The father retired in 1787, when the new firm, Edmund Fry & Co., issued their first 'Specimen of Printing Types,’ followed the next year by an enlarged edition.
In 1788 the printing business was separated from the foundry, and remained at Worship Street as the 'Cicero Press,’ under the management of Henry Fry.
In 1793 'Edmund Fry & Co., letter founders to the Prince of Wales,’ produced a 'Specimen of Metal-cast Ornaments curiously adjusted to paper,’ which gained vogue among printers.
[1] On the admission of George Knowles in 1799, the firm took the name of Fry, Steele, & Co. At the start of the nineteenth century the modern-faced type supplanted the old-faced.
In 1798 he circulated a 'Prospectus' of the major work on which he had been occupied for sixteen years, published as Pantographia, containing accurate Copies of all the known Alphabets of the World, together with an English explanation of the peculiar Force and Power of each Letter, to which are added Specimens of all well-authenticated Oral Languages, forming a Comprehensive Digest of Phonology, 1799.
Fry cut several founts of oriental types for the university of Cambridge, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and other bodies.
In 1833 twenty designs for raised type for the blind were submitted to the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, who had offered a prize for the best example.