The Oxford Dictionary also defines tsunami as “an arrival or occurrence of something in overwhelming quantities or amounts.” There are hundreds of words that have dual, often opposite intents, just as futuristic technologies often carry equally painful and joyful outcomes.

Future of offset

Recently, a raft of industry news signalled hope for some offset press manufacturers—photos of customers with toothy grins standing before their new investments on social media and trade magazines. Most of the recent installations are B1 (40 in.) and often have unique configurations. Late last year, Heidelberg announced the installment of the world’s largest offset press, a Speedmaster 106 with a whopping 20 units, at a Westrock plant in Poland. It’s as if we took the last 15 years of stagnation, wrapped it up in a beach towel and buried it someplace: Did the printing industry’s struggle against the internet ever happen? This rejuvenation is only an illusion; declining print use is the reality. Print service providers must do everything faster and at less cost to keep afloat.

The recent resurgence of traditional offset press sales is exciting, even with print’s decline. New equipment makes mincemeat of older presses that have become obsolete overnight. But I still wouldn’t bet on the long-term future of offset. Other new digital technologies are making huge, tsunami-like moves to replace the old guard.

Fully digital

A client in New York recently contacted me with big news. This 100-year-old business and longtime offset commercial printer wanted to sell all their offset equipment and go 100 per cent digital. This is no small operation. The pressroom held two 16-page webs and a six-colour 40-in. press. I’d never encountered a situation as significant and evolutionary before, and as I travelled, I assumed the company’s president wasn’t completely serious. I held onto that notion until I walked into the area that used to house their offset webs. It was all true; this company had overnight transitioned from typical old-school printing methods to a shiny new HP T250 HD inkjet roll-fed press. As I stood and watched, the HP, with only two operators (it looked as if one was enough), hummed along at close to 500 ft per minute from paper rolls through to a bespoke ribbon-deck finishing line that folded and then collected complete products ready for (in this case) perfect binding.

The owner likes to say he grew up making “signatures.” Now, no longer. The plant also doesn’t need a battery of traditional folding machines, as pages are printed in order and bound.

As if the HP T250 HD to a perfect bound book—sans signatures—wasn’t enough, the same HP runs roll-to-roll. Then the printed rolls are sent to another line, encompassing a Hunkler sheeter, an MBO eight-page folding section and finally into a Müller-Martini Prinova stitcher. The Prinova collects each folded signature until the book is complete, then sends it along where a cover feeder can fold and feed a cover. One operator for the whole line. There are no skids of signatures awaiting the entire book to be printed. Printing and binding are in real-time with few personnel and drastically lower costs. Run lengths vary from a few thousand to well over 30,000 copies.

The 40-in. sheetfed, mainly used for cover work (also equipped with UV), hasn’t seen a job in months, with all the work transferred to a few recently installed toner cut-sheet digital presses.

With such a long, successful history, this printing firm had to overcome two world wars, a global depression and fierce competition in the transactional and book printing segments. Today, they have accomplished something few thought feasible: a completely digital process from workflow to delivery.

This isn’t the first HP T250 HD or HP T485 HD installations and Hunkler and Müller-Martini aren’t new to collaboration. Twenty years ago at Drupa 2004, these two were running with Koenig & Bauer’s RotaJet. HP has been marketing the web lines for over 10 years. Transitions of this kind continue to spread. Whether it be Ricoh’s ProZ75, Canon’s ColorStream or Xeikon’s SX30000, choose a partner, as there are many. What has changed is the frequency of these new technologies taking the lead away from old-school offset. The tsunami is already here. Discover it soon.

Nick Howard, partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

Rupert Murdoch is one such media mogul who understood this well. From an early age, he built his empire on a simple premise: give consumers something different. In September 2023, 92-year-old Murdoch stepped down as chair of News Corp and Fox News, leaving behind a dynasty that includes print and television media.

Australian-born Murdoch found himself at the helm of his late father’s fledgling newspaper group, News Limited (now News Corp) in Adelaide, Australia. In 1952, soon after his father’s passing, Murdoch saw the opportunity to build a distinct market for his newspaper, embracing the tabloid format and offering salacious headlines, which were the opposite of the staid conservative broadsheets typical in Australia, America, and Europe. He realized competing for readership using the established playbooks wouldn’t increase readership or profits. During the next two decades, Murdoch replicated his formula to become Australia’s largest newspaper publisher. He then he turned his attention to Britain.

