Automatic While the above de scribed development of cylinder presses was going on. the small platen press was not forgotten by inventors, who improved upon these machines, and brought out a new class, that are properly styled automatic machines, because they do not require hand feeding of the paper, sheet by sheet. Kidder, of Boston, was one of the first to adapt the reciprocating platen press to use paper fed in from an endless roll, and cut off into sheets after printing. About the same time Meisel of Boston began building i special ma chines, roll-fed, and automatic n operation. These machines were confined to a limited class of work and printed from flat beds. Harris brought out a press in which the type-form was replaced by a curved electrotype plate, mounted on a cylinder, and this not only worked auto matically but permitted high speed. This was so successful that a whole line of automatic presses has been brought out by the Harris Company, which has sold them all over the world. Wood and Nathan improved the old type of Gordon jobber by adding a paper feed ing and delivery device, which has become known as the Standard press. Kelly built a small cylinder, self-feeding, automatic press, which is sold by the American Type Founders' Company, and is largely used. The Autopress, Osterlind, New Era and Stokes and Smith presses are others which have successfully en tered this field.
Offset Presses.— Late in the 19th century a New Jerseyman named Rubel conceived an offset press, in which the printing was first done on a rubber cylinder, and this rubber cylinder rotated in contact with a printing cylinder, so that a continuous sheet of paper could be run and printed between the cylinders. The idea was developed and the first commercial ma chines employed by A. H. Kellogg and Company of New York. This machine brought litho graphic principles into the field of the typo graphic printer, and several concerns built them, among the most successful being the Harris Company. They are occupying a wider and wider field, because.they permit beautiful artis tic illustrations to be executed on a cheap, coarse-finish class of paper. The machines offer special convenience for combining text with illustrations, and are in increasing demand for the printing of illustrated catalogues.
Newspaper Presses.—.The demand for faster presses of greater capacity grew enor mously with the years of the 19th century, and invention kept pace. The first step forward was the Hoe type-revolving machine, which was put at work in the Philadelphia Public Ledger office in 1846. They had put into effect the basic idea of fastening the type to the main cylinder, while smaller cylinders carried the sheets of paper to receive the impression. There was designed an apparatus for fastening the columns of type in a form on a large cen tral cylinder in a horizontal_position, each page in its own cast iron bed. column rules tapering to the base, with a special ar rangement for locking up the forms, held the type in place with the surface forming a true circle. An automatic inking apparatus carried the main ink-well beneath the cylinder, with distributing rollers between the impression cylinders. This first machine was built with four impression cylinders touching the type cylinder so that two were on each side and one as far above the other as possible. The frame
work of the machine bore four feed tables. At each a boy fed the sheets of paper to the auto matic grippers, operated by cams, on the im pression cylinders, which carried them around against the revolving forms of the central type cylinder. The printed sheet was conducted out by tapes under the feed board. and the patented sheet-flier, with its long wooden fingers fastened to the shaft and operated likewise by cam and springs, piled them upon the delivery tables. Upon this machine, with 2,000 revolutions an hour, 8000 sheets were struck off printed on one side. The capacity of the machine was found to be greatly in excess of this, and the number of impression cylinders and accessories was increased to 10, giving the machine a prod uct of 20,000 sheets an hour. Though this machine was cumbersome, and at times threw out type rather liberally, it met a need and the impetus given to the newspaper business was tremendous. Circulations that had been lim ited to the capacity of the old bed-and-cylinder press were rapidly increased twenty-fold. Many new papers were started. This press maintained its supremacy for 20 years and 175 were built. In 1848 the first sent abroad was set up in the office of La Patrie in Paris. Marinoni afterward built similar presses in Paris. The next great step was when there was perfected the process of making curved stereotype plates by the use of flexible paper matrices. A simple adaptation of the bed of the type-revolving machine provided for the clamp ing of stereotype plates on the cylinders in place of the type forms. The forms could now be du plicated. The large papers such as the New York Herald, the London Daily Telegraph and the London Standard each kept five presses in constant operation as circulation increased.
Web There remained yet another step before the increasing requirements of speed could be met. It was taken when William Bul lock, an American, of Philadelphia, invented in 1865 the first printing press to print from a continuous web or roll of paper. Thirty years before, Sir Rowland Hill had suggested the possibilities of such a machine based on those that printed cotton cloth from engraved cylin ders. But no practical working out of the problem in its details was offered. The Bullock press consisted of two plate cylinders and two impression cylinders, the second of which was made very large to lessen the offset from the first printed side of the paper. The stereotype plates were short of filling the whole circum ference of the form cylinders, because the sheets were cut before printing by knives set in the cylinders. This was the radical fault of the press. The sheets were then carried through the press by tapes and fingers and delivered by a series of automatic metal nippers on endless leather belts, placed at such a distance apart as to grasp each sheet successively as it came from the last printing cylinders. The Bullock press was perfected and came into considerable use. The New York Sun was the first newspaper to make use of them, and the New York Herald soon followed.