APPENDIX F.
[The following letter to The Scotsman was written by Mr. John Forster, late Member for Berwick. In a marginal note Sir R. Hill has written, “I vouch for its accuracy.”]
“SIR ROWLAND HILL AND THE PRINTING PRESS.
“London, February 12, 1872.
“Sir,—In your interesting article on the ‘Walter Press’ it was stated that the idea of a Rotatory Machine printing newspapers on a continuous sheet of paper was not novel; that Sir Rowland Hill had worked at it many years before, as had other persons in America. As to most of your readers this mention of a benefactor of theirs in another way as a mechanical inventor was no doubt something new and curious, it may be interesting to them to learn what Sir Rowland Hill’s share of merit in this matter was. I send with this a copy of the specification of his patent for letter-press printing machines, taken out in 1835 (No. 6762, printed by the Patent Office in 1857), and an account of it given in the ‘Repertory of Patent Inventions,’ No. 35. By these it will be seen that the most important achievements of modern printing were effected by Sir Rowland Hill thirty-seven years ago. His machine was to print either with stereotype-plates or movable type (the difficulty of fastening the last securely to cylinders revolving at great speed was met by special contrivances); was itself to keep the printing surfaces inked; to print a continuous roll of paper, of any length, and both sides, while passing once through the apparatus; to cut up the roll into sheets; and means were contrived of performing those operations on two rolls at once, so that at one revolution of the printing cylinders two copies could be struck off. Such a machine was actually constructed (at an expense of about £2,000), and was frequently shown at work at No. 44, Chancery Lane, as many persons must remember. Though driven by hand, it could produce at the rate of seven or eight thousand impressions in an hour. One great difficulty of most printing machines is that of securing perfect register (the exact coincidence of the printing on opposite sides of the paper). This was anticipated and met by the patent. The one thing the inventor failed to do was to overcome the resistance the collectors of the stamp duty presented to this printing on a continuous roll, and to the affixing of the stamps to the newspapers at the proper intervals during their passage through the machine. Many years afterwards they allowed this to be done by machinery contrived by Mr. Edwin Hill (who had assisted his brother in the preparation of the printing machine), which was affixed to the presses of the Times and other papers, and which itself registered, for the security of the revenue, the number of impressions made. In 1835, the task of satisfying the Treasury that this could be done with safety to it was too formidable to be overcome,—at least it was not overcome. Sir Rowland Hill’s attention was soon afterwards absorbed by his plans of postal reform; and no one can regret this, seeing what work he did in the Post Office, which probably no one but himself could have done so well; while if the fourteen years of his patent passed unprofitably to the inventor, other hands have carried to extraordinary perfection the scheme of a printing machine. Of course the Americans and the ‘Walter Press’ have greatly advanced on ‘Hill’s Machine’ of 1835; especially by the preparation of stereotype plates for this particular service. In his specification, Sir Rowland Hill made due mention of his predecessors, recording that an imitation of the process of printing calico by cylinders revolving rapidly was proposed for letter-press printing as early as 1790, by Mr. William Nicholson, and that this was applied to stereotype plates bent to a cylindrical surface by Mr. Edward Cowper in 1816. But the first practical scheme of newspaper printing on a continuous roll of paper by revolving cylinders was produced and set to work by Rowland Hill in 1835.
“I am, &c.,
“J. F.
“The Editor, The Scotsman.”
[Two years later Sir Rowland Hill wrote the following letter to the Journal of the Society of Arts:]—
“TYPE-PRINTING MACHINERY
“Sir,—In the interesting paper ‘On Type-printing Machinery,’ by the Rev. Arthur Rigg, which appeared in your Journal of the 13th inst., there are certain errors affecting myself which I request permission to correct.
“It is stated that rotating cylinders and continuous rolls of paper were principles first introduced into type-printing machinery by Mr. Nicholson in 1790, and further on it is asserted, in reference no doubt to the printing machine which I invented in 1835, that I ‘revived a proposal of Nicholson’s.’
“Now, so far from Mr. Nicholson proposing to print from types on continuous rolls of paper, a reference to the specification of his invention (A.D. 1790, No. 1,748) will show that, excluding his proposals for calico and wall-paper printing, which have nothing to do with type-printing machinery, he invariably speaks of printing on sheets of paper; indeed, the means of producing continuous rolls of paper were not invented till several years later. Again, it will be seen that the means he proposes for attaching the types to his cylinder, the real difficulty to be overcome, are clearly insufficient for the purpose; indeed, as stated in the specification of my patent (A.D. 1835, No. 6,762), which was drawn by the late Mr. Farey—a man thoroughly conversant with the subject—‘on account of deficiencies and imperfections in the machinery described in that specification [Mr. Nicholson’s] the same has never been practised or brought into use.’
“Towards the close of his paper, Mr. Rigg seems to imply that hitherto all schemes for fixing moveable types on a cylinder have failed. I can only say that in my machine this difficulty was entirely overcome. Indeed, in a letter which appeared in the Mechanics’ Magazine of November 12th, 1836 (when the subject was before the public), I was enabled to state that ‘in the opinion of many eminent printers who have seen my machine the end in view has been fully accomplished, for while any portion of type may be detached from the cylinder with a facility even greater than that with which a similar change can be made in an ordinary form, each letter can be so firmly locked in its place that there is no danger whatever of its being loosened by centrifugal force or by any other cause.’
“While upon this subject, I may as well add that a comparison of my specification with that of the ‘Walter Press’ (A.D. 1866, No. 3,222) will show that, except as regards the apparatus for cutting and distributing the printed sheets, and excepting further that the ‘Walter Press’ is only adapted for printing from stereotype plates, while mine would not only print from stereotype plates, but, what was far more difficult, from moveable types also, the two machines are almost identical. I gladly admit, however, that the enormous difficulty of bringing a complex machine into practical use—a difficulty familiar to every inventor—has been most successfully overcome by Messrs. Calverley and MacDonald, the patentees of the ‘Walter Press.’
“I am, &c.,
“Rowland Hill.
“Hampstead, February 26, 1874.”