Cowper went into partnership as a printer with his brother-in-law, Augustus Applegath, around 1813, when their employer William Cornish died.
[2] The partnership, or, according to William Savage in his Dictionary of the Art of Printing, Applegath alone, was employed by The Times to improve their presses.
[2] Towards the end of his life Edward Cowper was professor of manufacturing art and mechanics at King's College London.
[2] Cowper was the improver of the steam printing machine, projected by William Nicholson and implemented by Friedrich Koenig.
Cowper did not invent the soft composition for distributing the ink, which superseded the old pelt-balls in hand-presses, but devised the system of forming it into rollers.