The United Kingdom

London’s Fleet Street, home of all the great British papers, operated as if it were 1869, not 1969, when Murdoch purchased News of the World. Publishers and powerful print unions were locked in a perpetual round of disputes. The unions stifled technological progress with bloated ranks and refused to modernize the print process. But publishers were still making money since newspapers commanded the lion’s share of news and, more importantly, advertising.

With quick success at News of the World, and after a vigorous battle with Robert Maxwell for ownership of the Sun shortly after, Murdoch reworked the Sun from a broadsheet to a tabloid and juiced it up with brassy headlines, plenty of sport and titillating pictures of women. The modern tabloid was thus born.

In Britain, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives were marching toward the right, and Murdoch’s papers supported her as she took a sledgehammer to deep-seated unionism in the country. Fleet Street was well past its expiry date, still embracing letterpress to print all national papers. Offset had not entered the picture even though the technology was mature and used elsewhere in Europe. So, in 1986, Murdoch secretly took over an old factory at Wapping and purchased the latest electronic pre-press equipment and new offset presses, where they were set up, ready for his final ultimatum to the powerful, yet behind-the-times print unions: either reduce your numbers or be out of a job. The unions refused and were summarily fired, forcing 6,000 members on the street.

Meanwhile, the new Wapping factory (with a small contingent of bused-in non-union replacement workers) started up the Sun and News of the World presses and carried on without missing a beat. Murdoch had won a decisive battle.

Crossing the Atlantic Ocean

Murdoch would see other successes, with the addition of the famed the Times in 1981. Still restless, Murdoch next cast his eye on America. In 1974, he moved to New York City, where he launched the trashy Star, a gossip-filled tabloid. This was followed in 1976 with the purchase of the New York Post. But then he cast his net wider and established 20^th Century Fox studios along with Metromedia, a small group of TV stations. In 1986, the new Fox Broadcasting Company would have two hits, the Simpsons and the X-Files. Murdoch had already invested in British TV with Sky Television in 1983.

It wasn’t long before Murdoch envisioned the next great opportunity ripe for huge profits. CNN and MSNBC, both left-of-centre networks, dominated cable news for years. Competing for viewers with similar content made no sense. The obvious choice was to offer content to the right-of-centre viewer. In 1996, Murdoch would do just that with Fox News.

Canadian hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky was once asked about his secret. “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been,” he responded. This logic epitomizes Murdoch. He reasoned that competing in mass communications required a new approach to develop a loyal base of consumers who sought a unique voice. Once he realized this, making money was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Nobody else was there; open ice provided more chances to score!

Praise him or loath him; it doesn’t matter. Murdoch may not even believe what his tabloids or Fox News publishes daily. But he does know how to make a buck, and this is a valuable lesson for our world of print. Versions of the Sun are now sold all over the world. They attract those who feel disenfranchised, often angry, and usually right-of-centre. Nobody saw this wide-open market until Rupert Murdoch, and it’s a lesson for print communication: Find new markets, develop new products, and go where no one has gone before.

Nick Howard, partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

Since the time of Sheng and Gutenberg, our industry has grown and prospered with ever-increasing demands for the dissemination of information. Speeds increased, and materials like paper improved, as printed materials became cheaper with new technologies. The desperate hunger for knowledge created a profitable market for printing until a better way cast the last 500 years aside in a flash.

The age of internet

The year 1995 was symbolized by the great transition to the internet. Drupa 1995, the lynchpin of all things prints, failed to grasp the changes soon to decimate a large segment of our world. At this exhibition, large web newspaper presses were erected, and a host of new offset machines dominated those of the upcoming digital age. Something was afoot, but other than firms discovering websites and the expanding use of email, few in print media knew how the internet would alter their livelihoods.

Print is no longer a critical information media source. Instead of being four wheels and a spare, we are now just a spoke on a larger wheel. Printing presses aren’t lifetime investments, but rather short-term solutions producing products of today and, with luck, maybe tomorrow.

Take, for instance, printing for the pharmaceutical industry. OTC (over-the-counter) medicines come with inserts and outserts, which are six-point type, virtually impossible-to-read, folded sheets of warnings and instructions. Out of legal necessity, these mini-signatures have been included in everything from cough syrup to pain relievers. But now, a movement is afoot to eliminate them in favour of the ubiquitous QR codes. Smartphones are everywhere—almost everyone has one—and getting the same information with a phone click relieves big pharma of an expensive packaging cost. It’s possible inserts and outserts will be gone from OTC medications soon.

