[Illustration: Typographia....501 PRESS INVENTED BY BLAEW. From Johnson, J. Typographia] For his ability and attainments as a practical printer Willem Blaeu is especially entitled to great honor. He labored on for many years in Amsterdam, making use of such presses as were commonly to be found in the printing houses of his own and of other lands. Finding, however, numerous inconveniences attending the structure of these oldtime presses, he was induced, about 1620, to contrive remedies.[8] In this, we are told, he succeeded beyond his expectations, so much indeed that he had nine of the new presses constructed, each of which he called by the name of one of the Muses. The excellence of Blaeu’s improvements soon becoming known to other printing houses, their proprietors were induced to follow his example, and presses of his design became, in the course of a few years, almost general throughout the Low Countries, and were introduced into England, though at first there was here much opposition to his new ideas. While the description below is that of the Blaeu establishment as it was under the management of the son John, yet as it presents to us the printing house founded by the father, Willem Blaeu, and describes a printing house of the middle of the seventeenth century, it is here cited in free translation. “On the Blumengracht,” says Filips von Zesen, in his description of the city of Amsterdam,[9] “near the third bridge, and the third alley, may be found the greatly renowned printing house of John Blaeu, Counsellor and Magistrate, of this city. It is furnished with nine type presses, named after the nine Muses, six presses for copperplate printing, and a type foundry. The entire establishment on the canal, with the adjoining house, in which the proprietor lives, is 75 feet in breadth, and stretches along the east side of a cross street 135 feet, or with the attached house 150 feet. Fronting on the canal is a room with cases in which the copper plates are kept, from which the Atlases, the Book of the Cities of the Netherlands and of foreign countries, also the Mariners’ Atlases and other choice books are printed, and which must have cost a ton of gold. Next to this first room is a press room used for plate printing, and opening upon the cross street referred to above is a place where the type, from which impressions have been made, are washed; then follows in order the room for book printing, which resembles a long hall with numerous windows on either side. In the extreme rear is a room in which the type and certain other materials used in printing are stored. Opposite this store room is a stairway leading to a small room above which is set apart for the use of the proof-readers, where first and second impressions are carefully looked over, and the errors corrected which have been made by the typesetters. In front of this last designated room is a long table or bench on which the final prints are placed as soon as they are brought from the