The Press Museum

The Press Museum

The rich history of Cambridge University Press is preserved in the Press Archive held at Cambridge University Library.

A selection of items is also on display at our Shaftesbury Road site in Cambridge.

Video file

Our museum contains original and facsimile copies of items relating to publishing and printing, machines and people, bibles and prayer books.

Highlights

An edition of the King James Bible, printed in 1638 by University Printers Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, which set new standards for an accurate text.

A selection of John Baskerville's punches (steel rods with a letter carved backwards on the end, which were driven into a plate of softer metal leaving behind an impression of the letter).

The trowel which laid the first stone of the Pitt Building (home of printing and publishing in Cambridge for over a hundred years) in 1831.

Examples of our printing for royal occasions.

Photographs of our people at social occasions.

A selection of programmes for the Wayzgoose, an annual entertainment for printers given by the master printer.

Machinery and tools used by printers and engravers.

Copies of documents from the Press Archive which bring a particular moment or person to life.

Examples of employee notices and information.

The story of the eleventh edition Encyclopaedia Britannica being taken to Antarctica by Sir Ernest Shackleton on board the Endurance and Aurora.

Visitors are welcome by appointment

Email: [email protected]