London gets up a head of steam

On November 29th, 1814, in a cramped London workshop smelling of hot metal and wet ink, Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer’s steam-driven printing press thundered into life – and the world quietly tipped into its modern age. The Times secretly ran its entire issue on this whirring mechanical wonder, doubling – no, quadrupling speed overnight. Londoners didn’t know it, but the very rhythms of their city – news, politics, scandal, the spread of ideas – had just been turned up a big notch. On the anniversary of that day London Calling tells the story of that breakthrough morning: clatter and clank, a hint of cloak-and-dagger secrecy, a dollop of London ingenuity, and the moment the printed word stepped onto the express train of history.