Changes are happening with other forms of packaging too, such as CPG goods packaging. With the rapid rise of in-mould-labelling, a potentially lucrative new enhancement could be wide open to attack from those who wage war on plastic in packaging.

No one segment of the print industry is safe from the future demands of the consumer. We must be aware that everything we do today is ripe for obsolescence tomorrow.

Drupa 2024 will soon be upon us. The event is still important, perhaps not for the new devices on display, but for what ‘may’ be relevant over the next few years. 

The expo will showcase legacy offset and even more toner and inkjet, but we can no longer view a trade show as a sherpa to the mountaintop. Ultimately, the consumer will judge our future sustainability in placing ink on paper, plastics, or whatever media they demand.  

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant, and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphic.com.

This column originally appeared in the September/October 2023 issue of PrintAction.

Since Henry Ford’s time, companies have argued over how best to attract young people, but with meagre results. Once powerful organizations, such as trade unions and the Craftsman, are distant memories. We are too busy trying to keep our ships afloat, so we don’t have time to agree and fund a plan. Apprenticeships may have worked decades ago, certainly in Europe, but in North America, we graduated employees from sweeping floors to running  presses.

‘Let the cream rise to the top’ was our form of labour capture. This may have worked in the past, but better incentives are needed now.

Different skillsets

Today, skill levels differ with new print technologies. The in-depth knowledge and experience needed in 1960 aren’t required in the digital age. With recent changes, along with the general public’s opinions of what we do, we often find hiring people to become non-skilled servants of a large inkjet printer—heaving large sheets onto a table and taking them off. This drives them away to seek something with more of a future in an industry offering better prospects. Still, we have positions to fill, and although remuneration has increased, we can’t seem to attract talented people.

Previously, governments attempted to build proper apprenticeship programs. Those failed because schools tended to look forward to the needs of printers by looking back in time. Secondary schools and trade colleges that should have kept current ran antiquated courses on print. Students ended up graduating with the same knowledge Gutenberg used to print his 1450 Bible. Isn’t it ironic an industry that owned the ability to communicate finds it hard to benefit from its own tools? 

Some post-secondary colleges and universities may have taken an equally misguided approach, giving up on essential, practical machine skills and instead focusing on print management. All exciting, perhaps, but what is needed now is more practical skill learning. Look at most inkjet production equipment; only some are well cared for. In almost all cases, the piezo heads are poorly maintained, as it’s better to replace a head than clean it. The same holds for offset presses. How often do we see poor-quality, washed-out colour and incorrect densities on relatively new machines equipped with in-press tools to correct and maintain colour? Isn’t it ironic how we complain about finding talent, yet accept the costs of re-running a lousy job?

Better marketing

The solution may reside in us marketing what we do as exciting, relevant and financially rewarding. We can start by removing negative obstacles, particularly the perception that print has no future. If some ‘printers’ and industry pundits spent the effort used on promoting themselves on encouraging workers and new hires, perhaps more quality applicants would take notice. Pay the key people better. Focus on engaging a company’s most important asset: people.

With print technologies changing, we must attract more workers to join our ranks. It’s never been as easy as it is now for a young person without print skills to enter the workforce. Methods and machinery have never been as simple to learn or as effortless to operate. Institutions and private enterprises must help rally support for logical training plans and foster much-needed encouragement for young people who thought printing was what their grandfather did.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. Contact him at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article originally appeared in the July/August 2023 issue of PrintAction.

While in England, the partners designed and constructed a breakthrough printing press for the Times of London newspaper. This cylinder printing press produced in one day what a battery of hand presses took weeks to do. This technology ushered in a dramatic change that vaulted K & B to a leadership position.

K & B never looked back and went about designing and building ever more complex web presses while expanding into other print areas, such as sheetfed cylinder presses, offset machines, and security presses. Today, it has a firm footing in digital printing systems.

The Oberzell facility also employed a young Andreas Albert, first, as an apprentice, and then master craftsman. Albert eventually left K & B to work for Reichenbach Mashinenfabrik, which was started by Koenig’s nephew and continues today as M.A.N. (Manroland).

In 1861, Albert joined forces with a cast iron foundry run by Andreas Hamm. Hamm’s firm has been in business, notably casting bells for churches, since 1850. Today, it is known as Heidelberger Druckmaschinen (Heidelberg). It wasn’t long before stop-cylinder presses left the picturesque German town of Frankenthal with both names emblazoned on the side frames.

