July 14th is National Tape Measure Day! This day commemorates when Alvin J. Fellows of Connecticut was granted a patent for “Improvements in Tape Measures” on July 14, 1868. That improvement was a retractable tape measure. For today, Howard letterpress printed an image from a small hand carved woodcut of a tape measure. This woodcut, made in the 1890s, is from the Lewis Winter Collection. Like much of the cuts designed by Lewis Winter from 1888 to 1910 in his collection at our print shop at the Sacramento History Museum, they are of material goods likely for advertising purposes for newspapers at that time in Sacramento. There are a variety of other cuts depicting hardware goods in the collection. This was printed with red rubber base ink using our Washington hand press, which was made in 1852. #onthisday #tapemeasure #SacHistoryMuseum #museum #printing