William Hamilton Page was born in Tilton, New Hampshire on March 14, 1829. He trained as a printer’s apprentice and worked as a traveling printer between 1843 and 1849. He worked as a reporter for several newspapers in New England and New York before taking a job with a newspaper in Norwich, CT in 1853. In 1856 he purchased a defunct wood type manufacturing company in Willimantic and moved all the equipment to a factory in Greenville, CT.
William Page & Co. soon became the largest manufacturer of wood type in the United States. Page and his employees pioneered the use of chromatic transparent inks creating typography with high visual impact for posters and advertisements created on a letterpress machine.
In an era when black on white typography was the rule, the use of two transparent color inks overlapping to create a third color revolutionized the field of wood type printing. In 1874 he published a catalog entitled Specimens of Chromatic Wood Type, Borders, manufactured by William H. Page & Co.
Within the pages of this catalog a variety of fonts designed by William Page were on display in a wide range of sizes.
The growing scarcity of indigenous maple trees in Connecticut used in the making of wood type eventually began to threaten the financial viability of Page & Company. Page decided to exit the wood type business and contacted Hamilton & Baker in Two Rivers Wisconsin. Hamilton & Baker acquired Page & Company’s business in its entirety in 1891.
Concurrent with his many patents in his wood type business, Page also patented a steam heater in 1879. He founded the Page Steam Heater Co that same year. The company continued to be a successful manufacturer of heaters and boilers into the early decades of the twentieth century.
To see the beautiful catalog of William H. Page’s chromatic wood type, visit the library’s Flickr page.