The machine is almost entirely self-acting, from the pumping-up of the ink into the ink-box out of the cistern below stairs, to the registering of the numbers as they are printed in the manager's room above. It is always difficult to describe a machine in words. Nothing but a series of sections and diagrams could give the reader an idea of the construction of this unrivalled instrument. The time to see it and wonder at it is when the press is in full work. And even then you can see but little of its construction, for the cylinders are wheeling round with immense velocity. The rapidity with which the machine works may be inferred from the fact that the printing cylinders (round which the stereotyped plates are fixed), while making their impressions on the paper, travel at the surprising speed of 200 revolutions a minute, or at the rate of about nine miles an hour!
Contrast this speed with the former slowness. Go back to the beginning of the century. Before the year 1814 the turn-out of newspapers was only about 300 single impressions in an hour—that is, impressions printed on only one side of the paper. Koenig by his invention increased the issue to 1100 impressions. Applegath and Cowper by their four-cylinder machine increased the issue to 4000, and by the eight-cylinder machine to 10,000 an hour. But these were only impressions printed on one side of the paper. The first perfecting press—that is, printing simultaneously the paper on both sides—was the Walter, the speed of which has been raised to 12,000, though, if necessary, it can produce excellent work at the rate of 17,000 complete copies of an eight-page paper per hour. Then, with the new method of stereotyping—by means of which the plates can be infinitely multiplied and by the aid of additional machines, the supply of additional impressions is absolutely unlimited.
The Walter Press is not a monopoly. It is manufactured at The Times office, and is supplied to all comers. Among the other daily papers printed by its means in this country are the Daily News, the Scotsmam, and the Birmingham Daily Post. The first Walter Press was sent to America in 1872, where it was employed to print the Missouri Republican at St. Louis, the leading newspaper of the Mississippi Valley. An engineer and a skilled workman from The Times office accompanied the machinery. On arriving at St. Louis—the materials were unpacked, lowered into the machine-room, where they were erected and ready for work in the short space of five days.
The Walter Press was an object of great interest at the Centennial Exhibition held at Philadelphia in 1876, where it was shown printing the New Fork Times one of the most influential journals in America. The press was surrounded with crowds of visitors intently watching its perfect and regular action, "like a thing of life." The New York Times said of it: "The Walter Press is the most perfect printing press yet known to man; invented by the most powerful journal of the Old World, and adopted as the very best press to be had for its purposes by the most influential journal of the New World.... It is an honour to Great Britain to have such an exhibit in her display, and a lasting benefit to the printing business, especially to newspapers.... The first printing press run by steam was erected in the year 1814 in the office of The Times by the father of him who is the present proprietor of that world-famous journal. The machine of 1814 was described in The Times of the 29th November in that year, and the account given of it closed in these words: 'The whole of these complicated acts is performed with such a velocity and simultaneosness of movement that no less than 1100 sheets are impressed in one hour.' Mirabile dictu! And the Walter Press of to-day can run off 17,000 copies an hour printed on both sides. This is not bad work for one man's lifetime."
It is unnecessary to say more about this marvellous machine. Its completion forms the crown of the industry which it represents, and of the enterprise of the journal which it prints.
Footnotes for Chapter VII.
[1] Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, Barrister-at-Law, F.S.A., i. 231.
[2] After the appearance of my article on the Koenig and Walter Presses in Macmillan's Magazine for December, 1869, I received the following letter from Sir Rowland Hill:—
"Hampstead" January 5th, 1870.
"My dear sir,
"In your very interesting article in Macmillan's Magazine on the subject of the printing machine, you have unconsciously done me some injustice. To convince yourself of this, you have only to read the enclosed paper. The case, however, will be strengthened when I tell you that as far back as the year 1856, that is, seven years after the expiry of my patent, I pointed out to Mr. Mowbray Morris, the manager of The Times, the fitness of my machine for the printing of that journal, and the fact that serious difficulties to its adoption had been removed. I also, at his request, furnished him with a copy of the document with which I now trouble you. Feeling sure that you would like to know the truth on any subject of which you may treat, I should be glad to explain the matter more fully, and for this purpose will, with your permission, call upon you at any time you may do me the favour to appoint. "Faithfully yours,
"Rowland Hill."
On further enquiry I obtained the Patent No. 6762; but found that nothing practical had ever come of it. The pamphlet enclosed by Sir Rowland Hill in the above letter is entitled 'The Rotary Printing Machine.' It is very clever and ingenious, like everything he did. But it was still left for some one else to work out the invention into a practical working printing-press. The subject is fully referred to in the 'Life of Sir Rowland Hill' (i. 224,525). In his final word on the subject, Sir Rowland "gladly admits the enormous difficulty of bringing a complex machine into practical use," a difficulty, he says, which "has been most successfully overcome by the patentees of the Walter Press."