Frankenthal’s domination

However, all was not well with the partners. By 1873, Albert terminated the partnership with Hamm and set up his company, Schnellpressenfabrik Albert & Cie. Soon there were new machines and radically improved technologies under the Albert name. In short order, web-fed presses were reaching customers all over Europe. K & B realized this young company was elbowing its way onto their home turf. As Albert grew more powerful, reaching over 1,200 employees and entering the gravure and offset business, the Frankenthal company became a threat to K & B and M.A.N.

In the 1920’s, Albert already had the world’s fastest web press, known as the “Red Devil.” By the early 1930s, Albert web presses with speeds of 30,000 revolutions were being installed in Europe. At that time, sheetfed letterpress business was dominant in Germany. But Albert held a whopping 60 per cent of the worldwide market of web presses, specifically rotogravure, by the late 1980s. Many web offset platforms designed by Albert during the 1970s and 1980s would become “Compacta” presses, a K & B trademark.

K & B decided to take action. In 1978, K & B orchestrated a purchase of 49 per cent of Albert from the owners, Rhineland Palatinate Ministry of Finance (local state government). In 1988, it increased its ownership to 74.99 per cent. When the 1990 unification of Germany brought about new opportunities, K & B purchased the final shares of Albert and, in so doing, launched the trade moniker, “KBA.”

This is how things remained until 2017 when KBA celebrated its 200^th anniversary. K & B’s senior management marked the anniversary by adding an arsenal of press designs to its conglomerate. The brand, “KBA,” was also retired. Albert was relegated to the past. K & B was deemed to be the brand name of the world’s oldest printing press company.

The Albert purchase by K & B is one of the most monumental print-related acquisitions of the 20^th  century. Sadly, Albert’s role in shaping our industry is not widely known and only a few of us remember when the “A” in KBA stood for much more than just Albert. 

Nick Howard,  a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant, and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphic.com.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2023 issue of PrintAction.

Gaston Lefebvre, the 36-year-old owner of Printing Material, was the Canadian agent for Polygraph-Export, which included exclusive selling rights for all graphic arts products produced in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). By all accounts, he was well educated, with a B.Comm degree from McGill University and a sales pitch that could convince most printers to hand over their cash. To crack the U.S. market, Lefebvre deviously booked space at Spectra ’59 and installed a Universal Webmaster RZO (offset half-web made in Leipzig, GDR) at his booth.

You’ve stolen our press!

Not surprisingly, there was already a Webmaster RZO dealer in the U.S.—the Acme Litho-Plate Graining Co. Acme was owned by New York-based Milton Berg, who, in 1949, craftily chartered a ship loaded with wastepaper from New York to the East German port of Rostock. Berg then bartered the paper, desperately needed by East Germans, in exchange for machinery made by Planeta, Brehmer, Universal, and Perfecta. The Universal, quickly renamed the Milton, was being displayed at Acme’s booth at the 1959 Graphic Arts Exposition.

Since 1950, Berg’s company had been the official U.S. importer of over 53 lines of Polygraph machinery produced in the GDR. Planeta was the diamond of the bunch, and since 1954, Berg had successfully racked up U.S. sales of the popular Planeta PZO-6 and PZO-7 presses (49 and 55 in., two-colour) while at the same time reminding prospective clients that Planeta had indeed designed and sold its drawings to the English firm George Mann. The resultant 1932 design facsimile known as the “Mann Fast-five” had then seen brisk sales all over the U.S. through local agent, American Type Founders.

Where did the money go?

It wasn’t long before Berg caught wind of the cheeky Canadian. He showed up at Lefebvre’s booth yelling, “You’ve stolen our press!” and sharing with passers-by the lurid details of the betrayal. This incident ironically helped expose what would soon become Canada’s largest bankruptcy among printing industry suppliers. After the dust settled, a $4 million deficit (worth $41 million today) would be uncovered.

In 1943, Printing Material, trading as Matérial d’Imprimerie Ltée in Quebec, was a subsidiary of Lefebvre & Sorin Ltée, a company formed in 1937 by Lefebvre’s father, Achille. 

In 1955, Lefebvre gained sole ownership and immediately sought to take advantage of the growing Canadian printing industry by lining up many European graphic arts agencies, such as Kiekebusch, Grafopress, Nebiolo, Koenig & Bauer, Johannisberg, Sadolin & Holmblad, Buhler Bros (Swissplex), GMA Tirfing, and Parisolith.

