DEVELOPMENT OF PRINTING PRESSES
The primitive screw press saw little improvement except in minor details down to the end of the eighteenth century. Then steam began to take the place of hand power and the idea was conceived of using a rotary cylinder in place of a flat press. The types were tapered so that they could be fitted about a cylinder. The paper was fed between the type cylinder and a soft impression cylinder faced with leather. The ink was applied to the type by means of a roller which was fed by an inking apparatus.
In 1814 two rotary presses were installed in the offices of the London “Times,” making it possible to turn out that newspaper at the marvelous rate of 11,000 impressions per hour. In this country, Richard Marsh Hoe invented a machine in which four, six, eight, or ten impression cylinders operated on a single form of type, thereby increasing the output of the press correspondingly. The first machine, a four-impression cylinder press, was used by the Philadelphia “Ledger” in 1846, and it printed 8,000 papers per hour.
Next came the “perfecting” press that printed on both sides of the paper, and then came the continuous web press, in which the paper was fed from a roll as a continuous sheet and, after receiving the type impression, was cut, folded, and delivered as a complete newspaper.