February 16th this year is Presidents’ Day and the Sacramento History Museum is open! For today, Howard letterpress printed an image from a halftone of the first 25 presidents from George Washington to Teddy Roosevelt. Technically, Roosevelt is the 26th president but Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president, is represented once in this print. The picture in halftones are broken into a series of equally spaced dots of varying size. Halftones were used to introduce photographs into newspapers

April 3rd is American Circus Day! This day commemorates the anniversary of the first circus performance in the United States, which took place on April 3, 1793 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For today, Jared letterpress printed the largest halftone that we have in our print shop at the Sacramento History Museum, which is a poster for the circus performer, Clyde Beatty. This halftone was made in the 1930s. This was printed with black rubber base ink using our Washington hand press. This halftone