DEVILS TOWER, a national reservation, technically known as a national monument, on the Belle Fourche river about 20 m. north-west of Sundance in Crook county, Wyoming, U.S.A.
DE VINNE, THEODORE LOW the most eminent American printer during the later 19th century and the first decade of the 2oth. He was known as an authority on the history of typography and was the author of many scholarly books on this subject. Born at Stamford, Conn., on Dec. 25, 1828, he took the first steps toward learning his trade in 1843 in a print ing office at Fishkill, N.Y., but entered on his regular apprentice ship soon after in the office of the Gazette at Newburgh, N.Y. In 1847 he went to New York city and after working in several offices, in 1849 entered the employ of Francis Hart, one of the leading printers in that city, a relation destined to prove both happy and permanent. From work as a job compositor, he gradu ated in 1850 into the position of foreman. Nine years later, when De Vinne was offered a partnership elsewhere, Hart decided to hold him by making him a member of the firm. At this period the business of Francis Hart and Co. was tending more and more to book printing, a field to which De Vinne devoted most of his efforts from that time onward. About 1864 De Vinne began to write on printing, his earliest contributions dealing with the economic aspects of the business, but his attention soon turned to the aspects of typographic style and the history of the craft.
In 1873 the firm began to print St. Nicholas and soon after took on the Century Magazine, in printing the illustrations for which some new standards were established. The Century Dic tionary was another job of importance produced under De Vinne's direction.
Francis Hart died in 1877 and in 1883 the name of the firm was changed to Theodore L. De Vinne and Company, the plant coming to be known as the De Vinne press, which earned a repu tation as the outstanding printing office of the country. De Vinne was one of the founders of the Grolier Club and one of its most active members, printing most of the early books issued by that organization, and writing or editing a number of them. He died on Feb. 16, 1914.
As a printer De Vinne was a craftsman of high standards and stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries, but he could not be regarded as a great creative artist. His simplest books were his best. De Vinne's most important contributions to typo graphic literature were: The Practice of Typography (1900–o4), a series of four manuals; The Invention of Printing (1876); Christopher Plantin and the Plantin-Moretus Museum at Antwerp (1888) ; and Notable Printers of Italy during the Fifteenth Cen tury (1910). (D. C. MGM.)