Career
Around 1813 he invented the Columbian Printing Press. This was a cast-iron, lever-operated replacement for the wooden screw presses which had been in use in Europe since the fifteenth century and in North America since the seventeenth. Clymer appears to have begun making wooden presses of the traditional type before 1800, and may have introduced refinements to the design.
His Columbian Press was inspired in part by the earlier English Stanhope press
Clymer found a limited market for his press in the United States, so in 1817 he moved to England to compete in the European market with the Stanhope Press, and later with the Albion press Clymer made a success of his press-manufacturing business, and spent the rest of his life in England.
He died in London in 1834 at the age of eighty. After his death the Columbian Press continued to be sold by the firm he had established, and was also made by other manufacturers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe.
Surviving examples of the Columbian Press can be found in many museums:
William Clowes Limited.
Printing Museum, Beccles, Suffolk, England
Werkstattmuseum für Druckkunst (Workshop Museum for the Art of Printing), Leipzig, Germany
Milton Keynes Museum Printshop, England
Amberley Working Museum, Amberley, West Sussex, England
Cambridge Museum of Technology, Cambridge, England
National Print Museum of Ireland
Foyer of The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia
The Eagle Press at Crich Tramway Village, Crich, Matlock, Derbyshire, England
Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Northern Ireland
BIP Printing Workshop, Brighton, United Kingdom.
