Mirek Subrt, from the Czech Republic, sent in these photos of his print plant. Mirek worked many years as a Compositor, mainly on Intertypes, but is currently working as a bus driver. Ivan Kohout took the photographs.
Czech Print Works
Category: Location
McWhan Printers
After more than 70 years the family business, McWhan Printers, Scabrborough, UK closed down early in 2007. Specialising in posters and magazines, the business remained fully letterpress to the end. Ken McWhan used Metal Type Classifieds to try and find new homes for the equipment on these pages — many thanks to the people who were able to help him out.
Cossar Flat-Bed Web Press
Thanks to David Philips for sending in these pictures of a historical press from Scotland, UK.
FROM the Strathearn Herald, Saturday July 6, 1907.
Since the inception of the Strathearn Herald in 1856, several changes have taken place in the machine-room, all with a view to a speedier production of this journal.
In its earlier years the Herald was printed on a hand-press, which entailed much hard manual labour, with a very low output per hour.
After a time a cylinder machine, driven by manual labour, was introduced, this in turn giving way to another old-fashioned cylinder machine with a speed of some 600 per hour.
A step towards faster printing was gained by the installation of a single-feeder machine of the Wharfdale type, printing from 1000 to 1200 sheets per hour, on one side only, which has done good services for about 20 years.
An increasing circulation, together with pressure on our space at certain times of the year, has again necessitated greater speed and a larger machine, and accordingly we placed an order for a new press, capable of producing the Herald at a high speed, with a minimum of labour, with Messrs Payne & Sons, Atlas Works, Otley, the well-known printers’ engineers.
With this issue the paper is printed for the first time on the “COSSAR” PRESS, of which an illustration is given above.
This machine — so named after its patentee, a young Scotsman, with a genius for mechanics, Mr T Cossar, Govan Press — is of the flat-bed type, and has been designed to fill up the gap between single or two-feeders and the rotary machine, and embodies the latest improvements in printing off a flat bed of type, and with a roll of paper instead of cut sheets.
The paper after being printed is cut off the reel, folded and delivered ready for sale at a speed of 4000 to 5000 per hour.
If necessary, we can extend the size of the paper so as to give us about 24 columns more space.
The various parts of the press, numbering several thousands, and weighing in all over ten tons, have been most expeditiously put together in our premises by the makers’ representatives — Messrs T Searr, F Paley, and W Bennett — and on Thursday and yesterday satisfactory trials were made under the superintendence of Mr Cossar.
As indicating the steadiness and entire absence of vibration with which this machine runs, a penny-piece may be balanced on edge on the side frame, while the press is running a full speed.
We need only add that we will be very pleased to show the machine to any of our readers interested.
The final run of this magnificent press in March 1991.
Koenig & Bauer Rollrenner Press Video
Many thanks to Andy from the Basel Paper Mill Museum for sending in these videos of their Koenig & Bauer Rollrenner Press VIII, dating from 1926, printing posters.
Feeding paper
Underside of the press
Grippers
Printed sheets
Last Letterpress Newspaper in Australia
Graeme How spotted this article in an edition of the Australian trade magazine ProPrint. Visit their website here: www.proprint.com.au
TAKE A DRIVE up the scenic Waterfall Way from Bellingen, on the mid-north coast of New South Wales, towards the university city of Armidale, and when you start to breathe the cooler, fresh air at the top of the plateau you’ll find yourself in the snug town of Dorrigo.
And there, if you walk through the town’s newsagency and out the back, you will find Australia’s last surviving newspaper printed on letterpress.
The Don Dorrigo Gazette and Guy Fawkes Advocate, as it’s rather mysteriously called, was founded by brothers Herb and Reg Vincent in 1910, is a proudly independent weekly journal redolent of the hot metal days before country newspaper buyouts.
Proprint found published-editor John English seated at a vintage Intertype machine setting next edition’s news in lead, tin and antimony at 288 degrees Celsius. Grey-bearded John started as an apprentice with the Gazette when he was 16 and has been there ever-since.
The paper serves a rural district of some 2,000 plateau dwellers, with a few copies being sold down the hill in Bellingen’s green valley. John prints the stories on a Heidelberg Zylinder Automat which was installed new at a cost of 3,270 pounds. He can still obtain parts for the Intertype, but not for the Heidi.
