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Star Lore Officina Typographica The Printing Office

Officina Typographica is a now obsolete constellation in the southern hemisphere, created in 1801 by Johann Elert Bode. In 1801, German astronomer Johann Elert Bode published a large star atlas called Uranographia sive astrorum. The atlas marked the climax of an epoch of artistic representation of the constellations. Among the more than 100 constellations presented were four personally developed by Bode. Honores Friderici, created in 1787 honored Bode's patron, Prussian King Frederick the Great. The other three, first shown in Uranographia, celebrated the age of enlightenment and discovery.

At the same time as Bode published his star catalogue covering 17,240 stars, French astronomer Joseph Jérôme de Lalande published a catalogue containing more than three times as many stars, 47,390 to be precise. Three years earlier, in 1798, Bode and Lalande had met at a conference in Gotha, Germany and had discussed the creation of new constellations, commemorating epoch making German and French inventions. The result were two proposals, Lalande's Globus Aerostaticus, honoring the Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloon and Bode's Officina Typographica, the Printing Office, commemorating the invention of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press in 1439. As described by Ian Ridpath, Bode depicted the constellation "... as a case of movable type with composing stick; the frisket, a frame with four windows that folded over the printing paper; the tympan, on which the paper was placed; two inking pads to ink the type; and stacks of paper in the background. Oddly the printing press itself, which pressed the inked type against the paper, was not shown by Bode." Bode originally called his creation Buchdrucker-Werkstatt (Print-Shop). In Urania's Mirror in 1824, it appeared as Atelier Typographique. Ludwig Preyssinger, in 1862 in his Astronomischer Bilderatlas called it Atelier de l’Imprimeur and Eliza A. Bowen in 1888 in Astronomy by Observation used the term Antlia Typographiae. The main stars (by modern designation) of Officina Typographica were 5, 6, 16 and 20 Puppis. In 1922, when the IAU did not include Bode's creations in their list of 88 official constellations, the stars were "returned" to the constellation Puppis. Sources: Wikipedia, Ian Ridpath, SkyEye John C. Barentine: The Lost Constellations, The Philosophical Magazine, Vol III, p. 384

Officina Typographica in Uranographia Atelier Typographique in Urania's Mirror Early printing office (1568), showing details of the designs in Uranographia and Urania's Mirror; Source: Wikipedia

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