Definition
Press copies are reproductions of handwritten documents made by pressing the original against dampened tissue or thin paper, transferring a mirror-image impression of the ink. The resulting copy captures the handwriting of the original and was commonly used in legal and commercial practice before carbon paper and photocopying became widespread. In legal proceedings, press copies were treated as secondary evidence of the contents and authorship of the original document, admissible to prove both substance and genuineness of the writing when the original was unavailable or when authentication was in dispute.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Press copy" in general usage refers broadly to a copy of a document made available to the press or media, or to a complimentary copy of a book or publication sent to reviewers.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A copy of a letter or other document made by a copying press, a device using moisture and pressure to transfer ink impressions.
The gap here is significant for researchers. In modern common usage, "press copy" almost exclusively suggests a media or publicity context. In legal and historical documentary sources, the term has nothing to do with the press as an institution — it refers to a mechanical copying method. A researcher encountering "press copies" in nineteenth-century legal records, court transcripts, or evidentiary disputes should not read any media-law meaning into the term.
Common Confusion
Press copies should not be confused with certified copies, attested copies, or examined copies. A certified copy carries official authentication by a public officer; a press copy is simply a physical reproduction made by a mechanical process with no official sanction. The admissibility of press copies rested on the reliability of the transfer process and the legibility of the resulting impression, not on any official certification. Researchers consulting historical evidence law should also distinguish press copies from office copies (fair copies made by a clerk) and from lithographic or printed reproductions.
Why It Matters in Research
This is a term anchored almost entirely in the nineteenth century. Its relevance to the Law Mind corpus is primarily evidentiary and documentary rather than doctrinal: researchers working with pre-twentieth-century court records, commercial correspondence, and evidence treatises will encounter press copies as a recognized category of secondary evidence.
The central legal question around press copies in historical sources was authentication and admissibility. Courts and treatise writers addressed whether the impression faithfully preserved the characteristics of the original handwriting sufficiently to allow a witness familiar with that handwriting to testify to its genuineness. The answer was generally yes — press copies were treated analogously to partially obliterated originals, meaning imperfect legibility did not automatically disqualify them.
Researchers should watch for two traps. First, the technology's limitations matter for reading historical records: press copies were often faint, smeared, or partially transferred, and documents described as "press copies" in an archive may be difficult to read or may have gaps. Second, the evidentiary rules governing press copies belong to a pre-Federal Rules of Evidence world. Arguments about their admissibility appear in treatises and case law from roughly 1820 through 1920; after photocopying and carbon copying rendered the technology obsolete, the specific legal category largely disappeared. Modern best-evidence and authentication rules subsume whatever function press copy doctrine once served.
The term does not carry forward into modern evidentiary practice under that name. Researchers should not expect to find statutory or regulatory definitions of "press copies" in twentieth-century or later sources.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's is the primary historical dictionary source for this term, and its treatment is narrow but pointed. Bouvier focuses on the evidentiary sufficiency of press copies for handwriting authentication: the position is that a witness with accurate knowledge of a person's handwriting can testify to genuineness from a press copy with the same reliability as from an original. The comparison to writings "partially obliterated by damp and exposure" is instructive — it signals that courts did not demand perfection from the impression, only sufficient legibility to permit meaningful identification.
What Bouvier does not address is the procedural foundation for introducing a press copy: the proponent would typically need to establish that the original was unavailable, account for its absence, and lay a foundation that the copy was made by the press-copy process from the genuine original. Bouvier's entry captures the authentication piece but is silent on the predicate showing required before the copy reached a jury. Researchers relying solely on Bouvier's brief treatment for a complete picture of the admissibility framework will need to supplement with contemporary evidence treatises.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Encyclopedia entries on Freedom of the Press (constitutional_104 and constitutional_156) address press freedom, shield laws, and reporter's privilege — doctrines entirely unrelated to press copies as a documentary and evidentiary concept. Those entries should not be consulted in connection with this term. No Law Mind Encyclopedia entry directly addresses nineteenth-century documentary evidence or the mechanics of secondary evidence authentication; researchers should work from the dictionary and treatise layer of the corpus for this topic.