p. 136 | Rapid Printing

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 26, 1877

Rapid Printing.

WHEN, some sixty years ago, Koenig constructed the first cylinder press and enabled the London Times to announce to the world the first grand step in rapid printing, the transition from two hundred an hour on the old hand presses to a thousand an hour by steam, was heralded forth as the greatest achievement of that time. Thirty years later Hoe constructed the “Planitarium,” with its many cylinders; and hundreds of our readers can readily recall the furore it created in the printing community when this press was perfected so as to produce from five to ten thousand sheets printed on one side per hour. The demand for still faster presses for the increasing editions of the great daily papers, brought out in rapid succession the Bullock, Walter, and others, with capacity for turning off six to eight thousand perfected sheets per hour, and yet the Tribunes, Heralds, Suns, etc., need presses still more convenient and rapid. It has remained, then, for the centennial year to supply this want. Andrew Campbell has invented what must be conceded the fastest rotary printing and folding machine in the world. This press is capable of printing twenty thousand eight page or forty thousand four page papers per hour, delivering them either flat or folded, at the will of the operator. This is at the rate of six hundred and sixty a minute, or eleven papers every second! It would appear as if this was the limit of fast printing on cylinders, and that hereafter if anything faster is produced it must be by some method as yet unknown.—Electrotyper.