The seal of the Soncino Press and the name it represents date back half a millennium. The most famous of the first Jewish printers, the Soncino family hailed from the Alsatian town of Speyer and settled in Soncino, a village in northern Italy from which they took their name. Joshua Soncino set up one of the world's first Hebrew printing presses in 1484, on which he printed Soncino's first Hebrew book, the Talmud tractate Berakoth. He also produced the first printed Hebrew Bible complete with vowels--no mean feat for the early, primitive days of printing.
Upon Joshua Soncino's death, his nephew Gershom took the firm's helm, becoming one of the most successful and prolific printers of his time, publishing volumes in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Italian. Gershom Soncino adopted the family printing seal, the tower which we now use--a trademark that has come to symbolize the care and craftsmanship that was the hallmark of the early Hebrew printers.
Today, Soncino Press endeavors to carry on the tradition of those pioneers by continuing to reissue the great Hebrew classics with faithfully rendered English translations.