William Clowes (1 January 1779 – 26 January 1847) was a British printer who developed the use of steam-powered printing presses in the industry. He founded the

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...

firm that became William Clowes Ltd. in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

in 1803. Clowes was born in

Chichester Chichester () is a cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. It is the only ci ...

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

, the eldest son of schoolteachers William Clowes and Elizabeth (née Harraden) Clowes.Weedon A. (2004
Clowes, William (1779–1847)
in ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press; accessed 25 June 2011. His father died when William was an infant, and he became a printer's apprentice at the age of 10.Smiles S. (1884

in ''Men of Invention and Industry'', at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

; retrieved 25 June 2011. In 1803 he moved to London and founded his own business in October 1803 at 22 Villiers Street, with just one employee. Through his wife's cousin, William Winchester, Clowes was able to gain access to government printing work which enabled the firm to develop rapidly, moving to Northumberland Court in 1807. In 1823 Clowes installed a steam-powered printing press designed by Applegarth and

Edward Cowper Edward Shickle Cowper (1790–1852) was an English printing engineer, inventor, and academic. Life Cowper went into partnership as a printer with his brother-in-law, Augustus Applegath, around 1813, when their employer William Cornish died. A pr ...

. His factory adjoined the palace of Britain's wealthiest man, the Duke of Northumberland, who successfully instituted a court action for noise and pollution abatement. In 1827 the firm took over Applegarth's premises in Duke Street, Blackfriars, a site which became the largest printing works in the world, printing a wide variety of works and employing over 500 workers directly. The development of powered presses by Clowes is credited with increasing levels of accuracy as well as speed of output, making printed material cheaper and more accessible. He was also an innovator in terms of working practices and in 1820 became one of the first employers to start a benevolent fund for this workforce. He was a leading figure in the

Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (SDUK) was founded in London in 1826, mainly at the instigation of Whig MP Henry Brougham, with the object of publishing information to people who were unable to obtain formal teaching or who pr ...

. Clowes married Mary Winchester, the niece of William Winchester, in 1804 and had four daughters and four sons with her. Three of his sons, William, Winchester and George, ran the business which had become William Clowes and Sons in 1839. In 1824, Clowes was made a freeman of Chichester. He died in Marylebone in January 1847, aged 68, and was buried in

West Norwood Cemetery West Norwood Cemetery is a rural cemetery in West Norwood in London, England. It was also known as the South Metropolitan Cemetery. One of the first private landscaped cemeteries in London, it is one of the " Magnificent Seven" cemeteries of L ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Clowes, William 1779 births 1847 deaths Publishers (people) from London William Clowes Burials at West Norwood Cemetery People from Chichester