Description

N.B: The term Press, Copying, does not appear in the lexicon for this program. The term Press, Book, is used instead, based on additional correspondence entered below.
Copying press for duplicating letters (sometimes called a "letter press"), made of black iron, very heavy, a rectangular base (16 1/2" x 11") has holes in each corner to screw the press onto a table top or other surface, another flat rectangular piece (12 1/2" x 9 3/4") is attached to a steering wheel-type crank that turns and presses the two flat pieces together, when the press is down all the way the height of the object is 15:, the press reproduced handwritten documents in a carbon process.
A letter from Bob Kuehn, 1212 Bellows Street, West St. Paul, MN 55118, dated October 21, 1982 contains the following: "After arriving home the day we visited your museum I looked in my catalogs for book presses, and oddly, the two current catalogs I found them in both called them "copying press", which of course is not suggestive of bookbinding but rather of the use you ascribe to them, i.e. copying letters. However one of the ads says ". . . for bookbinders, to compress books while binding or gilding."