The story
It was first established in 1869, making it the first university publishing enterprise in the United States, but was inactive from 1884 to 1930.
The press was established in the College of the Mechanic Arts, as mechanical engineering was called in the 19th century, because engineers knew more about running steam-powered printing presses than literature professors. Since its inception, The press has offered work-study financial aid: students with previous training in the printing trades were paid for typesetting and running the presses that printed textbooks, pamphlets, a weekly student journal, and official university publications.
In 1955 the press was the first university press to publish paperback books, this move being "quickly followed by other university presses". During the 1950s the press also published paperback series including Great Seal Books and Cornell Paperbacks.
In 2010, the Mellon Foundation, whose President Don Michael Randel is a former Cornell Provost, awarded to the press a $50,000 grant to explore new business models for publishing scholarly works in low-demand humanities subject areas. With this grant, a book series was published titled "Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thoughts". Only 500 hard copies of each book in the series will be printed, with extra copies manufactured on demand once the original supply is depleted.
Other currently active series include "Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge" and Police/Worlds: Studies in security, crime and governance.
From Wikipedia’s article on Cornell University Press, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4