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 born on Chrismtas day, hence his name, in Trelly, La Manche, the son of a farmer. 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. Meating some success, he opened his own print shop in 1848. He initially applied for a booksellers patent in 1853, but the application was initially rejected. It was formally approved in 1877. In 1859, he received a lithographers patent for artistic and industrial prints for education purposes. He took over the presses of Louis Etienne Stanislas Petit in 1859, but did not relieve 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 part of his equipment. He became known for zincographic lithography - the process of etching plates into zinc, which he claimed falsely to have invented. He did nonetheless, contributed significantly to the industrialization of the printing with zinc plates. Being cheap, simple to make, easy to modify, zinc plates became the standard for news printing. Zincography under Monrocq was also ideally suited to map production. The Monrocq produced a significant corpus of maps. The firm spearheaded the movement to centralize map production in France. The firm continued well after his death, issuing maps for both Hachette Taride. For a long time, his son, Léon Monrocq (1857 - 1902) worked with him specifically printing maps, unfortunately he died young. The firm for a time was operated by the founder's son-in-law, who took the name Gaillac-Monrocq. Jean Noël Monrocq's grandson Lucien Monrocq, eventually took over the publishing arm of the firm.



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