Following Joannes Gutenberg's invention, paper printing became a new field for technical innovation. During the 19th century, the productivity of printing presses increased considerably, partly due to technical improvements in their construction, but also due to the use of the steam engine as a driving force.

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The first mechanical printing press made of cast iron was designed in 1800 by Charles Stanhope. The innovation consisted of replacing wooden frames with cast iron characters, thereby improving the durability of this technical tool as well as its printing capacity. By using this new, more resistant material, printing capacity was significantly increased to around 200 sheets per hour, a rate well suited to newspaper and periodical printing on a larger scale. In 1812, Friedrich's machine, designed by Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, marked the beginning of the integration of steam into printing machinery. By operating the vertical press, the force used to apply pressure was no longer in human hands. The innovative motion of the press allowed printing to be carried out using an ink roller through a back-and-forth movement. Although the feeding of the sheets remained manual, this principle increased the printing speed by five.

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In the 1860s, William Bullock invented the rotary press, which could print 10,000 copies per hour. This technical achievement was later perfected by American Richard Hoe and Frenchman Hippolyte Marinoni. Over the years, printing techniques such as double-sided and color printing were developed, leading to a wide range of press machinery.