Basel Mission Press is the first printing press of coastal Karnataka and was established in 1841 at Balmatta, Mangalore, India. This printing press was gifted to Gottfried Weigle by Basel Mission of Switzerland who had been to Bombay to get a booklet printed. Tulu Kirthanegalu by the lithographic process was the first book printed in the Manguluru Branch in 1941. In 1841, Gottfried Weigle obtained a printing press from Bombay and brought it back to Mangalore in 1842 with two Marathi printing assistants. In 1842, they published a Kannada pamphlet by Moegling and made 1500 copies. The next item was Christian Greiner's Tulu translation of St. Matthew's Gospel. In July 1843, the press began the first Kannada newspaper called "Mangalur-samachar" edited by Hermann Moegling. Two issues a month were produced until February 1844, after which it was printed in Bellary. Basel Mission Press celebrated its 175th anniversary celebrations in 2016. Basel Mission Press is now renamed as Balmatta Institute of Printing Technology and Book Craft offers courses in printing technology and book binding. The press is being maintained by Karnataka Christian Education Society (KACES) since 1972
Early life of Gottfried Weigle
Gottfried Hartmann Weigle was born on 1 July 1816 in the house of a chairman in the village of Zell, a beautiful place on the banks of the Neckar River in Württemberg. After graduating in 1834 he joined the theological training in Tübingen. When he joined the apprenticeship, he specialized not only in teaching but also in various training. He came to India in 1840 after serving as a lecturer in Basel after being baptized at St. George's Church in 1836., who started the printing industry in 1841 in Mangalore.
Printing in Kannada
The East India Company used their powers to bring Roman scripts to the country's languages, but the British authorities, who first pulled the literary treasure of Hosanagadda (new Kannada), with the use of nails started the printing of Kannada from 1817 with the help of missionaries and natives. The British India company's government, to facilitate their administration funded specialist from missionaries to print Kannada, Telugu and Tamil languages. William Reeve of the London Mission produced an English to Kannada dictionary in 1824, and a Kannada to English dictionary in 1832, at the behest of the government of Madras. Krishnamacharya's Kannada grammar was printed in 1830. It was easy to assemble English nails when these prints were done. For the Kannada letters to be inserted, the Kannada letters were hand-inscribed and printed in the order of drawing images on a piece of wood. There are records of college presses using the same type of presses for Telugu and Kannada. Therefore, there are many works that have been printed in Kannada books using the letter prints that look like Telugu letters. For example, William Carey's first Kannada grammar, printed in Calcutta, 1817 and the New Testament, part of the 1824 Truth Book. Later in the Bellary Mission Press, many parts of Kannada truth published by John Honds were printed.Later in the Bellary Mission Press, many parts of Kannada truth published by John Honds were printed.Later in the Bellary Mission Press, many parts of Kannada satyaveda published by John Honds were printed in the similar way. The printing of "Mangaluru Samachar" newspaper is considered as the milestone in the history of printing technology in India. Malayalam - English dictionary of Hermann Gundert, a German missionary, scholar and linguistic was also printed as Basel Mission Press.
