When this has gone on for an hour, two hours, or however long it may take to run off the editions, the monster press can be stopped in an instant. With the simple touching of a lever all its movement will cease before the cylinders can revolve five times, and they had been revolving two hundred times a minute before.
The two wonders just described are confined to newspaper work. This same American firm has produced presses upon which are printed the fine specimens of magazines where the work takes a striking resemblance to lithograph printing. They have a speed of 8000 an hour. From them come booklets of 16, 20, or 24 pages. From the presses of 4000 an hour come books of 32, 40, and 48 pages. In construction they are complicated and grand.
Then come the presses upon which are printed different colors. These are made in England and the United States, and are used with satisfactory results on prominent publications in both countries. A recent issue of the “British and Colonial Printer” directs attention to this advance in mechanism through the medium of the Hoe art rotary form feeder. It says:—
“This machine carries the mind back naturally to pre-rotary days, when the Hoe multi-feeder held the field as the newspaper machine, to the days of the heavy, and as we consider in these advanced days, clumsy turtle. When the creative genius of Colonel Hoe evolved the rotary press, the multi-feeder was almost at once relegated to the lumber room of obsolete mechanics. It is hardly conceivable that it entered the mind of any practical man at this time that the principle of multi-fed flat sheet printing would ever be adapted to the production of high art illustrated literature, at a speed equal, or nearly so, to the former Hoe news machine. It has, at all events in our country, long been a settled opinion that such work could only be successfully accomplished upon a flat-bed machine, that the mere curvature of a plate must destroy the beauty of a fine process block for example, and that any attempt to travel at a greater speed than 1200 to 1500 an hour must be at the sacrifice of depth and sufficiency of rolling. Whether this is really so readers will now be able to form their own opinion from the pages of the ‘Strand Magazine.’ Those pages abound in very varied methods of engraving, woodcut and process, line and nature, and reproductions alike from photos and from wash and crayon drawings. Every page has undergone the process of electrotyping, cast straight and curved subsequently, and therefore the conditions of printing at the high speed of 4000 (or to be strictly accurate, four sheets of 16 pages each put through at the rate of 950 each, or 3800 per hour) are as severe as could be desired.
“The British printer has yet to acquire a full mastery of its capabilities, and the engineer has equally before him in some degree a period of development. Some of the portraiture, human and animal, is equal to anything seen. The make-ready (upon hard packing) exhibits the highest quality, and the distribution of color perfection. The plate-cylinder is made as large as the desired speed renders practicable, in order that the curvature of the plates may be reduced to a minimum. The provision for securing adequate distribution and in-rolling is upon a liberal scale, but not one whit more so than is requisite, extent of surface and speed of running considered. There are 16 inkers and 38 distributors, with 16 iron distribution cylinders. The sheets are fed in two at either side of the machine, those from the right hand feeders being delivered upon the table at the extreme left, the other upon the inner delivery board. The plates are rigidly secured by special clutches. To facilitate the imposition of the plates, or any attention required by the cylinder, the short rear portion of the machine back of the cylinder is detachable and can be run out upon an extended base, and then closed up and put into gear again. This renders it perfectly accessible at the most essential point. The sheets are of course printed on one side only. We have not yet attained to the perfecting stage in art work in combination with high speed; the introduction of the Hoe art rotary press, however, marks a distinct epoch in this class of printing in Great Britain. Color printing-presses are in use in the newspaper and magazine offices in this country, and from them are produced the artistic as well as the lurid styles of art.”
What the possibilities of the printing press are, looking at the degree of excellence at present attained, it is difficult to predict. It would seem as if the height of perfection now had been reached. The probability is that the printer at the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century may look with something akin to contempt upon the machines which now are regarded with so much pride.
Such a thing is possible in this age of invention.
NUMBERING CARD PRESS.