Full name: William Caxton Born: Between 1415 - 1425 Invention/Achievement: The first printing press in Britain  Date of introduction/Achievement: 1476 Died: 1491/2

It's fair to say that William Caxton transformed cultural life in England by being the first to print books in moveable type and also to publish them.  Despite this fame, some details of his life are sketchy.  He was born somewhere in Kent, possibly in Hadlow or Tenterden, probably sometime between 1415 and 1424.  

By 1438 he was apprenticed to Robert Large, a prominent mercer who was Master of the Mercers Company and Lord Mayor of London in 1439.  Large died in 1441 and after this Caxton began making trips to Brugge and settled there in 1453.  He prospered and became an influential member of the English trading community in Flanders and Holland.  

In 1463 he became Governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London, his business travels took him to Burgundy where he became part of the household of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy (the sister of the English King Edward IV) possibly as her financial adviser.  

Here by 1471 he had translated Raoul Le Fèvre's "Recueil de histories de Troye".  He later wrote how his "… pen became worn, his hand weary, his eye dimmed" with copying in longhand.  

Some 20 years earlier Gutenberg had introduced printing with moveable type to Europe.  Caxton went to Cologne and at great personal cost learnt the techniques of printing.  

In 1474 he set up a printing press in Brugge and in 1475 printed "Recueil de histories de Troye", the first book printed in English. Then in 1476 he set up a printing press at Westminster in London and among his earliest output were Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and "Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers".  

In all, Caxton is known to have produced over 100 books, 80% of them in English.  Caxton catered for a wide public with his output including an encyclopaedia and the first illustrated book printed in English.

As well as being a printer, he was a translator with a working knowledge of French, Dutch and Latin, publisher and bookseller.  

He is also credited with helping to standardise the English language.  He died in 1491 or 1492 and was buried in St Margaret's Westminster.