In 1957, Montreal firm Barer Engineering & Machinery, which held the Canadian rights to all East German machinery, agreed to sell Polygraph-Export rights along with their remaining inventory to Printing Material. Now with even more lucrative lines to sell and at exceedingly low prices due to East German companies’ desperate need for hard currency, Lefebvre signed crazy deals, offering long-term repayment plans, extending credit, and inflating the value of trade-ins, and basically anything to secure a sales contract. The financing firms of the day were delighted to extend loans to Printing Material after they saw the potential of fat margins on East German equipment. All Lefebvre needed was to show a copy of a sales contract along with a customer deposit. Air travel back and forth to Europe and California, expensive hotels, and fast cars became a part of Lefebvre’s life: an addiction that has been the downfall of many salesmen.

A ponzi scheme

As debts piled up, Lefebvre felt the screws tightening and pushed his sales staff to write contracts with even more generous terms to appease bankers. The ruse worked for months, but there would be no escaping reality. On the surface, Printing Material was a successful venture ensconced in a palatial building on Montreal’s Park Avenue and employing over 80 people. The dam finally burst on October 28, 1959, when Lefebvre orchestrated a “voluntary bankruptcy with only hours to spare.” Over 520 creditors discovered they’d be whistling for pennies on the dollar and had been duped by Lefebvre’s hyperbole. Polygraph-Export had the most to lose and flew a representative to Montreal to salvage remaining inventory, but their $608,000 ($7 million today) had already vapourized.

Further bad news awaited the appointed receiver when substantial cash sums paid to the company by finance companies “were never entered in the company books,” and individual sales were “financed not only once, but twice, and, in some cases, three times.”

Oddly, Lefebvre was listed as a creditor, but he would vanish from the scene by the end of November, after transferring his house in the affluent town of Hampstead, outside of Montreal, to his brother-in-law.

The saga of Printing Material would haunt the industry for years to come. On a personal note, my father had to look for a new job after the sudden bankruptcy.

Lefebvre never materialized again nor did the money. To add insult to injury, the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York never got paid for Lefebvre’s stay during Spectra ’59.

Milton Berg, on the other hand, had some terrific years selling East German machinery. By 1957, he had delivered 135 Universal RZOs alone. Still, by the end of 1960, he relinquished his agency to Royal Zenith. 

Royal Zenith would hold on to the agencies until 1990 when Koenig & Bauer purchased Planeta and the Iron Curtain finally imploded under its weight.

Nick Howard, Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. Email him at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the March/April 2023 issue of PrintAction.

The museum LSB was built in 1935, but the first models appeared in 1933. With a maximum sheet size of 17.5 x 22.5 in., this would be Harris’s first attempt at entering the then rapidly growing small format offset business. As today, printers sought affordable methods of printing. Letterpress was the dominant technology then but offset offered better quality and colour, and faster speeds. Today, digital manifestations are doing the exact same thing to win over traditional offset users. Even during the Great Depression printers were game to try new things.

There were few challengers when the Harris LSB first came out. In England, Crabtree had built a small press. In America, Webendorfer with the Chief offered the only local competition. This shows that offset builders spent most of their resources on larger machines. In the end, Harris built just 646 LSBs between 1933 and 1943. In 1945, the model was superseded by the LTG.

The rebuilt Harris LSB.

Reviving an old press

Restoration was a slow and painstaking process of re-learning and demystifying an assemblage of crude mechanical levers, cams and, often laughable by today’s standards, mechanics. Our goal was to print a job on this press, which we achieved after months of work. A copy of a Harris 1935 advertisement was recreated and produced with a sheet size of 14 x 20 in. The normal problems and shortcomings faced by operators in the Thirties were clear to us, as we had to re-learn to “copperize” the steel oscillation rollers: a long-forgotten process, which if not carried out properly, would cause such bad ink stripping that printing was impossible. Then there was the sheet feeder. Unlike a modern centre separation, the old Harris-HTB feeder was clunky, used “combers” to crack the pile, and offered few precise adjustments. For register, the LSB didn’t have the “feed roll” infeed but rather “tumbler grippers” and front stops, timed to a “push” side guide. To maintain any sense of register the feedtable wheels had to be set perfectly, and this was a big problem even in 1935.

The most important tool for a press operator was an oil can, not a quarter-inch spanner. The complete press was built without a single anti-friction (ball or roller) bearing. All moving parts were running in bronze or simple cast iron bearings. As typical of the times, the machine had to be oiled by hand and at daily regular intervals. To forget was a sin and a seized part would often manifest itself at an inopportune time. In short, operating an LSB was a frustratingly difficult task, and producing quality print was an even bigger undertaking.

