This machine is intended for printing on a continuous roll of dampened
paper, which passes between a pair of cylinders (one of which is an
impression cylinder, and the other a cylinder around which stereotyped
plates are bent) and receives an impression on one side, and the sheet
then goes forward and is printed on the other side while passing between
a second pair of cylinders similar to the first, except that the
impression cylinder is four times the diameter of the plate cylinder
to prevent more effectually the ink from “setting off.” After being
printed, and before delivery, the sheet is cut off by a fixed serrated
cutting blade, the ingenious invention of Victor Beaumont of New York.
A French device for making flexible papier-maché moulds rendered it
possible to cast the type-plates to fit the printing cylinders. Without
this auxiliary, web perfecting presses would have been useless and
impracticable.
[Illustration: THE BULLOCK SELF-FEEDING PERFECTING PRESS, WITH FOLDER,
WILL FLY THE SHEET FLAT, FOLD IT THREE OR FOUR TIMES AT WILL, OR CUT,
FOLD, AND PASTE IT AS FAST AS PRINTED]
Mr. Bullock, born in Greene County, New York, was a mechanical genius,
and was the author of many inventions in various departments of
machinery.[18] About the year 1860, he began to work out the idea of
a rotary self-feeding, or web perfecting press. After making a large
working model, which is still in existence, he adopted a simpler plan,
and in 1861 constructed a machine for the _Cincinnati Times_, which
was successfully operated, but it was far from perfect. Three of
these machines were used for a considerable time in the office of the
_Philadelphia Inquirer_.
He continued his efforts, and in 1865 he produced a press which met his
original anticipation, and a company was formed to manufacture it. In
1867, while setting up a machine for the _Public Ledger_ in Philadelphia,
he suffered a serious injury which terminated his life. More than fifty
of the presses are now in use in the United States. The New York _Herald_
press, printing and cutting two copies at each delivery, is said to
produce, with but three men to attend to it, 30,000 copies per hour. The
New York _Sun_ states: “When our seven Bullock Presses are working, we
can turn off, without extravagant assertion, 210,000 copies an hour.”
This assertion must be taken with some grains of allowance. The press is
twelve feet long by five and a half feet wide.