A HISTORY OF SURREY 



where the firm's premises still are. Matthew 

 Smith died in 1842, and Robert Hoe and 

 Peter Smith Hoe succeeded him. Richard 

 M. Hoe, better known as Colonel Hoe, con- 

 tinued in charge of the mechanical depart- 

 ment and devoted himself with great success 

 to inventions. As the inventor of the rotary 

 or ' lightning ' press he became well known 

 to printers throughout the world. His new 

 process was that we have already referred to 

 in connection with the printing of the Times. 

 It consisted in placing the types on a hori- 

 zontal cylinder revolving on its axis, against 

 which the sheets were pressed by exterior 

 smaller cylinders. The first such machine 

 introduced into England was for printing 

 Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper in 1856. The 

 machines required the presence of one person 

 at each exterior ' impression ' cylinder to 

 direct the entry and transit of the paper. 

 Ten cylinder machines turned out 20,000 

 impressions in an hour, but printed only on 

 one side of the sheet. 



Experiments were about this time being 

 made in the direction of a perfecting machine 

 that would print the paper continuously from 

 the web without cutting it. But it was not 

 until the successful substitution of curved 

 stereotype plates for pages of movable type 

 had been attained in 1859 that the idea was 

 rendered practicable. In 1861 the first web 

 press for newspaper printing was built by 

 William Bullock of Pittsburg, and in 1866 

 this was followed by the Walter Press, as the 

 machine has been named, wherewith the 

 Times was henceforth to be printed. This 

 machine is capable of printing 10,000 perfect 

 sheets per hour. In the meantime Messrs. 

 Hoe & Co. were making an improved web 

 rotary press, printing 12,000 copies per hour, 

 but the difficulty in increasing the speed still 

 further was in delivering the sheets at the fly. 

 It was not until 1873 when Hoe invented the 

 contrivance that first obviated this difficulty 

 — an accumulating cylinder on which six or 

 eight sheets were laid one above another, and 

 then delivered from the fly at one motion — 

 that the increased working speed of the per- 

 fecting machine went up to 1 8,000 per hour. 

 This first web rotary was made for the late 

 Mr. Edward Lloyd of Lloyd's News and the 

 Daily Chronicle^ and was adopted almost im- 

 mediately by the Daily Telegraph and 

 Standard and other leading newspapers. 



Colonel Hoe died at Florence on 7 June 

 1884, and his brother Robert a few years 

 later. Soon afterwards Peter Smith Hoe, the 

 remaining brother, retired from the firm, and 

 then the present Robert Hoe, son of Robert 

 and nephew of Colonel Hoe, took entire 



charge of the business. It is to his great 

 energy and enterprise that the enormous 

 development that has taken place during the 

 last sixteen years is primarily due. 



Mr. Robert Hoe, on a visit to the London 

 works, then situated at Tudor Street, White- 

 friars, found them too cramped, and no land 

 or building adjoining being available in order 

 to develop his London business, looked farther 

 afield and bought up the lease of the existing 

 London works situated in Southwark, bounded 

 by the Borough Road, Mansfield, Earl and 

 Dantzic Streets. The works are entirely de- 

 voted to the manufacture of printing machin- 

 ery, and are believed to be the most extensive 

 premises in the kingdom for this class of work. 

 They cover a large area of ground and employ 

 about six hundred men, with a complete 

 outfit of British and American machine tools 

 ofthe highest class and of the most recent de- 

 sign. But with all these resources the capacity 

 ofthe works is taxed to the utmost to keep pace 

 with the orders that are continually coming 

 in from all parts of Great Britain and Ireland 

 and the British colonies for new machinery. 



Messrs. Hoe & Co. make at present a very 

 great variety of printing machines for every 

 description of press work, and it is impossible 

 within our present limits to attempt even a 

 mere enumeration of their various produc- 

 tions or of the vast number of newspapers 

 and magazines that are now printed by them. 

 Not only do they make machines to print 

 every size of newspaper that can be desired, 

 but these machines are capable also of per- 

 forming every process that is necessary to 

 complete the newspaper, ever to pasting the 

 sheets together, and in the case of certain 

 periodicals to wire-stitching them. Machines 

 for fine multicolour and half-tone printing 

 are also made by the firm, and many of the 

 best illustrated of our magazines are now 

 printed by their means. Their Power Plate 

 Printing Press for the printing of bank notes, 

 bonds, postage and revenue stamps and 

 similar work is used by such well known 

 London printing firms as Messrs. Perkins, 

 Bacon & Co., Messrs. Bradbury, Wilkinson 

 & Co., and Messrs. Thomas De La Rue & 

 Co, In short, the firm's operations extend 

 to every appliance that is required in the 

 printing trade, and not even has the hand- 

 press been omitted from the range of their 

 improvements.* 



' This account of Messrs, R. Hoe & Co.'s 

 works is in the main an abstract of materials 

 kindly supplied by the firm and contained in a 

 reprint from The British and Colonial Printer and 

 Stationer oi zi June 1900. 



424 



