Zazzle, for example, spent three years developing about 50 inks that would bind to different materials, as diverse as cotton and plastic, and built on-demand printing software so that its factory in San Jose, Calif., can create and ship a personalized item in 24 hours.
"This city is built on creativity," a print ad asserts, listing examples like Pewabic pottery, founded in Detroit in 1903; the Detroit Derby Girls, an all-female, amateur, flat-track roller derby league; and the Von Bondies, a rock band.
The Protestant Reformation, assisted by the spread of printing, built on the banned 14th-century English manuscript translation by John Wycliffe, and made steady efforts to disseminate the Word in intelligible form.
But several stumbles in the past few weeks have demonstrated some of the risks for a print culture built on careful reporting, layers of editing and time for reflection as it moves onto platforms where speed is everything and attitude sometimes trumps values like accuracy and restraint.
The Guardian has already built on its long heritage as a print newspaper to embrace a transformative digital-first strategy which has seen theguardian.com become the third largest English-speaking newspaper website in the world*.
During the period of Lutheran ownership the only now extant building, a c. 1890 print shop, was built on the land; the buildings associated with the Transcendentalists, most recently the Margaret Fuller Cottage, had burned down by the 1980s.
Having learned from what happened in music and print publishing, entertainment companies, built on the still enormous riches of television, have carved their own digital route to consumers.
The store is built on Zazzle's platform, which handles the printing, shipping, and billing.
Print publishing is becoming a business built on rich people who read.
Despite its broad expansion into radio, print and digital outlets, ESPN's greatest strength is built on the power of video.
