Inventions in the Century

by William Henry Doolittle

Then Earl Stanhope in England invented a press entirely of iron, and the power consisted of the combination of a toggle joint and lever. The first American improvement was invented by George Clymer, of Philadelphia, in 1817, the power being an improved lever consisting of three simple levers of the second order. This was superseded by the “Washington” press invented by Samuel Rust in 1829. It has as essential parts the toggle joint and lever, and in the frame work, as in the Stanhope, type bed, rails on which the bed was moved in and out, means to move the bed, the platen, the tympan on which the sheet is placed, the frisket, a perforated sheet of paper, to preserve the printed sheet, an inking roller and frame. In this was subsequently introduced an automatic device for inking the roller, as it was moved back from over the bed of type on to an inking table. This, substantially, has been the hand press ever since.

With one of these hand-presses and the aid of two men about two hundred and fifty sheets an hour could be printed on one side. The increase in the circulation of newspapers before the opening of the 19th century demanded greater rapidity of production and turned the attention of inventors to the construction of power or machine presses. Like the paper-making machine, the power press was conceived in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and like that art was also not developed until the nineteenth century. William Nicholson of England is believed to have been the first inventor of a machine printing press. He obtained an English patent for it in 1720. The type were to be placed on the face of one cylinder, which was designed to be in gear, revolved with, and press upon another cylinder covered with soft leather, the type cylinder to be inked by a third cylinder to which the inking apparatus, was applied, and the paper to be printed by being passed between the type and the impression cylinder. These ideas were incorporated into the best printing machines that have since been made. But the first successful machine printing press was the invention of two Saxons, König and Bauer, in 1813, who introduced their ideas from Germany, constructed the machine in London, and on which on the 28th of November, 1814, an issue of the London Times was printed. The Times announced to its readers that day that they were for the first time perusing a paper printed upon a machine driven by steam power. What a union of mighty forces was heralded in this simple announcement! The union of the steam engine, the printing press, and a great and powerful journal! An Archimedean lever had been found at last with which to move the world.

The production of printed sheets per hour over the hand-press was at once quadrupled, and very shortly 1800 sheets per hour were printed. This machine was of that class known as cylinder presses. In this machine ordinary type was used, and the type-form was flat and passed beneath a large impression cylinder on which the paper was held by tapes. The type-form was reciprocated beneath an inking apparatus and the paper cylinder alternately. The inking apparatus consisted of a series of rollers, to the first of which the ink was ejected from a trough and distributed to the others. In 1815 Cowper patented in England electrotype plates to be affixed to a cylinder. Applegath and Cowper improved the König machine in the matter of the ink distributing rollers, and in the adaptation of four printing cylinders to the reciprocating type bed, whereby, with some other minor changes, 5000 impressions on one side were produced per hour. Again Applegath greatly changed the arrangement of cylinders and multiplied their number, and the number of the other parts, so that in 1848 the sheets printed on one side were first 8000 and then 12,000 an hour.

In the United States, Daniel Treadwell of Boston invented the first power printing machine in 1822. Two of these machines were at that time set up in New York city. It was a flat bed press and was long used in Washington in printing for the government. David Bruce of New York, in 1838, invented the first successful type-casting machine, which, when shortly afterward it was perfected, became the model for type-casting machines for Europe and America. Previous to that time type were generally made by casting them in hand-moulds—the metal being poured in with a spoon.

Robert Hoe, an English inventor, went to New York in 1803, and turned his attention to the making of printing presses. His son, Richard March Hoe, inherited his father’s inventive genius. While in England in 1837-1840, obtaining a patent on and introducing a circular saw, he became interested in the printing presses of the London Times. Returning home, he invented and perfected a rotary machine which received the name of the “Lightning Press.” It first had four and then ten cylinders arranged in a circle. As finally completed, it printed from a continuous roll of paper several miles in length, and on both sides at the same time, cutting off and folding ready for delivery, 15,000 to 20,000 newspapers an hour, the paper being drawn through the press at the rate of 1,000 feet in a minute. Before it was in this final, completed shape, it was adopted by the London Times. John Walter of London in the meantime invented a machine of a similar class. He also used a sheet of paper miles long. It was first damped, passed through blotting rolls, and then to the printing cylinders. It gave out 11,000 perfected sheets, or 22,000 impressions an hour, and as each sheet was printed, it was cut by a knife on the cylinder, and the sheets piled on the paper boards. It was adopted by the London Times and the New York Times.

A German press at Augsburg, and the Campbell presses of the United States, have also become celebrated as web perfecting presses, in which the web is printed, the sheets cut, associated, folded, and delivered at high speed. One of the latest quadruple stereotype perfecting presses made by Hoe & Co. of New York has a running capacity of 48,000 papers per hour. On another, a New York paper has turned off nearly six hundred thousand copies in a single day, requiring for their printing ninety-four tons of paper. Among other celebrated inventors of printing presses in the United States were Isaac Adams, Taylor, Gordon, Potter, Hawkins, Bullock, Cottrell, Campbell, Babcock, and Firm.

Mail-marking Machines, in which provision is made for holding the printing mechanism out of operative position in case a letter is not in position to be stamped; address-printing machines, including machines for printing addresses by means of a stencil; machines for automatically setting and distributing the type, including those in which the individual types are caused to enter the proper receptacle by means of nicks in the type, which engage corresponding projections on a stationary guard plate, and automatic type justifying machines. All such have been invented, developed, and perfected in the last half century.

Another invention which has added wonderfully to push the century along, is the Typewriter. It has long been said that “The pen is mightier than the sword,” but from present indications, it is proper to add that the typewriter is mightier than the pen.

A machine in which movable types are caused to yield impressions on paper to form letters by means of key levers operated by hand, has been one of slow growth from its conception to its present practical and successful form.

Some one suggested the idea in England in a patent in 1714. The idea rested until 1840, when a French inventor revived it in a patent. At the same time patents began to come out in England and the United States; and about forty patents in each of these two countries were granted from that time until 1875. Since that date about 1400 patents more have been issued in the United States, and a large number in other countries. It was, however, only that year and before 1880, that the first popular commercially successful machines were made and introduced.