Chapter XXXIII: Appendix: F

[See p. 230.]

[The following letter to _The Scotsman_ was written by Mr. John Forster, late Member for Berwick. In a marginal note Sir R. Hill has written, “I vouch for its accuracy.”]

“SIR ROWLAND HILL AND THE PRINTING PRESS.

“London, February 12, 1872.

“SIR,—In your interesting article on the ‘Walter Press’ it was
stated that the idea of a Rotatory Machine printing newspapers
on a continuous sheet of paper was not novel; that Sir Rowland
Hill had worked at it many years before, as had other persons
in America. As to most of your readers this mention of a
benefactor of theirs in another way as a mechanical inventor
was no doubt something new and curious, it may be interesting
to them to learn what Sir Rowland Hill’s share of merit in
this matter was. I send with this a copy of the specification
of his patent for letter-press printing machines, taken out in
1835 (No. 6762, printed by the Patent Office in 1857), and an
account of it given in the ‘Repertory of Patent Inventions,’
No. 35. By these it will be seen that the most important
achievements of modern printing were effected by Sir Rowland
Hill thirty-seven years ago. His machine was to print either
with stereotype-plates or movable type (the difficulty of
fastening the last securely to cylinders revolving at great
speed was met by special contrivances); was itself to keep the
printing surfaces inked; to print a continuous roll of paper,
of any length, and both sides, while passing once through the
apparatus; to cut up the roll into sheets; and means were
contrived of performing those operations on two rolls at once,
so that at one revolution of the printing cylinders two copies
could be struck off. Such a machine was actually constructed
(at an expense of about £2,000), and was frequently shown at
work at No. 44, Chancery Lane, as many persons must remember.
Though driven by hand, it could produce at the rate of seven or
eight thousand impressions in an hour. One great difficulty of
most printing machines is that of securing perfect _register_
(the exact coincidence of the printing on opposite sides of the
paper). This was anticipated and met by the patent. The one
thing the inventor failed to do was to overcome the resistance
the collectors of the stamp duty presented to this printing on
a continuous roll, and to the affixing of the stamps to the
newspapers at the proper intervals during their passage through
the machine. Many years afterwards they allowed this to be done
by machinery contrived by Mr. Edwin Hill (who had assisted his
brother in the preparation of the printing machine), which was
affixed to the presses of the _Times_ and other papers, and
which itself registered, for the security of the revenue, the
number of impressions made. In 1835, the task of satisfying
the Treasury that this could be done with safety to it was too
formidable to be overcome,—at least it was not overcome. Sir
Rowland Hill’s attention was soon afterwards absorbed by his
plans of postal reform; and no one can regret this, seeing
what work he did in the Post Office, which probably no one
but himself could have done so well; while if the fourteen
years of his patent passed unprofitably to the inventor, other
hands have carried to extraordinary perfection the scheme of
a printing machine. Of course the Americans and the ‘Walter
Press’ have greatly advanced on ‘Hill’s Machine’ of 1835;
especially by the preparation of stereotype plates for this
particular service. In his specification, Sir Rowland Hill made
due mention of his predecessors, recording that an imitation of
the process of printing calico by cylinders revolving rapidly
was proposed for letter-press printing as early as 1790, by
Mr. William Nicholson, and that this was applied to stereotype
plates bent to a cylindrical surface by Mr. Edward Cowper in
1816. But the first practical scheme of newspaper printing on
a continuous roll of paper by revolving cylinders was produced
and set to work by Rowland Hill in 1835.

“I am, &c.,

“J. F.

“The Editor, _The Scotsman_.”

[Two years later Sir Rowland Hill wrote the following letter to the _Journal of the Society of Arts_:]—

“TYPE-PRINTING MACHINERY

“SIR,—In the interesting paper ‘On Type-printing Machinery,’ by
the Rev. Arthur Rigg, which appeared in your _Journal_ of the
13th inst., there are certain errors affecting myself which I
request permission to correct.

“It is stated that rotating cylinders and continuous rolls
of paper were principles first introduced into type-printing
machinery by Mr. Nicholson in 1790, and further on it is
asserted, in reference no doubt to the printing machine which I
invented in 1835, that I ‘revived a proposal of Nicholson’s.’

“Now, so far from Mr. Nicholson proposing to print from types
on continuous rolls of paper, a reference to the specification
of his invention (A.D. 1790, No. 1,748) will show that,
excluding his proposals for calico and wall-paper printing,
which have nothing to do with type-printing machinery, he
invariably speaks of printing on sheets of paper; indeed, the
means of producing continuous rolls of paper were not invented
till several years later. Again, it will be seen that the means
he proposes for attaching the types to his cylinder, the real
difficulty to be overcome, are clearly insufficient for the
purpose; indeed, as stated in the specification of my patent
(A.D. 1835, No. 6,762), which was drawn by the late Mr. Farey—a
man thoroughly conversant with the subject—‘on account of
deficiencies and imperfections in the machinery described in
that specification [Mr. Nicholson’s] the same has never been
practised or brought into use.’

“Towards the close of his paper, Mr. Rigg seems to imply that
hitherto all schemes for fixing moveable types on a cylinder
have failed. I can only say that in my machine this difficulty
was entirely overcome. Indeed, in a letter which appeared in
the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ of November 12th, 1836 (when the
subject was before the public), I was enabled to state that
‘in the opinion of many eminent printers who have seen my
machine the end in view has been fully accomplished, for while
any portion of type may be detached from the cylinder with a
facility even greater than that with which a similar change
can be made in an ordinary form, each letter can be so firmly
locked in its place that there is no danger whatever of its
being loosened by centrifugal force or by any other cause.’

“While upon this subject, I may as well add that a comparison
of my specification with that of the ‘Walter Press’ (A.D. 1866,
No. 3,222) will show that, except as regards the apparatus for
cutting and distributing the printed sheets, and excepting
further that the ‘Walter Press’ is only adapted for printing
from stereotype plates, while mine would not only print from
stereotype plates, but, what was far more difficult, from
moveable types also, the two machines are almost identical. I
gladly admit, however, that the enormous difficulty of bringing
a complex machine into practical use—a difficulty familiar to
every inventor—has been most successfully overcome by Messrs.
Calverley and MacDonald, the patentees of the ‘Walter Press.’

“I am, &c.,

“ROWLAND HILL.

“Hampstead, February 26, 1874.”