Joseph Meyer (publisher)
Joseph Meyer was a German industrialist and publisher, most noted for his encyclopedia, Meyers Konversations-Lexikon.Biography
Meyer was born at Gotha, Germany, and was educated as a merchant in Frankfurt am Main. He went to London in 1816, but returned to Germany in 1820 after business adventures and stock speculations fell through. Here he invested in enterprises like textile-trade. Soon after the first steam-hauled railway had started in December 1835, Meyer started to make business plans how to start the first railways. He also bought some concessions for iron mining. In 1845, he founded the Deutsche Eisenbahnschienen-Compagnie auf Actien.
Meyer operated very successfully as a publisher, employing a system of serial subscription to publications, which was new at that time. To this end he founded a company, Bibliographisches Institut, in Gotha in 1826. It published several editions of the Bible, works of classical literature, atlases, the world in pictures on steel engravings, and an encyclopaedia,. His company grew substantially, and in 1828 he moved it from Gotha to Hildburghausen, where he died thirty years later.
