Neptune's Needle

Engraver and printer.

Foster bought a printing press. Foster had acquired printing skills by observing Samuel Green in Cambridge and possibly Johnson in Boston, and he taught himself the business of printing books and almanacs and produced the first wood engravings printed in the colonies.

Foster's woodcuts also appeared in the almanacs he compiled between 1675 and 1681. His first almanac, printed in Cambridge by Green, contained woodcuts of the Sun, the Moon, stars, and a lunar eclipse. The rest of his almanacs were printed in Boston and made a break with the colonial almanacs that had been published by the Harvard establishment since 1639. He also increased the importance of illustrations in his almanacs to make them more popular. In 1679 he concentrated on tides.

Sources

External Additional Sources

Compiler

Peter Richards