8 Pieces of Printing Trivia Everyone Ought to Know

There are some fun facts floating around out there when you go looking for printing trivia. For example, did you know that:

1.       Benjamin Franklin, John Dunlap and the Wright Brothers were all printers by trade?

2.       Paul Revere (a silversmith by trade) engraved the plates for the first colonial currency?

3.       The printing industry may have given birth to the phrase, “Mind your p’s and q’s”, an admonishment from the printer to his apprentice to watch carefully when setting the letters in an old-style printing press? (This has been debated, since there are many possible origins for the phrase and no one is actually sure which is correct.)

4.       We have about $500 billion in U.S. currency currently in circulation, most of it outside of the U.S.?

5.       In 1999 a 1943 copper penny was sold at auction for $112,500?

6.       The first book to be printed using a moveable type printing press was the Gutenberg Bible?

7.       3D printing was used to test lighting for every scene in the movie “Avatar”?

8.       Pringles once combined inkjet printing with food coloring to print trivia questions and answers on their chips.