Good Impressions

The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra was established in 1958. The large hillside park contains several exhibition and service buildings and around 50 historic buildings moved from places within the province. Some are well spaced within fields to represent rural communities and others grouped to make the nucleus of a 'town'.

Baird's Print Shop is within one such building, which also contains a newspaper room and a library that came from Andrews Mill in Comber, County Down. The collection of books had been provided for the workers and for any other townspeople who wished to use it.

The print shop has a number of small presses, including the Columbian shown here. Operating with movements like those of an ancient wine press, the hand-powered Columbian employed three men to position, ink and "pull" impressions on paper laid flat on the assembled metal type. To an audience often more used to computer inkjet printers, the demonstrations might appear to show a totally alien world, but of course it was the printed paper like this that spread knowledge and ideas across the land. The historic changes shown in the museum could only come about through the agency of this communications powerhouse.