Printing Press begins operating in Cambridge.

(March) Brought from England by the Rev. Joseph Glover, who dies on the voyage over, it is located in a shop at today’s Holyoke Street. The first printing press in the British Colonies (one was set up in Mexico City 100 years earlier), it is operated by Glover’s widow and printer Stephen Daye. Its first product is The Freeman’s Oath, printed on a half-sheet of paper. Its second is the New England Almanac by Capt. William Pierce. Its first book is printed in 1640.* The General Court soon passes a law prohibiting additional presses anywhere but in Cambridge. Harvard president Henry Dunster marries the widow Glover in 1641, after which, according to Arthur Gilman, “the press had in that way indirectly passed under the control of the college.”