Monrocq, Jean Noël

Jean Noël Monrocq (December 25, 1819 - February 18, 1913) was a French printer and bookseller active in Paris in the mid to late 19th century. Monrocq was the son of a farmer, born on Christmas Day, hence his name, in Trelly, La Manche, France. In 1839, he moved to Paris for a more urban lifestyle. Although he had little formal education, he found work with the Parisian book and print seller Delarue. Meeting with success, he opened his own print shop in 1848. He initially applied for a bookseller's patent in 1853, but the application was initially rejected. It was formally approved in 1877. In 1859, he received a lithographer's patent for artistic and industrial prints for educational purposes. He took over the presses of Louis Etienne Stanislas Petit in 1859, but did not receive a formal intaglio imprint until 1865. In March 1874, he established a branch of his lithographic printing press in Ivry, Rue de Vitry, where he moved some of his equipment. He became known for zincographic lithography - the process of etching plates into zinc, which he falsely claimed to have invented. He did, nonetheless, contribute significantly to the industrialization of printing with zinc plates. Being of cheap materials, simple to make, and easy to modify, zinc plates became the standard for news printing. Zincography under Monrocq was also ideally suited to map production, and Monrocq produced a significant corpus of maps, spearheading the movement to centralize map production in France. The firm continued well after Monrocq's death, issuing maps for both Hachette Taride. For a time, his son, Léon Monrocq (1857 - 1902), worked with him, specifically printing maps, but tragically, he died young and did not inherit the business. The firm was taken over by the founder's son-in-law, who took the name Gaillac-Monrocq. Jean Noël Monrocq's grandson, Lucien Monrocq, eventually took over the business. Jean Noël Monrocq is interred in the family crypt at Paris's famous Père Lachaise Cemetery.