The first widely distributed printed edition of the United States Declaration of Independence was the Dunlap broadside.
Philadelphia printer John Dunlap produced the broadside in July 1776 after Congress approved the Declaration. It was a large single-sheet printing intended for rapid distribution, allowing the text to reach colonial governments, military officers, and the public far sooner than a bound book could have.
The first broadside listed John Hancock as president of Congress and Charles Thomson as secretary. It did not contain the famous set of 56 handwritten signatures found on the engrossed parchment. Those signatures were added later to the formal manuscript copy.
The broadside is named for Dunlap, not because he wrote the Declaration, but because he printed it. Mary Katharine Goddard later produced another important early printing in Baltimore, which included the names of the signers and identified her as the printer.