Information revolution: William Chambers, the publishing pioneer

With the arrival of steam power and new machinery in the 19th century, the production of printed media was transformed for the first time since the emergence of the printing press more than 300 years earlier. Yet until the 1850s, most publishers remained content with traditional methods, which enabled them to make profits from a small but affluent circle of readers. This article (part of the Science in the Industrial Revolution series) will show how William Chambers (1800-1883) was one of the first to make full use of the new technologies. He was driven by a determination to reach readers of all social classes, to produce a genuinely cheap instructive publication and to overcome the challenges of reaching a national market from his base in Edinburgh.