting them in a whole!

Between their fine hunting skills and having to spend less time now carving the blocks for their weekly publications, they were chewing increasingly more caribou fat while sitting around the, now smaller, fire pit (the first couch potatoes!)... They were becoming quite bored with themselves...

It was a clear day when one of the descendents of the original members of the Mammoth Hunters Weekly was sitting by the stump of a former Sequoia tree. He was trying to read the words carved in mirror images onto the stump by his forefathers when a large boar (really big piglet!) ran towards it and slammed its head against some letters on the stump and knocked itself cold (but not dead). Thinking "A Free Lunch!" he approached the animal when he noticed that the letters were readable on the cheek of the boar where it had made contact with the tree. Could something like that be used for printing faster? The first prototype of the clamshell design platen press was soon developed.

It was only a matter of more time before his buddy was sitting on a different stump, thinking about the improved design when he had another great idea. He realized that he could attach a standard 1/2 hp 7.2amp motor to the press and save energy and time. (Where he would get electricity was another problem).

It was all over: The modern letterpress was born soon after with a fully automated feeder system. Unable to think of a funny name like "C&P", the hunters named the object after themselves: The Brandtjen & Kluge letterpress. A few years later, as the exporting of the press increased to other regions of the greater arctic, the name posed a problem for folks on the other side of the straight. The Russians could not pronounce the D-T-J consonant combination. Since then, "Brandtjen" was dropped from the trademark as it was deemed too difficult for the average white-man to pronounce. Kluge is pronounced "k'loo-ghee" - easy for whities of all varieties.

Jump some years ahead and one might ask:

So, what's new with letterpress?
We, the (imitation) bacon-eaters at Two Piglets, are trying to further improve its design by attaching a stationary bicycle, in addition to the electric motor...(Look out for Get ’n’Shape Press Better Butt Workout by Two Piglets!)

ww2 underground french resistant printers
_Le Point_, "Imprimeries Clandestines,"
XXXI, Mars 1945. Photographies by Robert Doisnea

If you have any expertise on this matter (ergonomics, welding, etc), please contact us at:
losefatwhileletterpress@twopiglets.com

plant "soy" bacon...