Hoe’s machines

A greatly improved series of machines for job, book, and newspaper printing, invented hy Richard M. Hoe. a native of Leicestershire, who emigrated in his youth to the United States. In 1846, he brought out his “Lightning Press,” or Type-revolving Printing Machine, which is now in use in some of the largest offices in every part of the world.

The forme of type is placed on the surface of a horizontal revolving cylinder, of about four and a half feet in diameter. The forme occupies a segment of only about one-fourth of the surface of the cylinder, and the remainder is used as an ink distributing surface. Around this main cylinder, and parallel with it, are placed smaller impression cylinders, varying in number from four to ten, according to the size of the machine. The large cylinder being put in motion the form of types is carried successively to all the impression cylinders, at each of which a sheet is introduced and receives the impression of the types as the forme passes. Thus as many sheets are printed at each revolution of the main cylinder as there are impression cylinders around it.

One person is required at each impression cylinder to supply the sheets of paper, which are taken at the proper moment by fingers or grippers, and after being printed are curried out by tapes and laid in heaps by means of self-acting flyers, thereby dispensing with the hands required in ordinary machines to receive and pile the sheets. The grippers hold the sheet securely, so that the thinnest newspaper may be printed without waste. The ink is contained in a fountain placed beneath the main cylinder, and is conveyed by means of distributing rollers to the distributing surface on the main cylinder. This surface being lower, or less in diameter, than the forme of types, passes by the impression cylinder without touching it.

For each impression there are two inking rollers, which receive their supply of ink from the distributing surface of the main cylinder: they rise and ink the forme as it passes under them, after which they again fall to the distributing surface. Each page of the paper is locked-up on a detached segment of the large cylinder (termed a “turtle”), which constitutes its bed and chase. The column rules run parallel with the shaft of the cylinder, and are consequently straight; while the head, cross, and dash rules are in the form of segments of a circle. The column rules are in the form of a wedge, with the thin part directed towards the axis of the cylinder, so as to bind the types securely. These wedge-shaped column rules are held down to the bed by tongues projecting at intervals along their length, which slide in rebated grooves cut crosswise in the face of the bed. The spaces in the grooves between the column rules are accurately fitted with sliding blocks of metal, even with the surface of the bed, the ends of which blocks are cut away underneath to receive a projection on the sides of the tongues of the column rules. The forme of type is locked-up in the bed by means of screws at the foot and sides, by which the type is held as securely as in the ordinary manner upon a Hat bed. if not more so.

The speed of these machines is limited only by the ability of the feeders to supply the sheets. Messrs. Hoe and Co. possess a very extensive manufactory in New York, and they produce various classes of printing materiél. The most stupendous of their works are the type-revolving lightning presses; but perhaps the most extraordinary are the machines whereby railway and theatre tickets are, at a single operation, printed, numbered in a different colour, ami deposited in regular order in a receptacle, at the rate of 10,000 to 12,000 an hour. In 1843, they produced an improved kind, which took the sheet with iron fingers. Kotary Perfecting Presses were made by Hoe and Co. as long ago as 1850, when one was furnished to print, in both type and stereotype, “Thompson’s Bank Reporter,” and another to print “Webster’s Spelling Book” from the plates, at which work it is still employed by Appleton & Co. These machines were the first ever constructed on this principle.

In 1860, Hoe & Co. sent to Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, in London, a perfecting machine, adapted to two or more “feeders.” Large machines built on this principle are now in use in several newspaper offices, and strenuous exertions are making to i improve them to a point where they will do the work of the type-revolving press with equal speed and certainty, and with greater cheapness.

Much interest is felt at the present time in perfecting presses, so called because they “perfect” or print both sides of a sheet at once. They are of various patterns, but may all be divided into two classes, one having flat beds moving horizontally backward and forward, and the other having curved beds revolving upon the surface of a cylinder. Those with flat beds were originally made in England and Germany as early as the close of the last century, and have been manufactured by Hoe & Co. for about forty years.