Jennifer Ouellette has long post about the history of printing, inspired by a very lucky encounter a book of sketches by Katsushika Hokusai. Apparently the Chinese invented movable type some time in the 11th Century, long before Guttenberg was born. And Thomas Edison invented the dear old mimeograph. But my favorite bit was this:
There was a device called the hectograph in the 1870s
This, of course, is impossible. As we all know, fanzines were produced on hectographs, and fanzines were not invented until the 1940s when science fiction fandom was invented. But maybe those hectographs were in China.
Yes, I know, I’m being silly. I put it down to the unexpected sight of blue sky two days in a row.
The word “fanzine” seems to have been coined by Louis Chauvenet (sp?) around 1940, but sf fans had been turning out such publications for 10 or 12 years by then, depending on whose claim you favor.
I remember one of our departed fannish legends who made claims about starting the first zine, and know that he backdated his claim after someone else came along who beat his original date.
Not to detract from your post, which I enjoyed — even 1930 would be a lot later than 1870.