Historic Inventions

A playing-card stops John cold: how can its wooden block make the same picture again and again? His wife Anna sees only an ugly Knave of Bells—but John sees a way to bring books within reach.

In the restless German cities of the fifteenth century, John, a skilled lapidary exiled from Mainz, sets up a workshop in Strasburg. A rare picture-book sparks a question: if carved blocks can reproduce images, could they do the same for words—and spare readers the slow, costly work of copying by hand? With Anna’s encouragement, he experiments with wood, ink, and tools, learning from each imperfect print. But a picture is only a beginning. How will John make letters serve the larger dream of books for many?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.