Two-Color Rotary Presses are in successful operation in different parts of this country. In these machines there are two plate cylinders and one impression cylinder, each of the plate cylinders having its own inking and dampening appliances. The sheet of paper, after being fed to the grippers of the impression cylinder, receives one printing from the first plate cylinder, and a second printing, in a different color, from the second plate cylinder, and is then released from the grippers and delivered in the usual manner by the sheet flier. The size of the sheets printed is 44 × 64 inches, and running at a speed of 1,700 revolutions per hour, the number of printings is 3,400, or double that obtained from the one-color machine of the same size.

We now return to a further consideration of the newspaper press. The “Single Small Cylinder” and “Double Small Cylinder” machines heretofore described as primarily the invention of Napier, and perfected by Hoe & Co. and made by them, came into general use in the United States. In construction and for the quantity and quality of work produced they excelled any made in England; the output of one of the “Single Cylinder” presses reaching 2,000 impressions per hour, or about as fast as the feeder could lay down the sheets. When still greater speed was required the “Double Cylinder” press was used, the travel of the bed being of such length that the form of type passed backward and forward under both cylinders. Two feeders accordingly put in the sheets; the maximum speed obtained being about 2,000 from each cylinder, or 4,000 from the two cylinders per hour, printed on one side. It was evident, both in England and America, that something faster must be devised. The growing demand for papers containing the latest news necessitated increasing effort on the part of the machine-makers. The presses of Dryden & Ford, Middleton, and others in England failed to meet the requirements there, as did the “Single” and “Double” Cylinders in America.

In 1845 and 1846 the firm of R. Hoe & Co. in New York were busily engaged upon plans and inventions for presses which should meet the increased requirements of the newspapers in America. The result was the construction of a press known as the “Hoe Type Revolving Machine,” embodying patents taken out by Richard M. Hoe. The first one of these machines was placed in the “Ledger” office in Philadelphia, in 1846. The basis of these inventions consisted in an apparatus for securely fastening the forms of type on a central cylinder placed in a horizontal position. This was accomplished by the construction of cast-iron beds, one for each page of the newspaper. The column rules were made “V” shaped; i. e., tapering toward the feet of the type. It was found that, with proper arrangement for locking up or securing the type upon these beds, it could be held firmly in position, the surface form a true circle, and the cylinder revolved at any speed required without danger of the type falling out. Around this central cylinder from four to ten impression cylinders, according to the output required, were grouped. The sheets were fed in by boys, and taken from the feed board by automatic grippers, or fingers, operated by cams in the impression cylinders, and which conveyed them around against the revolving form of the central cylinder. Here again a great advantage was gained by the use of the patented sheet flier, consisting of a row of long wooden fingers fastened to the shaft, and operated by a cam and springs; the sheet after printing being conducted out underneath each feed board by means of tapes to the sheet fliers, which laid them in piles on tables; the number of fliers and tables corresponding to the number of impression cylinders. The inking was accomplished by the use of composition rollers placed between each of the impression cylinders; the fountain being below, underneath the main type cylinder. The portion of the surface of this type cylinder, not occupied by the type itself, was utilized as a distributing table, its surface being lower than that of the type, and the inking rollers rising and falling alternately to place the ink on the type and receive a new supply from the distributing surface. The first of these presses had only four impression cylinders, necessitating four boys to feed the sheets. The running speed obtained was about 2,000 sheets to each feeder per hour, thus giving, with what was called a “Four Feeder” or “Four Cylinder” machine, a running capacity of about 8,000 papers, per hour, printed upon one side. As the demands of the newspapers increased, more impression cylinders were added, until these machines were made with as many as ten grouped around the central cylinder, giving an aggregate speed of about 20,000 papers per hour printed upon one side. A revolution in newspaper printing took place. Journals which before had been limited in their circulation by their inability to furnish the papers rapidly increased their issues, and many new ones were started. The new presses were adopted not only throughout the United States, but also in Great Britain. The first one put up abroad was erected in 1848, in the office of “La Patrie” in Paris, but the downfall of the Republic and the re-imposition of a stamp duty, soon put an end to all enterprise in French newspaper publishing. The English, always slow to adopt improvements, did not appreciate the value of these presses until the year 1856, when Edward Lloyd of “Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper” in London, having seen the one in the office of “La Patrie,” ordered a “Six-Cylinder” machine. This was erected in his office in Salisbury Square, Fleet Street, London, in the following year. It was no sooner in operation and seen by the other newspaper proprietors than orders were received from the London “Times” for two “Ten-Cylinder” presses, to replace the Applegath machine they were then using. The order for these machines was a gratifying tribute to American ingenuity, for the “Times” in December, 1848, in an article on the starting of the Applegath vertical cylinder press, stated that “No art of packing could make the type adhere to a cylinder revolving around a horizontal axis and thereby aggravating centrifugal impulse by the intrinsic weight of the metal.” Eventually orders from almost all of the leading newspapers in Great Britain and Ireland were received.

In the meantime various experiments had demonstrated the possibility of casting stereotype plates on a curve. The process was brought to perfection by the use of flexible paper matrices, upon which the metal was cast in curved moulds to any circle desired, and these plates were placed upon the Hoe “Type Revolving Machine” upon beds adapted to receive them instead of the type forms. The newspaper publishers were thus enabled to duplicate the forms, and run several machines at the same time with a view of turning out the papers with greater rapidity. In some large offices, such as the New York “Herald,” London “Daily Telegraph,” and the London “Standard,” as many as five of these machines were in constant operation. About this time the stamp duty in England of one penny upon each sheet of printed matter was repealed. This in itself aided materially in the development of the newspaper press.

After the return of Koenig to Germany, an Englishman named Applegath, in connection with a machinist named Cowper, made various improvements, mostly in the way of simplifying Koenig’s presses. After many experiments, they in 1848 constructed for the London “Times” an elaborate machine, entirely upon the cylindrical principle. All of the cylinders of this machine instead of being horizontal, as in presses heretofore used, were vertical. The type was placed upon a large upright central cylinder, but the circumference instead of presenting a complete circle represented as many flat surfaces as there were columns in the newspaper, the forms thus being polygonal. Around this central or form cylinder were placed eight smaller vertical cylinders for taking the impression, inking rollers being introduced to ink the type as it passed alternately from one of these impression cylinders to another. The sheets were fed down by hand from eight flat horizontal feed-boards through tapes; then grasped by another set of tapes and passed sideways between the impression cylinder and the type cylinder, thus obtaining sheets printed upon one side. The impression cylinder delivered them, still in a vertical position, into the hands of boys, one stationed at each cylinder to receive them. The results obtained from this machine were in a measure satisfactory, as the number of papers printed per hour upon one side, from one form of type, was materially increased; not, however, in proportion to the number of impression cylinders placed around it, as the press at its best could produce but 8,000 impressions per hour, on one side of the sheets. Having devised no means to lock up the type other than in flat columns, the polygonal form was a necessity, and the irregularities in it were made up by underlaying the blankets on the impression cylinders to take up these inequalities. Although this press, used in the London “Times” office, was the only one of the kind ever made, its size and importance warrant some record and description of it. This machine was taken out to make way for Hoe Type Revolving Presses.