Four times in western history: in the 1400s, the early 1800s, the 1880s, and again in the mid-20th century, we learned to duplicate and disseminate the printed word more cheaply. And each time strange events followed. For with each of these changes in the gritty production of glamorous content, expensive and secret bodies of knowledge abruptly became cheap and easy to spread. Once-rare and sometimes disorienting impressions rained down on once-sheltered folks. New and otherwise inexpert hands mixed them into whole new breeds of information, myth, logic, and viewpoints. There were fantastic scientific advances, mass migrations, bold social experiments, financial upheavals, and much bloodshed. In the harrowing decades that followed, powerful new kinds of governments, businesses, and groups came to elbow aside old ones. In all of these periods, there were great, creaking shifts in politics, wealth, religions, and even the way we learn, think, and see. And in the last decade, the costs of producing and distributing printed knowledge have fallen a fifth time, far and fast and almost to free. Paradigms Lost traces the history of the accidents, inventions, forces, eccentrics, and geniuses who accelerated information in the past, examines what happened each time they succeeded, and provides some background for what, if the past is any guide, may be coming.

This is a study of international print networks developed across the English-speaking world over a significant part of the long nineteenth century. The first study of its kind, it draws on unique sources from Australasia, North America, South Africa, the British Isles, and Ireland, to explore how printers interacted and shared trade and cultural identities across international boundaries during the period 1830-1914. Morality, mobility, mobilisation, and solidarity were central to how compositors and print trade workers defined themselves during this period. These themes are addressed in case studies on roving printers, striking printers, and creative printers. The case studies explore the cultural values and trade skills transmitted and embedded by such actors, the global networks that enabled print workers to travel across continents in search of work and experience, the trade actions reliant on mobilization and information-sharing across the printing world, and the creative ideas that printers shared through such means as memoirs, poetry, prose, and trade news contributions to print trade journals and other public outlets.