“Someone from Heidelberg came here once and told me it was the third-last machine made in Germany before the start of WWII. It sat crated up until post-war trade got going, and this firm got it in 1951,” John said.
John skilfully clicks the 90 keys of the Intertype, and we watch spellbound as the great lever of the machine tilts and the flywheels spin. This print shop has a rhythm of percussion and whirring that we haven’t heard for years.
John starts the newspaper on Friday morning, working through the weekend until Tuesday, when he can put it to bed. The Gazette is folded on Wednesday morning, and the editor can take a break until Thursday when he commences commercial printing. The staple of this line of Gazette work is docket books and the like, and specials such as the Dorrigo Pre-school calendar.
With the machines paid off long ago, low overheads allow competitiveness, and as many Dorrigo folks believe in shopping locally there is always plenty to keep the town’s printery occupied.
As for the paper’s 96-year-old masthead, there are two schools of thought as to the origin of the name Don Dorrigo. One theory says that the name of the area — which from its earliest days was known as Don Dorrigo comes from the local aboriginal word dundurrigo, meaning “stringy-bark tree”.
However, there is a local tradition, subscribed to by John English, that the name was given by a Major Parke who fought with a rebel Spanish general, Don Dorrigo.The old term lives on in just a few names, such as the Don Dorrigo Tennis Club, and the Gazette, Guy Fawkes Advocate refers to the nearby river that was named by white settlers on a Guy Fawkes day in the mid-19th century.
We watch John line up the metal type from the stick to the chase, block the metal with furniture and tighten it with a coign key, making the forme for another Gazette page and thus also preserving some of the colourful jargon of a mode of printing little changed since the craft’s roots centuries ago.
We ask the owner of one of perhaps just three independently owned and printed newspapers in Australia if he would consider selling the Gazette to one of the big boys.
The look on John English’s face is all the answer required.
Gisborne Museum, NZ
Graeme How sent in these pictures of a neglected Intertype and an old press from a recent visit to the Gisborne Museum of Technology and Transport in New Zealand.
Nodis Rapid Caster
THIS MACHINE was advertised in the November 1944 edition of The British Printer.
The text of the advertisement is as follows: “Type! A Worry? It isn’t to printers who have a Nodis Rapid Caster.
“They always have full cases of perfect type, and can quote for a job in a great variety of faces, as a large library of matrices is at all times in their service.
“Their Nodis Rapid Caster casts from Nodis, Linotype, Intertype and other matrices using the same mould. Also Rules, Leads, Borders, etc.
“Low initial cost, low running cost, perfect solid hard type.
“Manufactured at Nodis Works, Julien Road, Ealing, W5 by The Williams Engineering Co. Ltd. of British materials by British labour with British capital.
“Although, during the war period, orders cannot be executed for this machine, all enquiries will be answered fully and promptly.”
Damaged Miehle Press
TONY PRESTON sent in this photograph of a press, which he thinks was a Miehle, taken at the Government Printing Office, Perth, Western Australia in 1980.
Says Tony, “The damage is down to the machine minder leaving his quoin key on the bed of the machine, then pressing the start button.”
The damage looks terminal!
Rusholm Printers, York, 1959
Thanks to Tony Preston for sending in this slightly out of focus (but worth including) photo of Rusholmes Printers.
Tony Preston, who sent in the photograph said: “I’m a native of York and served my time as a hand compositor at Rusholme Printers who were originally in Market Street before moving to High Ousegate in 1956 or 7.
“The photograph is of the staff at Rusholmes in High Ousegate standing beside a vertical Miehle. The office was originally the City snooker hall and down a snicket opposite All Saints Church.
“I’m now in my seventies, Arthur Kelly would be a year or two older, and I know Don died just recently at age somewhere in the nineties. Bill is definitely gone and I would presume the same for Walter. Terry Rowan was the apprentice and the last I heard of him he was in the police force. There was also another apprentice there Terry Walker — he owns, or did, Ultra Print in Park Grove.
New Zealand, 1938
Graeme How spotted this photo whilst queuing at his local bank — and managed to get a copy to send in to Metal Type.
Many thanks to Metal Type stalwart Graeme How for sending in the above picture.
In Graeme’s own words, “I walked into my local bank and saw the attached picture from their calendar hanging on the wall.
“I asked the teller to save it for me, which she kindly did.
“The calendar photos are a series of nostalgia photos of early New Zealand. This one is the July – August page.”
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