Inking machines, card-printing presses, hand-lever printing presses, proof presses, copperplate and lithographic presses, are all turned out from this department in that perfection which has obtained for the Messrs. Hoe a celebrity really world-wide, and caused their names to be known and their improvements adopted in almost every country of the world, and that, too, through no blind accident of fortune, but by dint of real superiority and merit. In proof of this, it will be necessary only to state that hand-presses of this establishment are at this moment in successful operation in Canada, the British Provinces, Cuba, Calcutta, Mexico, Bengal, nay, even in unimproving, stationary China, where they were introduced during the visit to that strange country of Mr. Cutting, as United States Commissioner.
Attached to the hand-press room is a small chamber appropriated to the safe-keeping, sharpening and ordering all the drills and edge tools of the department, under the care of one person, who is answerable for the safeguard and efficiency of the whole.
LARGE FAST PRESS BUILDING.
From thence we proceed to the shops on two stories, which have been thrown together, for the perfecting of the vast and wonderful fast-printing machine, by the removal of the ceiling, in order to make room for the great and complicated mass of moving cylinders, and to give space for the operations of the numerous artisans employed upon it.
The machine now in building, is one of six cylinders, for the use of the New York Herald, which now drives one of four cylinders, and is the same in almost every respect as that of the Tribune, being made with wide cylinders for the printing of double sheets; while that of the Sun, with eight cylinders, is suitable only for the smaller folios of that journal. With regard to this machine, as we shall notice it more fully when we come to speak of it as in operation, we shall say no more in this place except that it is the head and front of all the wonderful inventions and improvements which now enable journals to be furnished to the world at prices merely nominal, their vast and unheard of circulation compensating their moderate prices, and producing in the gross, a highly remunerative profit.
The six cylinder press is calculated to throw off twenty-five hundred copies to each cylinder, fed by one man, or an aggregate of fifteen thousand in the single hour. The four cylinder press now in operation in the light and beautiful vault of the Herald, has done even more than at this ratio, having, when pressed, actually thrown off twelve thousand copies in one hour. These presses were first introduced by the Messrs. Hoe only some five or six years ago; and their utmost calculation, as to the probable number which they should ever be called upon to manufacture, was five and twenty, but so marvelously has the demand exceeded their wildest imaginations that they have already built sixteen, one of which is, as we observed heretofore, in operation for La Patrie, the French government organ; and three more are ordered, and in progress of formation.
About four months is required for the erection of one of these splendid machines, or if extraordinary exertions be used, even a shorter time.
It is a pregnant fact, and one singularly corroborative of the soundness of the writer’s view, as expressed in the early portion of this article relative to the effect of machinery in increasing rather than diminishing the number of hands employed, or likely to be employed, in the business of printing, in consequence of the daily augmenting demand for printed matter arising from its cheapness and perfection—that, since the introduction of the fast-printing machines the call for hand presses has greatly increased. During the past year, the sale of this article alone, by the Messrs. Hoe, rose to so many as five a week during the whole twelve months; in all amounting to two hundred and sixty, besides all the other instruments and appliances of the printers’ and bookbinders’ professions.
After this, completing the press making department, we come to the cylinder press rooms, occupying one entire flat of the building, in which we find the patent improved double cylinder, the single small cylinder, and the single large cylinder printing machines, in every state of progress from their very inception to absolute perfection.