The recent death of Richard March Hoe, in Florence, Italy, closes the
career of one whose name is known wherever the newspaper is used to
spread intelligence.
He was the senior member of the firm of printing-press makers, and one
of the leading inventors and developers of that great lever of public
opinion. Mr. Hoe's father was the founder of the firm. He came to this
country from England in 1803, and worked at his trade of carpentry.
Through his skill as a workman he was sought out by a man named Smith, a
maker of printer's material. He married Smith's sister, and went into
partnership with Smith and brother. The printing-presses of those days
were made chiefly of wood, and Hoe's skill as a wood-worker was valuable
to the firm.
In 1822 Peter Smith invented a hand-press. This press was finally
supplanted by the Washington press, invented by Samuel Rust in 1829. Mr.
Smith died a year after securing his patent, and the firm-name was
changed to R. Hoe & Co., but from the manufacture of the Smith press the
company made a fortune. The demand for hand presses increased so rapidly
that ten years later it was suggested that steam power might be utilized
in some way to do the pulling and tugging necessary in getting an
impression. At this time Richard M., one of the sons of the founder of
the house, was an attentive listener to the discussions.
Young Richard M. Hoe was born in 1812. He had the advantage of an
excellent education, but his father's business possessed such a
fascination for him that it was with difficulty he was kept in school.
He was a young man of twenty before his father allowed him to work
regularly in his shop; but he had already become an expert in handling
tools, and soon became one of the best workmen. He joined with his
father in the belief that steam would yet be applied to the
printing-press, and the numerous models and experiments they made to
that end would, in the light of the present day, appear extremely
ridiculous.
In 1825-30 Napier had constructed a steam printing-press, and in 1830
Isaac Adams, of Boston, secured a patent for a power press. These
inventions were kept very secret; the factories in which they were made
being guarded jealously. In 1830 a Napier press was imported into this
country for use on the _National Intelligencer_. Mordecai Noah, editor
of Noah's _Sunday Times and Messenger_, was collector of the port of New
York at that time, and being desirous of seeing how the Napier press
would work, sent for Mr. Hoe to put it up. He and Richard succeeded in
setting up the press, and worked it successfully.
The success of Napier's press set the Hoes to thinking. They made models
of its peculiar parts and studied them carefully. Then, in pursuance of
a plan suggested by Richard, his father sent his partner, Mr. Newton, to
England, for the purpose of examining new machinery there, and to secure
models for future use. On his return with ideas, Mr. Newton and the
Hoes projected and turned out for sale a novel two-cylinder press, which
became universally popular and soon superseded all others, the Napier
included.
Thus was steam at last harnessed to the press, but the demand of the
daily papers for their increasing editions spurred the press makers to
devise machines that could be worked at higher speed than was found
possible with the presses, in which the type was secured to a flat bed,
which was moved backward and forward under a revolving cylinder. It was
seen, then, that if type could be secured to the surface of a cylinder,
great speed could be attained. In Sir Rowland Hill's device the type was
cast wedge-shape; that is, narrower at the bottom. A broad "nick" was
cut into its side, into which a "lead" fitted. The ends of the "lead" in
turn fitted into a slot in the column rules, and these latter were
bolted into the cylinder. The inventor, Sir Rowland Hill, the father of
penny postage in England, sunk, it is said, £80,000 in the endeavor to
introduce this method.
In the meantime Richard M. had succeeded to his father's business, and
was giving his attention largely to solving this problem of holding type
on a revolving cylinder. It was not until 1846 that he hit on the method
of doing it. After a dozen years of thought the idea came upon him
unexpectedly, and was startling in its simplicity. It was to make the
column rules wedge-shape instead of the type. It was this simple device,
by the introduction of the "lightning press," that revolutionized the
newspaper business of the world, and made the press the power it is. It
brought Hoe fame and put him at the head of press makers. His business
grew to such dimensions that he has in his employ in his New York
factory from 800 to 1,500 hands, varying with the state of trade. His
London factory employes from 150 to 250 hands.
Yet the great daily cravings demanded still faster presses. The result
was the development of the Web press, in which the paper is drawn into
the press from a continuous roll, at a speed of twelve miles an hour.
The very latest is a machine called the supplement press, capable of
printing complete a paper of from eight to twelve pages, depending on
the demand of the day, so that the papers slide out of the machine with
the supplements gummed in and the paper folded ready for delivery. Of
late years many other remarkably ingenious presses of other makers have
come into the market, but still the genius of R. M. Hoe has left an
indelible mark in the development of the printing-press. He died June
6th, 1886.