Makers of Many Things

Ten miles from a store, a mile from the nearest neighbor, and the last match refuses to blaze: Eva March Tappan’s winter-night mishap makes a tiny splinter feel like a miracle.

Written for young readers in the early twentieth century, Makers of Many Things begins with the humble match—and the ingenious machinery that turns wood, wax, and chemicals into millions of reliable little flames. Tappan also follows India rubber from the milky sap of a tree to the useful material arriving at the factory, revealing the careful work behind familiar things. A match seems simple, until you learn how much precision—and how much human ingenuity—it takes to make it safe and dependable. What other everyday objects conceal a surprising journey from raw material to finished thing?

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.