PRINTING 



411 



board, since known us a. platen, which is movable 

 vertically, and presses on a forme of type laid on 

 an unresisting hard surface parallel to it. The 

 two, between which was the paper, were brought 

 together by a powerful screw, and thus the paper 

 was squeezed down on the forme. This rudiment- 

 ary appliance was improved from time to time, as is 

 shown in various pictures of printing-office interiors. 

 The wooden printing-press was brought to its 

 ultimate degree of perfection in the later part of 

 the 17th century. Moxon, the first technical 

 writer on printing, described in 1683 what he 

 called 'a newly invented press.' This was the 

 old wooden press as improved by Blaeu of Amster- 

 dam (fig. 5). 



This press continued to be generally used until 

 the close of the 18th century. About 1800 Charles 

 Million, third Earl Stanhope, was instrumental in 

 producing a much improved printing apparatus. 



Fig. 5. Old Common Press. 



The press which l>ears his name was made entirely 

 of iron, and the strength thus obtained enabled a 

 forme to be printed on it double the size of that 

 which could l>e done on a wooden press. There 

 was a most ingenious system of links and levers, 

 by means of which the approach to the type of the 

 platen, and its withdrawal, were accelerated. The 

 greatest leverage and consequently the greatest 

 pressure were obtained when the forme and platen 

 came into contact. These arrangements enabled 

 the pressmen to print at the rate of 200 per hour 

 on one side of the sheet or 100 per hour on both 

 aides. After this several inventors turned their 

 attention to the improvement of the hand-press. 

 Clymer, an American, in his Columbian press, 

 discarded the screw, the central feature of previous 

 presses, and gained his power from a combination 

 of powerful levers. About 1823 an excellent press, 

 called the Albion, was brought out by Mr K. \V. 

 Cope of London, in which the pressure was gained 

 by forcing an inclined bar of steel from a diagonal 

 to a vertical position, forcing down the platen, the 

 impression taking place when the piece of steel was 

 brought into the vertical position. The Columbian 

 and the Albion presses enabled the printer to print 

 on one side of the paper at the rate of 250 sheets 

 per hour. Such presses are now, except for pecu- 

 liar kinds of work or when very few impressions 

 of a forme are required, quite obsolete, being 

 superseded by ' machines ' on which the various 

 operations of press-work are done more or less 

 automatically. 



The earliest inventors of 'printing' machines 

 coupled together the two arts of printing on 

 paper and on calico and other textile fabrics. 

 Adkin and Walker in 1772 patented a machine 

 which was the type of a modern rotary letterpress 

 machine. It was 'for stamping and printing' on 



paper, cotton, and other cloths, ' whereby the 

 printing on such materials would be greatly facili- 

 tated and rendered much less expensive, and more 

 perfect and exact.' The words fully and clearly 

 indicate the advantages of rotary over flat platen 

 printing. Amongst other suggestions of a cognate 

 nature made about this time the most remarkable 

 was that of William Nicholson of London, the 

 editor of a scientific journal. In 1790 he took out 

 a patent which foreshadowed nearly every funda- 

 mental improvement even in the most advanced 

 machines of the present day. He contemplated an 

 apparatus in which formes or plates were to be 

 fastened to the surface of a cylinder ; the inking to 

 be supplied by a roller and distributed by smaller 

 rollers ; the impression to be cylindrical, the paper 

 being caused to pass between the printing cylinder 

 and one covered with cloth or leather. Nichol- 

 son never actually constructed a machine, and 

 although his patent was a marvellous forecast of 

 the methods soon to be adopted in letterpress 

 printing, he cannot be awarded the honour of 

 being the inventor of the printing-machine. 



Hitherto the evolution of the type-printing 

 machine from the calico-printing machine has been 

 completely overlooked by historians of printing, 

 yet the connection is almost obvious. Nicholson's 

 apparatus belonged to the same category. The 

 distinction of first actually making a printing- 

 machine was reserved for a German printer, 

 Frederick Konig (q.v. ), who commenced experi- 

 ments with the modest, and, as it proved, mistaken 

 view of accelerating by making more automatic the 

 ordinary hand-press. He came to London in 1806, 

 and patented a new platen-machine. The idea 

 was but crude, and never put into execution. It 

 is not unlikely that about this time Konig became 

 acquainted with the ideas patented by Nicholson 

 (see Goebel, Friedrich Konig imd die Erfindung 

 der Schitell-]rresse, Stuttgart, 1883). At any rate 

 Konig abandoned his project for accelerating flat 

 printing. In 1811 he took out a patent for what 

 we would now call a single-cylinder machine i.e. 

 one in which the impression was given by a 

 cylinder, the inking being done by rollers, and the 

 paper carried through the apparatus on tapes. 

 The type bed moved to and fro, and the cylinder 

 had an intermittent or stop motion, affording time 

 for the feeding of the sheets. The glue and treacle 

 composition had not been discovered, and leather 

 inking-rollers had to be used. Mr John Walter of 

 the limes was so struck with the apparent possi- 

 bilities of this method of printing that he engaged 

 Kimig to make for him a double-cylinder machine 

 which should print two copies of a forme of the 

 newspaper, but on one side only of the sheet at 

 once. This was completed in 1814, and on the 

 28th November of that year a newspaper was for 

 the first time in any country printed by a machine 

 driven by steam-power. This machine printed 

 1800 impressions per hour, completing 900 sheets, 

 and it was used uy the Times for several years. 

 In 1818 Edward Cowper invented several important 

 improvements, including a flat ink-distributing 

 table, with distributing-rollers, forme-inking rollers, 

 and ink-fountain. These principles are still to lie 

 found in single-cylinder machines. Cowper was 

 called upon to perfect Konig's machine and did so, 

 mainly by taking away the old inking-apparatus 

 and substituting his own. In the same year 

 Konig patented a perfecting machine which 

 resembled two single-cylinder machines placed 

 with their cylinders towards each other. The 

 sheet was conveyed from one cylinder to the other 

 by means of tapes so arranged that in the course of 

 its track it was turned over and the second side 

 presented to the second cylinder. At the first 

 cylinder the sheet received its impression from the 



