Background on the Printing Museum The International Printing Museum in Southern California is a dynamic museum that takes one of the world's most significant collections of antique printing machinery and brings it to life through working demonstrations and theatre presentations. Since 1988, over 250,000 visitors have toured the museum, learning about the history of books and printing, great inventions and inventors that have changed our world. The Printing Museum has been recognized worldwide for its importance and size, and for the successful and creative approach it takes in interpreting the collection to a general audience. The Museum was founded in 1988 by David Jacobson of Gutenberg Expositions and Ernest A. Lindner to house the Lindner Collection of Antique Printing Machinery. The collection has grown since then with significant donations and acquisitions, making the International Printing Museum the premier exhibit on printing history throughout the world. From 1988 until 1997, the Printing Museum was located in the city of Buena Park. Following the acquisition of the Museum property by the California Department of Transportation in 1997, the collection was moved into storage while a new home was sought. The new public display opened in 1998 in the city of Carson, 20 minutes south of downtown Los Angeles. In February of 2003, the Board of Trustees for the International Printing Museum Foundation successfully raised the necessary down payment for the acquisition of the Museum property in Carson.
Founder and Collector, 1911 to 2001 As a young man, working for his uncle and father, who rebuilt and sold used typesetting equipment, Ernest A. Lindner began collecting. “We would sell a man a machine and take in trade a piece he was replacing, because it was worn out, outdated or otherwise unsuitable. I couldn't bear to throw some of these wonderful machines away, so I began to shove them into corners, even after there were no more corners.” Eventually, he began to comb the world searching for old hand-lever presses and typesetting machines that were the wonders of the machine age. He found a rare Rogers Typograph in the back of a Berlin factory; an 1828 Imperial printing press in a tobacconists shop in Longsutton, England, where it had been operated by succeeding generations of fathers and sons. He prowled ghost towns, auctions, at junk stores and out-of-the-way antique shops to assemble one of the largest and finest collections of antique printing machinery in the world. Ernie and his wife, Harriet, have personally restored many of the pieces in their collection, now on display at the International Printing Museum.
|
|
Ernest A. Lindner 