The bed and platen system of printing was, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the favorite method of printing fine books and cuts. The first “power” or steam press upon this principle was made by Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, in 1822. The frames were of wood, and it does not appear that more than three or four of these were ever constructed. The best machines of this description were those devised and patented by Isaac Adams, of Boston, in 1830 and 1836, and by Otis Tufts, of the same place, in 1834. They were first made with wooden and afterward with iron frames. In 1858 Adams’s business became the property of Hoe & Co., who continued to manufacture the machines with added improvements. In all more than a thousand, in no less than fifty-seven sizes, were sold for use in the United States, some being sent to other countries. In these machines, the type is placed upon an iron bed, after the usual manner of the hand press, and this bed is raised and lowered by straightening and bending a toggle joint by means of a cam, thus giving the impression upon the iron platen fixed above it, and firmly held in position by upright iron rods secured to the bottom bar, a strong cross-piece, at the base of the machine. The ink fountain is at one end of the press; the inking rollers travel twice over the form, in a movable frisket frame, while the bed is down; the paper is taken in by grippers on the frisket and carried over the form, when the bed rises and the impression is given; and finally the sheets pass forward from the frisket by tapes to a sheet flier, which delivers them on the fly board. One thousand sheets per hour is the maximum speed of the larger sizes of the Adams press. Although many of these machines were made and great numbers are still used, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thought by many experienced printers that fine book and cut work could be done in no other way than by flat pressure, this system of printing has given place to that of the cylinder press.

The idea of printing from plates or forms carried upon a flat bed beneath a cylinder was not a new one, having been employed by printers of copper-plate engravings in the fifteenth century. Their machines, however, were rude in form, and made of wood, the roller revolving in stationary bearings, while the bed, with the plate upon it and carrying the paper, covered by a blanket, on its surface, moved backward and forward under the roller. The inking was done by hand with balls. With the inauguration of this system of printing from type or forms placed upon a flat bed moved forwards and backwards under a revolving cylinder, commenced an entirely new era in the history of the printing press. It should be understood, however, that the vast number of patents granted for printing machines in which the cylinder is connected with the bed, or by the operation of two cylinders together, one holding the form and the other giving the impression, are almost all for improvements and devices of detail, the radical principles upon which these are founded remaining the same. Thus, Sir Rowland Hill, in the early part of the nineteenth century, projected a machine for printing from an endless roll, or “web” of paper; and in 1790 an Englishman named William Nicholson (author, inventor, patent agent, editor and school teacher) took out a patent covering the idea of cylinder presses in which the forms should be placed upon either a flat bed or cylinder at will and receive the impression from a cylinder covered with cloth or some similar material. Between the bed and cylinder, or between the two cylinders, the sheet was to be fed in and printed. The ink was to be put on by a roller built up of cloth and covered with leather. There is, however, a great difference between an actual invention and a scheme. If the simple proposition advanced to make a machine upon this principle, without its consummation, or without any press being produced, can be considered an invention, then Nicholson may (as a writer on the subject states) have been “so far ahead of his time as to leap over three generations” by his invention. As a matter of fact, however, his patents were mostly schemes, and little more, as a moment’s reflection will convince. He did not know how to curve the plates to be put upon the cylinders, nor how to secure them properly for good work--in fact, he did not know how to make the plates in any practicable manner. All these questions remained to be solved in order that the printing press might be an invention. On this account, therefore, I do not give descriptions of proposals to make machines, but of presses that have been actually made, and used sufficiently to entitle them to recognition as practical improvements exemplifying the progressive evolution of the printing press.

The foundation and growth of newspapers first published periodically, and finally each day, created a demand for machines which should print with rapidity, and fine work was delegated for the time being to the flat bed and platen press, most of it, as has been seen, being turned out upon the hand press.

The credit of actually introducing into use a flat bed Cylinder Press is due to a Saxon named Friederich Koenig, who visited England in 1806, and through the assistance of Thomas Bensley, a printer in London, devised a machine which in 1812-1813 was worked by him, and printed, among other publications, a part of “Clarkson’s Life of William Penn.” Koenig was assisted by a mechanic named Andrew Bauer, a fellow-countryman. The form of type was placed on a flat bed, the cylinder above it having a three-fold motion, or stopping three times; the first third of the turn receiving the sheet upon one of the tympans and securing it by the frisket; the second giving the impression and allowing the sheet to be removed by hand, and the third returning the tympan empty to receive another sheet.

These men also devised what has proved, even to this day, to be a most efficient reciprocating motion of the type bed. It consists of a pinion carried on the inner end of a long shaft which is turned by gearing from the outside of the press frame and has in its length a universal joint, allowing an up-and-down motion of the pinion as it revolves. To the outer end of the shaft the wheel connecting with the impression cylinder is attached. Underneath the bed and fastened to it is a “rack,” or a row of teeth, with a crescent-shaped segment of hard metal at each end. In this rack, in addition to the teeth, are pins, or studs, at each end. The wheel before referred to, at the outer end of the shaft, being set in motion revolves the pinion and moves the bed by means of the teeth in this rack. At the proper moment, calling for the reversal of the bed, the pinion turns around over one of the pins or studs, against the segment on the rack, and immediately re-engages its teeth in the opposite side of the rack, so carrying the bed back again. This motion is repeated at the opposite end of the rack, and the bed again stopped and returned by the pinion revolving against the segment and again over the rack, thus giving a reciprocating motion to the bed.

In 1814 Koenig patented a continuously revolving Cylinder Press. The part of the periphery of the cylinder not used for giving the impression is slightly reduced in diameter, so as to allow the form to return under it freely after giving an impression. He showed designs adapting it for use as a single Cylinder Press, and also a two Cylinder Press, both for printing one side of the paper at a time; likewise a two Cylinder Press for printing both sides of the paper at one operation. In this later press, the two forms were placed one at each end of a long bed, and the paper after being printed on one side by one cylinder, was carried by tapes over a registering roller to the other cylinder, where it was printed upon the reverse side. This press, termed a “perfecting press,” was afterwards improved by Applegath & Cowper so as to be a very efficient machine.

Koenig erected in the office of the London “Times” in 1814 two of the two Cylinder Presses mentioned above, which printed on one side of the paper only, at the rate of 800 sheets per hour.

Koenig, however, was not alone in his efforts to perfect a Cylinder Press. Various patents were gotten out by Bacon & Donkin in 1813; by Cowper in 1816 and again in 1818; and by Applegath in 1818. But the most ingenious and practical device in connection with the movements of a flat bed and a cylinder for printing machines was patented by Napier in 1828 and 1830. He was the first who introduced “grippers,” or “fingers,” for the conveyance of the sheets around the cylinder during the impression, and for delivering them after printing. Tapes or strings had previously been employed for this purpose. He was also the first to manufacture presses in which the impression cylinders are of small size and make two or more revolutions to each sheet printed, and he devised the toggles for bringing the cylinders down to print on the form and for raising them to let the form run back without touching.