When the moving picture came into existence, the burgeoning movie industry emphatically embraced broadsides to advertise their films. These beautiful full-color posters (which evolved into the modern “one-sheet” movie poster) became their own art form, but the majority of movie audiences had to look to their daily newspaper to find when and where the films were showing. This meant these beautiful color posters had to be reproduced in black and white, and in a size much smaller than the side of a building.

By the 1930’s, a system of simplified ads with standardized sizes based on newspaper column widths flourished. These ads became the standard for how all movies were advertised for the next 50 years. Movie studios had specialized production houses produce metal printing plates, and paper molds for the newspapers. Like the broadsides before them, the components to produce these ads were considered trash and burned, melted, or discarded once used. While the paper molds were sent out in the millions over the decades to newspapers, the metal blocks made to test their quality were thought to be immediately melted down and  the wood block mounts reused over and over.  Miraculously, a collection of 60,000 printing proof blocks were re-discovered in 2015 and are now being preserved by The Press Room. 

This discovery was even more remarkable because letterpress printing was abandoned by newspapers decades before. The printing method developed by Gutenberg and used for five centuries was replaced starting in the mid-20th century by a cheaper, faster, and ultimately high-quality technology called offset printing.  Offset nearly eliminated relief printing for newspapers by the 1980s. But letterpress was not forgotten. Kept alive by passionate printers and artists as a craft, letterpress thrives to this day, beloved for its tactile beauty and place in history.