Thomas Bensley (1759–1835) was an English printer known for fine work, and as a collaborator of
Friedrich Koenig
Friedrich Gottlob Koenig (17 April 1774 – 17 January 1833) was a German inventor best known for his high-speed steam-powered printing press, which he built together with watchmaker Andreas Friedrich Bauer. This new style of printing pre ...
.
He was an innovator in the fields of steam-powered printing presses, and lithography for book illustration.
Life
Bensley, the son of a printer in
The Strand, had printing premises at Bolt Court, off
Fleet Street in London, and
William Bulmer was considered his only rival in fine printing.
In a preface Bensley complains of a fire which had destroyed his premises, with much of his stock; he was burned out on two separate occasions, in 1807 and 1819.
Works from the press included
Thomas Macklin
"The Cottagers" (inspired by Thomson) painted by Reynolds and commissioned by Macklin in 1788, featuring his daughter, Maria, (left), and his wife, Hannah (right) and friend (Jane Potts ( Edwin Landseer's mother), standing).
Thomas Macklin (1752 ...
's folio Bible in seven volumes (1800), an edition of
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment phil ...
's ''History of England'', and an octavo Shakespeare. A trustee of Providence Chapel, in Gray's Inn Lane, Bensley supported the ministry of
William Huntington; and helped to raise the monument by
Sir Richard Westmacott on the death of Huntington in 1813. He printed ''The Posthumous Letters of William Huntington'' (1822), which he also edited in part.
Development of the press
Friedrich Koenig came to London from
Saxony
Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...
in 1806, with a design for the powered "Suhl press". Bensley took up the innovation, and formed a consortium with
Richard Taylor and
George Woodfall
George Woodfall (1767–1844) was an English printer.
Life
The son of Henry Sampson Woodfall, he was his father's partner in the printing business till December 1793, when the father retired. George Woodfall later moved to Angel Court, Snow Hill ...
to monopolise it. Working with
Andreas Friedrich Bauer
Andreas Friedrich Bauer (18 August 1783 – 27 December 1860) was a Germans, German engineer who developed the first functional steam-powered printing press with his colleague Friedrich Koenig, who had invented the technology and sold it to ''The ...
, Koenig took out a patent in 1810, and built a working machine for Bensley in 1811. Over the next few years, development work produced a steam-driven press adapted to printing newspapers, rather than books as initially, and it was used for ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' of London. The working relationship of Bensley and Koenig broke down by 1817, however, as Bensley enforced his shareholding rights.
References
;Attribution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bensley, Thomas
1759 births
1835 deaths
English printers