The Society was founded in London in 1964 by a group of teachers, scholars, students of design and bibliography, librarians, professional printers and amateur enthusiasts, notably James Mosley, James Moran, John Dreyfus, Michael Turner, Berthold Wolpe, David Chambers and Michael Twyman.
[1] At the time, and to some degree ever since, the PHS had close connections with the St Bride Library (then called the St Bride Printing Library) and the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading.
[5] In 2015 the Society issued An epitome of the history of printing in sixteen leaves as a keepsake for its fiftieth anniversary (which included pages printed by all the main reproductive processes, from woodcut to digital) and a special number of the PHS Journal.
The Society has also published a Bulletin and, after 2000, joined with the Friends of St Bride and the National Printing Heritage Trust in issuing the quarterly Printing History News (edited by Paul W. Nash 2005–2015 and Ken Burnley 2015 onwards).
The Journal has had a series of distinguished editors and guest-editors, including Mosley, Twyman, Margaret M. Smith, Richard Lawrence and John Trevitt.