The first person who publicly projected a self-acting printing-press, was Mr. William Nicholson, the able editor of the Philosophical Journal, who obtained a patent in 1790-1, for imposing types upon a cylindrical surface; this disposition of types, plates, and blocks, being a new invention (see [fig. 913.]); 2, for applying the ink upon the surface of the types, &c., by causing the surface of a cylinder smeared with the colouring-matter to roll over them; or else causing the types to apply themselves to the said cylinder. For the purpose of spreading the ink evenly over this cylinder, he proposed to apply three or more distributing rollers longitudinally against the inking cylinder, so that they might be turned by the motion of the latter. 3. “I perform,” he says, “all my impressions by the action of a cylinder, or cylindrical surface; that is, I cause the paper to pass between two cylinders, one of which has the form of types attached to it, and forming part of its surface; and the other is faced with cloth, and serves to press the paper so as to take off an impression of the colour previously applied; or otherwise I cause the form of types, previously coloured, to pass in close and successive contact with the paper wrapped round a cylinder with woollen.” (See [figs. 913.] and [914.])[46]
[46] The black parts in these little diagrams, [913]-[922], indicate the inking apparatus; the diagonal lines, the cylinders upon which the paper to be printed is applied; the perpendicular lines, the plates or types; and the arrows show the track pursued by the sheet of paper.
In this description Mr. Nicholson indicates pretty plainly the principal parts of modern printing machines; and had he paid the same attention to any one part of his invention which he fruitlessly bestowed upon attempts to attach types to a cylinder, or had he bethought himself of curving stereotype plates, which were then beginning to be talked of, he would in all probability have realized a working apparatus, instead of scheming merely ideal plans.
The first operative printing machine was undoubtedly contrived by, and constructed under the direction of, M. König, a clockmaker from Saxony, who, so early as the year 1804, was occupied in improving printing-presses. Having failed to interest the continental printers in his views, he came to London soon after that period, and submitted his plans to Mr. T. Bensley, our celebrated printer, and to Mr. R. Taylor, now one of the editors of the Philosophical Magazine.
These gentlemen afforded Mr. König and his assistant Bauer, a German mechanic, liberal pecuniary support. In 1811, he obtained a patent for a method of working a common hand-press by power; but after much expense and labour he was glad to renounce the scheme. He then turned his mind to the use of a cylinder for communicating the pressure, instead of a flat plate; and he finally succeeded, sometime before the 28th November 1814, in completing his printing automaton; for on that day the editors of the Times informed their readers that they were perusing for the first time a newspaper printed by steam-impelled machinery; it is a day, therefore, which will be ever memorable in the annals of typography.
König’s single, for one side of the sheet.
In that machine the form of type was made to traverse horizontally under the pressure cylinder, with which the sheet of paper was held in close embrace by means of a series of endless tapes. The ink was placed in a cylindrical box, from which it was extruded by means of a powerful screw, depressing a well-fitted piston; it then fell between two iron rollers, and was by their rotation transferred to several other subjacent rollers, which had not only a motion round their axes, but an alternating traverse motion (endwise). This system of equalizing rollers terminated in two which applied the ink to the types. (See [fig. 915]). This plan of inking evidently involved a rather complex mechanism, was hence difficult to manage, and sometimes required two hours to get into good working trim. It has been superseded by a happy invention of Mr. Cowper, to be presently described.