Magazine Presses.— The demand for, a higher grade of rapid printing adapted to maga zines has been catered to by the Cottrell Com pany,. which has brought out an entire series of rotaries, less rapid than the newspaper ma chines, but executing a very high grade of illus trated printing. Hoe, Goss and Scott also built presses of this character.
Straight-Line Presses.— The angle-bar press stood alone for a decade as having the only device, though somewhat cumbersome, for assembling the several sheets into one complete paper. Joseph L. Firm, foreman of the press room at Frank Leslie's publishing house, how ever, solved the problem in a new way, and in 1889 patented the straight-line press. His first design was a simple tandem press. Three sets of cylinders were set in a straight line, and the printed product of the first passed over the second, and of the first and second over the third, thus assembling all three sheets over a triangular °former* for folding, cutting and delivering. It was but a step, to secure econ omy of construction and space, to build the press in tiers instead of tandem. Firm had the usual fortune of poor inventors. His first order, which was for a sextuple press, came from the New York World, and its building exhausted his resources. When set up, in 1891, it was so crudely and badly built that, failing to work properly, it was condemned. Poverty followed, but not for long. The Goss Printing Press Company of Chicago became interested in the straight-line press invention, which was being pirated, and bought it. taking Mr. Firm into the company. Litigation followed and established the patent and harmony among the printing press makers. Improvement was rapid. These presses mark the final development of the power printing press. Evolution and the re quirements of the publishers of metropolitan newspapers have brought forward presses with various improvements of detail and in increasing sizes, until one press, so-called, is a compound of two, four, six, eight, 12 presses built into one frame, one above the other, side by side or tandem, or all three for economy of space and power. and efficiency, but the basic principle is the same,— a web of paper passes between two pairs of plate and impression cylinders and is printed on both sides; it is assembled (if on a double-supplement press or one of greater power), pasted, folded, cut or separated, folded again and delivered ready for the car rier or mail-room, at a speed of 48,000 eight page papers (the unit of manufacture) an hour; and with an accuracy that denotes exact ness and skill of manufacture, excellence of material and utmost care and nicety in adjust ment and operation.
The first improvement in the Hoe type of fast press was the quadruple (or four-fold) press built for the New York World in 1887. A further advance in 1891 produced the sex tuple (a six-fold press), so constructed that the cylinders were all parallel. Its delivery ca pacity was 72,000 eight-page papers in one hour, or 20 a second.
and delivering its product on the mezzanine floor. In 1903 the New York Herald increased the size of its paper from a six-column page to a seven-column page. It was able to make over its presses to accommodate the increased width of the web, though web and cylinders now barely clear the framework The Duplex Com pany of Battle Creek, Mich., manufactures what they term a °tubular° perfecting press, in which the plate cylinders are reduced in diameter, be coming literally tubes, that print continuously. These presses are very speedy. H. A. Wise Wood brought out in 1917 an improved perfect ing press designed to reduce the strains on the web of paper and permit more rapid printing.
Newspaper Color Ever search ing for new features, New York newspaper publishers in 1902-03 were planning and design ing supplements and main sheets embellished with color printing. Their scientific pressmen and the press-builders were called on to pro duce the desired effects. Walter Scott of Plain field, N. J., designed and built a very efficient press that was set up in the office of the New In 1896 an octuple (eight-fold) press was built for the New York World, with a corre sponding increase in output, and four double sextuples, with color-printing attachment, were constructed for the New York Journal. Even larger are the six giant double-octuple presses which R. Hoe and Company designed for Lloyd's Weekly, and other great newspapers continue to purchase these enormous presses.