INDUSTRIES 



designed for the printing of calicoes and other 

 textile fabrics. In 1790 William Nicholson 

 took out a patent for a printing machine 

 which has been said to foreshadow every 

 fundamental improvement even in the most 

 advanced machines of the present day.' In- 

 asmuch however as he never actually con- 

 structed a machine, Nicholson cannot be 

 claimed as the inventor of the printing 

 machine.* The inventor whose efforts in 

 this direction were the first to bear fruit was 

 Frederick KOnig, a native of Saxony, who 

 came over to England about the year 1804. 

 His machine, patented in 1 8 ii , attracted the 

 attention of Mr. John Walter of the Times, 

 and on 28 November 18 14 that paper was 

 printed by steam and was the first in the 

 world so printed. So far however and for 

 many years after the cylindrical mode of 

 printing consisted of the substitution of a 

 cylinder for the flat platen of the hand press 

 in order to give the impression, the type 

 being set in flat formes. KSnig's first 

 machine was a single cylinder one and printed 

 on one side of the paper only. A further 

 improvement consisted in the method of 

 inking the type and was due to the inven- 

 tions of Edward Cowper. Previously to this 

 a Bermondsey engineer, Bryan Donkin, had 

 in conjunction with Bacon, a Norwich 

 printer, taken out in 18 13 a patent for a 

 machine in which the glue and treacle com- 

 position was first used for the inking rollers 

 in place of the old pelt balls or the leather 

 rollers of Konig's first machine.^ 



The premises in Bolt Court having been 

 consumed by fire in 1719 Konig's machine, 

 as improved by Cowper, was purchased by 

 Mr. Applegath, who has been already men- 

 tioned as a printer at Lambeth. He applied 

 other improvements by which its powers of 

 printing were doubled. The cylinders were 

 made to print the sheets at every revolution 

 instead of at every other revolution as before, 

 and, most important of all, to print on both 

 sides of the paper ; 3,600 sheets could thus 

 be printed by it in an hour. In its improved 

 condition it was repurchased for the Times. 

 In 1826 Messrs. Applegath and Cowper's 

 machines were said to be used in printing the 

 Morning Herald, Morning Chronicle, St. 

 Jameses Chronicle, and English Chronicle, and 

 to be in use at the king's printers and several 

 of the largest printing offices in London, as 

 at the Imprimerie Royale and several private 



" Pat. of Invention, No. 1748. 

 2 See art. ' Printing ' in Chamber^! Encyclopaedia 

 (1891) 



offices in Paris and St. Petersburg.* In 1848 

 Applegath invented another machine in 

 which the type was set on a vertical cylinder 

 nearly 6 feet in diameter, the paper to be 

 printed being placed in sheets on eight other 

 cylinders. This also was adopted by the 

 Times, but proved expensive and liable to 

 frequent stoppages, and was discarded in 

 1857 for a somewhat similar machine in 

 which, however, the cylinders were hori- 

 zontal instead of vertical, by Messrs. Hoe & 

 Co. of New York." It is with the later 

 inventions of this firm, which has since 

 become established in Southwark as well as 

 New York, that we must bring to a conclu- 

 sion this sketch of the evolution of the 

 modern printing machine, so far especially as 

 the labour and ingenuity of Surrey engineers 

 and printers have tended to bring it about. 



One of the most striking features of con- 

 temporary newspaper enterprise is the in- 

 creasing demand for rotary web printing 

 machines, which but a little more than 

 thirty years ago had not been introduced 

 into this or any country. At the present 

 day these machines are in use in every 

 quarter of the civilized globe where news- 

 papers are printed, and in the United King- 

 dom there is hardly a large town which does 

 not possess at least one or two of them. In- 

 deed, individual journals sometimes now pos- 

 sess as many as eight or even more of these 

 machines. As a result the manufacture of 

 such presses has come to be a large and im- 

 portant industry, and of the great firms which 

 are devoted to the designing and building of 

 them none is better known than that of 

 Messrs. R. Hoe & Co. of New York and 

 Southwark. 



The founder of the firm was Robert Hoe, 

 who was born in 1784, and was the son of 

 a farmer in Leicestershire, England. He 

 emigrated to the United States in 1803, and 

 soon established himself in trade and formed 

 a partnership with two of his brothers-in-law, 

 Matthew and Peter Smith, as press makers. 

 The two brothers died in 1823, and the 

 business was taken over by Hoe, who how- 

 ever was compelled through failing health to 

 relinquish it in 1832 and died in the fol- 

 lowing year. He was succeeded by his 

 eldest son, Richard March Hoe, and Mat- 

 thew Smith, son of his deceased partner, both 

 of whom had been associated with him since 

 1823. Their steadily increasing prosperity 

 led soon after to the erection of extensive 

 buildings on Broome Street, New York, 



3 Pat. of Invention, No. 3757. 



T. Allen, Hist, of Lambeth, 314 seq. 

 Chambers^ s Encyclopcedia, art. ' Printing.' 



423 



