Greek Printing Houses on the Eve of Revolution:
Chios and Kydonies 

The printing houses of Kydonies (Ayvalik) and Chios were intrinsically connected to the Greek Enlightenment, but operated only briefly from 1819 to 1821 when they were destroyed by the Turks. The printing house in Kydonies was connected with the local school, known as the Academy. The French philhellene printer Ambroise Firmin Didot, a friend and publisher of Adamantios Korais in Paris, met the intellectual Theophilos Kairis, a professor at the Kydonies Academy, in 1816. To serve its printing requirements, the Academy sent one of its graduates, Konstantinos Tombras, as an apprentice at Didot’s printing house in Paris to learn the art of printing. In 1818 Tombras brought back with him Greek printing types and a press donated by Didot. The Kydonies printing house was manned by Tombras and Konstantinos Demidis and produced at least seven known publications. It was destroyed on 3 June 1821.
The Chios printing house operated roughly at the same time, on the instigation of Adamantios Korais. The appointment of one of the most prominent intellectuals of the Greek Enlightenment, Neophytos Vamvas, as director of the Chios Academy in 1815, and the formation of an important library on the island ushered the founding of the local printing house. As in Kydonies, printing types were ordered from Didot in Paris. The German J. D. G. Bayrhoffer was responsible for printing. Despite its brief operation, the printing house published eight books to cover the educational needs of the Chios Academy.