Practical Printer Hermann Neuburger Issues the First Manual with Color Plates on Book Printing

In 1841 practical printer Hermann Neuburger of Dessau wrote and printed the Praktisches Handbuch der Buchdruckerkunst. This was the first manual of book printing published in any language to include examples of color printing. It was more extensively illustrated than other German printing manuals of the 1840s, and was also the first German manual of book printing to discuss all the types of iron hand presses in use in Germany, as well as printing machines. Neuburger printed the book on mediocre paper; the 270 pages of text of the copy that I was able to acquire were pretty much browned throughout; the five color plates and 19 engraved plates were printed on somewhat better paper. The book was published in Leipzig by Heinrich Hunger.

Bigmore & Wyman, Bibliography of Printing p. 73 , writing to between 1876 and 1885, expressed quite a different view of this book, calling it "Entirely practical, but the works of this author have not been regarded as of much authority, and are now superceded." Looking at it today, I think the main value is that it was written and printed by a "practical printer," who was not a "great authority." It is thus likely to contain views that were actually held by working printers in Germany at the time, and as such it would have definitely been superceded thirty to forty years after it was published.