Robert Aitken

Robert Aitken (1734–1802) was an Early American publisher and printer in Philadelphia and the first to publish an English language Bible in the newly formed United States. He was born in Dalkeith, Scotland.
He emigrated to Philadelphia in 1769, where he published the Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum in 1775–76.
Starting in Philadelphia as a bookseller in 1769 and 1771, Aitken started publication of The Pennsylvania Magazine in 1775 with content derived from the colonies. English political activist Thomas Paine, who just did immigrate to Philadelphia with a letter of recommendation from Benjamin Franklin, contributed two pieces to the magazine’s inaugural issue and Aitken hired him as editor. The Magazine’s readership rapidly expanded, achieving a greater circulation in the colonies than any American magazine up until that point. While Aitken had conceived of the magazine as nonpolitical, Paine brought a political perspective to its content, writing in its first issue that “every heart and hand seem to be engaged in the interesting struggle for American Liberty.”.
On March 8, 1775, an unsigned abolitionist essay titled African Slavery in America was published. It attacked slavery as an “execrable commerce” and “outrage against Humanity and Justice.”
Aitkin also printed the first copies of the New Testament to appear in the colonies, beginning in 1777, on through to 1781. He died in Philadelphia in 1802.