Printing machine by Donkin and Company

By the early 1800s, people were looking into ways of mechanising the process using steam power. The engineer Bryan Donkin, who had made the first commercially successful paper making machine, took on the project of creating a new printing machine, in partnership with Richard Mackenzie Bacon, the proprietor of the Norwich Mercury newspaper. Bacon and Donkin were granted a patent for their new machine in 1813 and in 1814 their machine was successfully trialled by the Cambridge University Press. This drawing was used to promote the Bacon and Donkin machine, following its adoption by the Cambridge University Press.