People have been printing in Switzerland for more than 500 years. What started out as simple manual work is today a high-tech industry manufacturing scores of products, from books to credit cards.

Printing has a long history in Switzerland. The range of products extends from the first Bible to the plastic credit card. In Zurich, this success story also has a lot to do with Christoph Froschauer. After his apprenticeship as a printer in Augsburg at the beginning of the 16th century, the Bavarian was drawn to the city on the Limmat and took over a small printing business there. Over the years, he expanded the business into a publishing house. The company still exists today, and since 1798 has been called Orell Füssli.

The history of printing is closely linked to technical development. Until 1843, even in Zurich the work was done using manual presses. After that, first high-speed presses and later the offset process replaced the manual work. The technologies became better and better, making it possible to produce huge print runs in a short time. This benefited the production of newspapers and magazines, which enjoyed a growing readership from the 18th century onwards. Books have also been printed in Zurich since the very beginning. The literature of the past five centuries gives us a glimpse of the subjects in which readers were interested. While it was mainly religious and scientific works that were big business in the 16th and 17th centuries, later on demand grew for travel literature and children’s books.

With the advent of tourism, the production of souvenirs began. The technique of photo-chromolithography, which arrived in the 19th century, met this demand and became an economic factor. These images, which combined photographic precision with colour, enjoyed great popularity and were produced in their thousands. The proliferation of tourism-related subjects not only was lucrative for the printing companies, but also boosted travel to Switzerland. A win-win situation. Other areas of interest are passports, maps, advertising posters and the production of credit cards, share documents and banknotes. The production of paper money in particular is highly complex. Because counterfeit notes are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the security features on new notes need to be enhanced and adapted on a continuous basis. The security printing industry is therefore permanently in innovation mode.

The exhibition at the National Museum Zurich gives an overview of the history of printing, explores the technical developments and presents bestsellers from the past 500 years.