Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/474

PRINTING. on each reciprocating movement of the bed, still finds some favor for newspapers of small editions; (5) the perfecting cylinder, that prints both sides of the sheet at the same operation. Other constructions, some of value, could be named, but those here specified are in most favor. The perfecting cylinder last mentioned is the only construction of flatbed press that attempts to print both sides at once, but its movement is relatively slow. The high speed required by daily newspapers can be had only by the full use of the rotary principle for the pressed and the pressing surfaces. In 1835 Rowland Hill, of England, devised a press on this plan purposed to print upon an endless roll of paper, but his scheme was never put to practical use. In 1850 Thomas Nelson, of Edinburgh, exhibited at the World's Fair a little cylinder which did print a handbill on both sides at great speed from this endless roll. It was not favorably regarded as a practicable apparatus. In 1865 William Bullock, of New York, constructed a rotary press, which printed from an endless roll, 10,000 copies in an hour. R. Hoe & Co., of New York, had produced in 1847 a type-revolving printing machine. In this construction a large central cylinder contained the form of type on a small portion of its circumference, the rest of that circumference being used for the movement of inking rollers. The types were held in place by grooved and rebated column rules and screw clamps. Around this large cylinder were placed at graduated distances 4, 6, 8, or 10 impression cylinders, for each of which separate piles of paper and separate feeders had to be provided. Every revolution of the central cylinder produced from four to ten copies, but these copies were printed on one side only, and this defect limited its value as a newspaper machine. In 1871 R. Hoe & Co. invented a rotary press, which printed on both sides, from curved stereotype plates at the rate of 12,000 an hour. This machine, a favorite at the start, has been reconstructed on new lines with many improvements for the different requirements of eight-page or forty-eight-page newspapers. Two or more distinct machines are geared together in one construction and are known as the quadruple, sextuple, and octuple machines.

A sextuple press built for the New York Herald in 1889 is composed of about 16,000 pieces and weighs 116,000 pounds. This press

is fed from three rolls of paper and can print, cut, paste, fold, and count 24,000 papers of 14, 20, or 24 pages each, 36,000 papers of 16 pages each, 48,000 of 10 or 12 pages each, and 72,000 of 8 pages each during every hour of its daily operation. In 1900 three octuple presses were installed for the New York Journal. Each press weighs, when in running order, about 200,000 pounds, and has 11 pairs of printing cylinders, 40 ink-distributing cylinders, 100 composition rollers, 22 ink fountains, 5 sets of oil fountains, and 850 gear wheels. These presses are operated by electricity, and are 35 feet long, 10 feet wide, and 15 feet high. An 80 horse-power electric motor is required to start one of them from a state of rest until it attains its proper speed, after which it performs its work at a considerably less expense of power.

In these machines five-cylinder color presses are combined with a full black press, which also has extra facilities for turning out fine newspaper work from electrotype plates; consequently half-tone plates and colored illustrations can be printed in connection with the text. In 1903 a press of still greater dimensions was constructed by R. Hoe & Co., which uses when running at full capacity, eight rolls of paper, each four newspaper pages wide. This machine requires 125-horse power to drive it, and when running at its full capacity consumes in an hour about 70 miles of paper, the width of the roll, or 280 miles of paper of the width of the newspaper page. In addition to the eight rolls of paper already mentioned eight other rolls are in position, so that when any of the rolls run out the roll-carrier may be turned on a turntable, and the new roll of paper quickly pasted to the end of the depleted roll. The running speed of this press is 90,000 papers an hour, four, six, eight, ten, twelve, fourteen or sixteen pages, or 48,000 eighteen, twenty, twenty-two, twenty-four, twenty-six, twenty-eight, thirty, or thirty-two page papers, all delivered, folded to half-page size, pasted, and counted. Other rotary presses of merit are made in this country, and in France and Germany, but they contain no distinctive principle that calls for minute description.

The output of newspaper presses would have been much smaller if type-setting machines had not furnished composed type at greater speed and lower cost. In