The Newspaper

by George Binney Dibblee

Now the chief marvel of a modern combined printing press is its power of being used to print separately a large number of small sized papers or by leading the paper through the press in a slightly different way to print a mammoth paper folded all together and receiving contributions from all six reels at once. In the particular machine in question, which is used to print a comparatively small sized paper, any six of the separate machines can be run separately, if a small paper and a small output only is wanted. When required, they can be combined in pairs or in threes or all together, either for an immense number of small papers or for a moderate number of very large ones. With a Daily Mail of eight pages the two lower tiers of the press could be run with an output of 132,000 copies per hour. For ten pages half the upper tier, using half length reels, could be run to supply the supplementary two pages per copy at the same rate. To produce a twelve-page paper the whole upper tier could be run and again produce them at the same rate. The larger sizes would involve a lesser rate of output. From fourteen to twenty-four page papers would be produced at the rate of 66,000 per hour, and twenty-four to forty-eight page papers at 33,000. To change over from printing one size paper to another would not be a matter of more than half an hour.

Fig. 3.—Illustration of a Four-reeled Press with Tubular Plates in Section.

The paper from the four reels runs through the machine from left to right. Each sheet passes between two pair of cylinders, such as A A, following the direction of the small arrows. The four sheets after being printed respectively between rollers A A, B B, C C, and D D, are all carried up together to the assembling roller E, where they are timed to meet exactly so as to form each 4 pages of a 16-page paper. They will pass down the triangular folder, where they receive the longitudinal fold, and then are cut into separate papers. After being cut the papers pass into the side folder F, where they each receive one cross-fold, and are delivered one above another, so as to make up a stack. (By courtesy of Mr. Lock, of Linotype and Machinery, Ltd.)

The course of each sheet from the reel through the printing cylinders is exactly the same. The paper has to be printed on both sides and on one only at a time. To effect this it passes between one pair of cylinders, one of which carries the stereotype plate containing the raised surface of type, whose course we have already followed; the other is covered with a hard rubber blanket, sufficiently pervious to allow the slightest possible indentation of its surface as the irregular type faces come opposite to it with the rapidly-flowing paper ever between them. This slight but rapid indentation gives a clear cut impression and applies the ink without smudging to one of the surfaces of the paper. The impression of ink on the other surface is given by going through another pair of similar cylinders but with their relative positions reversed—i.e., the plate cylinder must now come in contact with the other side of the paper.

The merits and defects of fast rotary printing depend wholly on two conditions, as far as the workmanship in the press is concerned, apart from the several qualities of paper, ink and accurately made stereotype plates, which are here supposed to be all of normal excellence. These two conditions are the degree of the impression allowed between the plate and the impression cylinders and the proper supply and distribution of the ink. Both these are matters requiring the highest technical judgment, and where illustrated work is concerned, as is increasingly the case in modern newspapers, slight variations have enormously different results. Conveying the ink, which in printing is a thick glutinous fluid, mostly oil and lamp-black, from the long ink cases running from side to side of the press, is the work of a number of subsidiary rollers with various conflicting and combining movements. The ink is allowed to ooze out generously on to a large metal cylinder, where it is pounced upon at once by a cohort of gelatine rollers and pounded and smeared in various directions and ultimately taken by carrying rollers with reciprocating motion to larger gelatine cylinders, which are in contact with the plate-carrying cylinder itself. All this pounding, squeezing and manœuvring are the only means of getting an absolutely even distribution of ink, which the reckless speed of newspaper printing requires. It must be remembered that the speed of the printing peripheries in contact with the moving paper often amounts to more than twenty feet per second.

There is a further complication of refinement required in the printing of illustrated work, which the increasing accuracy of modern times has not yet eliminated. The depth of the hollows in between the raised printing surfaces is very much less in plates reproducing photographic illustrations than in the case of type. It is found that “half-tone” work, as it is called, requires a degree of exactness in the printing plate, which at present it is impossible always to get. One part of a picture to be printed is very often slightly higher or lower than the other. To remedy this in the plate is impossible. Another plate might have fresh faults. Good printing is secured at a fast pace by a process called “making ready.” The printer runs his paper slowly through the press and discovers the faults in the plates containing illustrations by a trial impression on the paper. He then corrects the lightly-inked parts of his illustration by raising the corresponding surface of the impression cylinder. To do this he pastes on various thicknesses of paper on the latter, so that the paper to be printed is brought more firmly in contact with the printing cylinder, wherever the illustration appears to him to require it. The object is to get an even blackness of impression all over the illustration. The correction requires good judgment and skilled attention.

The last stage of the passage of the paper through the press is cutting and folding. It will be remembered that the printed papers are coming down two at a time, side by side into the central folding mechanism. The first operation is a longitudinal cut separating the two papers and making two half width running strips instead of one. Taking one of these strips the next operation is to run the paper over a V-shaped plate, drawing the two edges of the paper together at the bottom and making the central fold of the journal. A transverse cut separates each journal from the other, which are then taken separately sideways for one final revolution round a cylinder, where a knife pops out from the interior and neatly gives it the last fold, which we recognize across the front of our daily paper every morning.

So the papers come out at a pace about a thousand times quicker than one can read the description. Enormous efforts are required to deal with the advancing flood. Any accumulation would be destructive of order. Most of the papers go straight to waiting carts and motors. Others go to the mailing room, where, as in some American offices, they are fed through machines, which with the same operation print the names and addresses on wrappers, affix and gum the wrappers and deliver the newspapers into assorted bags, whose destination is already fastened on the outside.

Once outside, distribution is very much a question of population and locality. Different methods have to be employed to meet fresh problems. In London internal distribution is very difficult, because the local railways and tubes are not organized to handle goods traffic. Horses and carts are now outdistanced except for small consignments. Bicycles can be used to some extent but the motor will be the chief reliance of the future. In this case the problem must be divided up into two parts owing to traffic considerations. At night the roads are free and high speed can be kept up for long distances, so that the utility of the motor is only limited to its capacity, otherwise its tonnage. It has been calculated recently that a motor van can run from Fleet Street to Barnet, a distance of about twelve miles within an hour, stopping twenty-seven times in the last seven miles to deliver separate parcels to newsagents on the way.