A printer's devil was an apprentice in a printing

Printing

Printing is a process for reproducing text and image, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is often carried out as a large-scale industrial process, and is an essential part of publishing and transaction printing....

 establishment who performed a number of tasks, such as mixing tubs of ink and fetching type. A number of famous men served as printer's devils in their youth, including Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

, Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...

, Samuel Fuller

Samuel Fuller

Samuel Michael Fuller was an American screenwriter, novelist, and film director known for low-budget genre movies with controversial themes.-Personal life:...

, Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...

, Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

, Mark Twain

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...

, Joel Chandler Harris

Joel Chandler Harris

Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist, fiction writer, and folklorist best known for his collection of Uncle Remus stories. Harris was born in Eatonton, Georgia, where he served as an apprentice on a plantation during his teenage years...

, Warren Harding, John Kellogg

John Harvey Kellogg

John Harvey Kellogg was an American medical doctor in Battle Creek, Michigan, who ran a sanitarium using holistic methods, with a particular focus on nutrition, enemas and exercise. Kellogg was an advocate of vegetarianism and is best known for the invention of the corn flakes breakfast cereal...

, Lyndon Johnson, Hoodoo Brown

Hoodoo Brown

Hyman G. Neill, better known as Hoodoo Brown, was the leader of the Dodge City Gang in Las Vegas, New Mexico in 1879 and early 1880. According to Harold Thatcher, curator of the Rough Rider Museum in Las Vegas, Hoodoo was "the baddest cowboy of them all"...

, James Hogg

James Hogg

James Hogg was a Scottish poet and novelist who wrote in both Scots and English.-Early life:James Hogg was born in a small farm near Ettrick, Scotland in 1770 and was baptized there on 9 December, his actual date of birth having never been recorded...

, Joseph Lyons

Joseph Lyons

Joseph Aloysius Lyons, CH was an Australian politician. He was Labor Premier of Tasmania from 1923 to 1928 and a Minister in the James Scullin government from 1929 until his resignation from the Labor Party in March 1931...

, Albert Parsons

Albert Parsons

Albert Richard Parsons was a pioneer American socialist and later anarchist newspaper editor, orator, and labor activist...

, and Lázaro Cárdenas

Lázaro Cárdenas

Lázaro Cárdenas del Río was President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.-Early life:Lázaro Cárdenas was born on May 21, 1895 in a lower-middle class family in the village of Jiquilpan, Michoacán. He supported his family from age 16 after the death of his father...

.

Derivation

The origin of printer's devil is not definitively known. Various competing theories of the phrase's origin follow.

Printer's devil has been ascribed to the fact that printer's apprentices would inevitably have parts of their skin stained black by the ink

Ink

Ink is a liquid or paste that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill...

 used in printing. As black was associated with the "black arts," the apprentice came to be called a devil.

Another origin is linked to the fanciful belief among printers that a special devil (see Titivillus

Titivillus

Titivillus was a demon said to work on behalf of Belphegor, Lucifer or Satan to introduce errors into the work of scribes. The first reference to Titivillus by name occurred in Tractatus de Penitentia, c. 1285, by Johannes Galensis, John of Wales...

) haunted every print shop, performing mischief such as inverting type, misspelling words or removing entire lines of completed type. The apprentice became a substitute source of blame and came to be called a printer's devil by association.

A third source involves a business partner of Johann Gutenberg, Johann Fust

Johann Fust

Johann Fust was an early German printer.- Family background :Fust belonged to a rich and respectable burgher family of Mainz, traceable back to the early thirteenth-century; members of the family held many civil and religious offices.The name was always written Fust, but in 1506 Peter Schöffer, in...

, who sold several of Gutenberg's Bibles to King Louis XI of France

Louis XI of France

Louis XI , called the Prudent , was the King of France from 1461 to 1483. He was the son of Charles VII of France and Mary of Anjou, a member of the House of Valois....

 and his court officials, representing the bibles as hand-copied manuscripts. When it was discovered that individual letters were identical in appearance, Fust was accused of witchcraft

Witchcraft

Witchcraft, in historical, anthropological, religious, and mythological contexts, is the alleged use of supernatural or magical powers. A witch is a practitioner of witchcraft...

—the red ink text was said to have been written in blood, and Fust was imprisoned. Though Fust was later freed after the bibles' origins were revealed, many still believed he was in league with Satan, thus the phrase.

Another possible origin is ascribed to Aldus Manutius

Aldus Manutius

Aldus Pius Manutius , the Latinised name of Aldo Manuzio —sometimes called Aldus Manutius, the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson, Aldus Manutius, the Younger—was an Italian humanist who became a printer and publisher when he founded the Aldine Press at Venice.His publishing legacy includes...

, a well known Venetian

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 printer of the renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

, and founder of the Aldine Press

Aldine Press

Aldine Press was the printing office started by Aldus Manutius in 1494 in Venice, from which were issued the celebrated Aldine editions of the classics . The Aldine Press is famous in the history of typography, among other things, for the introduction of italics...

, who was denounced by detractors for practicing the black arts (early printing was long associated with devilry). The assistant to Manutius was a young boy of African descent who was accused of being the embodiment of Satan and dubbed the printer's devil.

One likely source stems from the fact that worn and broken lead type is thrown into a hellbox

Hellbox

A hellbox is a receptacle where cast metal sorts are thrown after printing. The job of sorting the type from the hellbox and putting it back into the job case was given to the apprentice, known as a printer's devil...

, which the printer's devil must take to the furnace for melting and recasting.

Finally, English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 tradition links the origin of printer's devil to the assistant of the first English printer and book publisher, William Caxton

William Caxton

William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...

. Caxton's assistant was named "Deville" which evolved to "devil" over time, as that name was used to describe other printers' apprentices.