The Inquirer published its first edition 196 years ago on this week in Philly history
On June 1, 1829, the first edition of the newspaper rolled off the flatbed press at No. 5 Bank Alley, now Moravian Street.
When the Pennsylvania Inquirer was born, there were no electric lights or typewriters. There were no telephones or telegraph instruments or trucks.
Yet on June 1, 1829, the first edition of the newspaper rolled off the flatbed press at No. 5 Bank Alley, now Moravian Street.
John Norvell and John R. Walker established the four-page, six-column daily, and did virtually all the work, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer: The Story of the Inquirer 1829 to the Present, published in 1956.
Now the city’s oldest paper, The Inquirer started as a morning edition (it would briefly become an afternoon paper later before returning to its original morning slot). The first subscription was $8 per year (payable half yearly in advance). It was delivered by mail at the beginning.
The paper was full of foreign news that arrived in packets delivered by boat. Its national news arrived by mail from Washington and New York. Norvell and Walker gathered the local news by walking to the nearby coffeehouses and interviewing their fellow Philadelphians, according to the Inquirer history book.
Walker was a practical printer, and Norvell was the former editor of the Philadelphia Aurora and Gazette. They promised editorially that the paper would be devoted “to the maintenance of the rights and liberties of the people, equally against the abuses as the usurpation of power.”
Advertisers in 1829 gave their copy to Walker, or told him what they wanted their ads to say, and he strolled over to a type case. “He set up the ad by hand, and placed it in the page form. Then when his four pages were completed, he placed them under his flatbed press and printed directly from the type,” according to the book.
The paper zealously supported Andrew Jackson’s presidency from the jump, but broke with Jackson a few years later for dissolving the Bank of the United States, which had its home in Philadelphia.
Lack of capital forced the partners to sell the paper in November ’29 to Jesper Harding, a former apprentice printer who rose to editor. He would later merge the older Democratic Press with the Pennsylvania Inquirer under the latter’s name.
The newspaper would not become the Philadelphia Inquirer until April 1860, one year before the start of the U.S. Civil War.
SEO editor Caryn Shaffer contributed to this article.