A SEA CAPTAIN’S CONTRIBUTION
The folding mechanism of a printing press is interesting. The paper is first fed over a wedge-shaped form which folds the paper lengthwise and then it is given a cross-wise fold. Curiously enough the folding mechanism for printing presses was first invented by a Yankee sea captain, named Cromwell, who could not read a drawing but developed his invention by whittling out wooden models. He also contributed other valuable improvements for the printing press worked out in the same primitive way.
The rotary press was evolved especially for the printing of daily papers and for a long time magazines continued to be printed on flat-bed presses. But as the circulation of magazines grew into the hundreds of thousands it became necessary to build high speed presses to turn out these large editions. Accordingly rotary machines were constructed similar in design to newspaper presses, but with refinements to enable them to produce the better class of work required of magazine printing. Although there are many magazines still printed on flat bed presses, particularly those which publish small editions of less than a hundred thousand, all the big national weekly journals and monthly magazines are printed on rotary presses and some of them even use web presses.