Benjamin Burrows was a pioneer of alternative music printing. He designed and made – for he was a practical engineer – his own machine for imprinting music on to wax stencils. His machine was not exactly a typewriter but consisted of several small platforms to which were attached two or three hinged keys. These were positioned over the wax stencil and typed the music symbols onto the wax skins. The print was then achieved by using the stencil on a duplicator like the well-established Gestetner.

By the 1940s, Burrows’ small Bodnant Press had assumed great importance in his life, both for the publishing of new compositions, and for the teaching materials essential to his work as teacher of Harmony and Composition, both to local students and to his correspondant students. Burrows built up a body of subscribers to whom a monthly circular was sent.
In 1942, the Leicestershire Reference Library joined the subscription list and received copies of Bodnant Press publications. It is here that one may find the most comprehensive stock of the material for teaching that Burrows produced, and the music, both his own and that of his pupils and friends, that he published.
At the most vigorous period of its existence, the Bodnant Press was quite widely known. Apart from the publicity it received from the network of postal students to whom the teaching material was sent, its editions were sold by the London Music Shop, Dale Forty's of Birmingham, Piggott and Co. of Dublin and, locally, by Russell and Son of Leicester.