Emphatic Diaglott - Publishing History

Publishing History

A nephew of Benjamin Wilson wrote this account of the production of The Diaglott:

"While I was a boy, my father put me into The Gospel Banner office to learn the printing business. It was during this time, that the EMPHATIC DIAGLOTT was translated and printed. I can now in my mind’s eye see my Uncle Benjamin, sitting at his desk, making a literal word for word translation of the New Testament. I remember seeing the Greek type arrive from England. Many readers of the Diaglott may not be aware that my Uncle not only translated the Diaglott, but took charge of the mechanical work as well. He electro-typed the entire book himself. The following was the process he followed. As each page of the Diaglott was put into type, he took an impression of the page of type in wax. This wax mold was then blackened with very fine blacklead dust. He had a vat containing acid. In this acid he hung a copper plate, and also the wax mold, before he went home at night. In the morning he would find the wax mold would be covered with a thin sheet of copper. This acid dissolved the copper, and the black lead attracted it to the wax mold. He then made metal plates out of melted metal and fastened the copper sheet upon it. He then printed the first edition of the book, from these plates, on a hand press. I used to ink the plate by a soft roller, while he worked the press."

Although Wilson prepared the plates himself, the first edition was published in 1865 by Orson Squire Fowler of Fowler and Wells Ltd. of New York. Fowler and Wells were phrenologists who published a periodical to which Walt Whitman contributed, and also published his Leaves of Grass. (Fowler also had an earlier indirect connection to Wilson's associates among the Christadelphians through having employed Robert Roberts on a trip to Huddersfield in 1861.)

After Wilson's death in 1900, the plates and copyright were inherited by his heirs. Charles Taze Russell, then president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, approached Wilson's family via a third party and obtained the copyright, and at some later point, the plates. The Society published the Diaglott in 1902, and later had the type reset for publication on its own presses in 1927, with an additional printing in 1942.

In 1952 the copyright to the Diaglott expired and it fell into the public domain. The Watch Tower Society's sold the Diaglott inexpensively (offering it free of charge from 1990), making it non-viable for others to print until the depletion of that inventory. Others such as Wilson's home church, Church of the Blessed Hope, had considered reprinting their own edition; in 2003 the Miami church of the group, with support from Christadelphians in the United Kingdom and the United States published their own edition, with a new preface.

The public domain status of The Emphatic Diaglott has made it a popular online translation.