A customer would come to William Nuthead and request a document to be printed. The customer would select the style of document he wanted to print.

William printed at the pleasure of the colonial government. This meant that he had to get a license from the government to print documents. If William printed something that people in the government did not like, he could lose his license to print and he wouldn't have a job! William could refuse a request if he felt he might make the government angry and lose his license.

Type was stored in a type case. Type letters were made backwards, so when the paper was pressed against the type, the mirror image would appear on the paper. The type was divided between the CAPITAL letters, in the upper case, and the small letters were stored in the lower case.

Type was placed in the composing stick. Although Dinah Nuthead could not read or write, she could copy existing documents by matching the letters and punctuation with the correct pieces of type.

The printer would set out the document with the type. When the composing stick was full, the type was carefully removed and placed in a chase where the pieces of type were wedged into place with blocks of wood, or quoins. Then the chase was carried to the press and placed in the coffin on the plank.

These pieces of type spell out words in French.

The printer cut a new hole in the frisket. The printer then glued dogears onto the tympan.

Earlier in the day, the printer dampened the paper with water. Then, he placed a sheet of paper in the dogears on the tympan. William had to get his paper from England. If he ran out of paper, he had to wait for another order to come by ship! Because of the hardship of getting paper from England, William tried to use as little paper as possible for each document. He would try to print several (two or more) copies of the same document on the same piece of paper. This meant little paper was wasted and he could print more with each pull of the press. William or Dinah would cut the paper after it was printed, giving them several imprints for each piece of paper.

Look at this document from the Nuthead printing press. The Mary-land heading at the bottom of the page is identical to the Mary-land heading at the top of the page. This page was at one time a long paper, with the same wording printed at the top and the bottom. Do you think this document was cut in the wrong place?

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The printer placed a dab of ink on the ink balls and then pressed the ink balls together to spread out the ink. Next, the printer dabbed the ink onto the type.

William had to import his ink from England. The ink was thick and sticky. The ink transferred onto the paper because the paper was wet which let the ink be better absorbed into the paper.

a. The printer folded down the frisket and tympan.

b. The printer rolled the coffin and plank under the platen.

c. The printer then pulled the arm, which lowered the platen and pressed the paper onto the inked type. This transferred the ink to the paper, to give you an imprint!

d. The plank and the coffin were rolled out.

e. The printer lifted the frisket and tympan and removed the copy.

f. Since the paper was wet, the printer had to hang the paper up to dry. If there were any mistakes, the printer corrected the type and ran another copy! Working by himself, William could print about 100 pieces of paper in one hour.