THE BULLOCK WEB PERFECTING PRESS.
This machine is intended for printing on a continuous roll of dampened paper, which passes between a pair of cylinders (one of which is an impression cylinder, and the other a cylinder around which stereotyped plates are bent) and receives an impression on one side, and the sheet then goes forward and is printed on the other side while passing between a second pair of cylinders similar to the first, except that the impression cylinder is four times the diameter of the plate cylinder to prevent more effectually the ink from “setting off.” After being printed, and before delivery, the sheet is cut off by a fixed serrated cutting blade, the ingenious invention of Victor Beaumont of New York. A French device for making flexible papier-maché moulds rendered it possible to cast the type-plates to fit the printing cylinders. Without this auxiliary, web perfecting presses would have been useless and impracticable.
THE BULLOCK SELF-FEEDING PERFECTING PRESS, WITH FOLDER,
WILL FLY THE SHEET FLAT, FOLD IT THREE OR FOUR TIMES AT WILL, OR CUT, FOLD, AND PASTE IT AS FAST AS PRINTED
Mr. Bullock, born in Greene County, New York, was a mechanical genius, and was the author of many inventions in various departments of machinery.[18] About the year 1860, he began to work out the idea of a rotary self-feeding, or web perfecting press. After making a large working model, which is still in existence, he adopted a simpler plan, and in 1861 constructed a machine for the Cincinnati Times, which was successfully operated, but it was far from perfect. Three of these machines were used for a considerable time in the office of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
He continued his efforts, and in 1865 he produced a press which met his original anticipation, and a company was formed to manufacture it. In 1867, while setting up a machine for the Public Ledger in Philadelphia, he suffered a serious injury which terminated his life. More than fifty of the presses are now in use in the United States. The New York Herald press, printing and cutting two copies at each delivery, is said to produce, with but three men to attend to it, 30,000 copies per hour. The New York Sun states: “When our seven Bullock Presses are working, we can turn off, without extravagant assertion, 210,000 copies an hour.” This assertion must be taken with some grains of allowance. The press is twelve feet long by five and a half feet wide.
THE WALTER PERFECTING PRESS.
The Bullock press was not long allowed to be the only press for rapid printing from cylindrical stereotype plates fed by a so-called endless roll of paper. The principle was applied to a machine constructed in the London Times office, called, after the name of its celebrated proprietor, the Walter press. This appears to be an effective press, but it seems more complicated than either the Bullock or Hoe machine, and from its mode of delivering the sheets, it is excessively noisy. The New York Times was printed on it at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.