When it was time to go home every roller had to be removed and cleaned by hand: there was no wash-up attachment for the little press. This meant that the next day rollers had to be replaced before inking up. The molleton (cloth) dampening tray had to be filled with a water bottle as Baldwin auto-feed jugs were only starting to be installed on larger models. Too much or too little dampening solution was typical and letterpress printers had a hard time learning the mystery of water and ink balance. Our print job ran well considering we had spent plenty of hours cursing the little press!

A Harris LTE shown in 1944.

On the battlefield

Besides being the innovator of small format offsets, the little LSB had another important role to play. In 1941, once America entered the Second World War, the LSB was used on battleships, destroyers, and Quonset hut ground installations around the world. The U.S. defence forces requested Harris, who had by that time stopped building printing machines in favour of gun-mounts, to produce a lightweight press in the 20 x 22.5 in. sheet size. The armed forces needed a press that could easily be moved, operated on the back of a truck or in the field, and possess a print quality sharp enough to reproduce reconnaissance photographs. While larger presses were utilising the offset process to print cartographic maps, the idea of mobile print shops close to the action was relatively new.

The British had already been doing this with Crabtree presses. Germans also built mobile units with Roland (now Manroland) presses. The Americans had tried using Webendorfers and Multiliths but neither press was ideal. Harris went to work and lobbed off over 1,000 lb while re-engineering the LSB into a special military press known as the LTE.

We are unsure how many LTEs were made by Harris as those records are still classified, but we can safely say there were at least 100. Most of them were used in the Pacific area. Perhaps this explains why the only LTE known to exist is at the China Printing Museum in Beijing. The press, painted an ugly green, caught my eye when I visited the museum a few years ago. It stands 5-ft tall and gives a rare glimpse into the importance of print to the war effort. Meanwhile, our restored Harris LSB is in full bloom at Howard Iron Works awaiting those who missed its heyday over 87 years ago!  

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant, and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphic.com.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the September/October 2022 issue of PrintAction.

However, Uline isn’t the only business mailing catalogues to customers. W.W. Grainger, Inc., another well-known industrial supplier, has the largest ‘mailed’ catalogue I’ve ever received. Coming in at over 3,200 pages, it would be an understatement to call it ‘massive’. Several other distributors have also continued swimming against the online current to distribute meaty volumes. All these companies (and many more) can’t be that slow or lack intelligence. Wasn’t print dying? Didn’t they get the memo?

I reached out to Brian Shenker in Pleasant Prairie, Wis., Uline’s vice-president of direct marketing and advertising, to find out why Uline was sticking to a medium many of us have given up for dead. We discussed Uline’s marketing (print editions, mailers, cards, social media, and direct email) strategies. Shenker said Uline wishes to control the complete advertising cycle, and print plays an important role in making the company more noticeable to prospective customers.

He went on to say that a printed catalogue can place Uline products directly into the hands of, for instance, a warehouse employee who initiated the order, but wasn’t named on the purchase order. The catalogue has a way of cutting through rigid company structures and showing up in a shipping office or company cafeteria or even taken home by an employee. The catalogue lingers, well past its expiry date. Remember the old Sports Illustrated issues in your hairdresser’s salon.

Shenker acknowledged that current paper shortages are a major concern and Uline must be flexible in choosing the paper and weight for individual runs. Regardless of the current crisis, Shenker believes a printed catalogue does an excellent job in circumventing the traditional purchasing agent while reaching a wider body of potential buyers at the same location. When the goods arrive—with a requisite free-ride catalogue in tow—the ultimate user often discovers valuable items they didn’t know about.

Large expenditures to keep mailing lists up to date are necessary, and Shenker believes the expense and time are well worth the trouble. Ironically, the mailing list serves both print and online activities. Various printed catalogues can reach specific customers in restaurants, offices, and warehouses.

According to Shenker, Uline’s printed catalogues are getting positive reviews from customers. He believes Uline’s catalogues are in the spotlight because considerably less catalogues are direct mailed today. Shenker was adamant in suggesting that some of his competitors exited print early and are now regretting their hasty decisions.

Shenker believes print campaigns can increase Uline’s sales but worries about the declining amount of web printers who can serve his needs. The decline in commercial web plants (large enough to handle his work), growing materials shortages, and rising prices keep him on his toes. Recently in the United Kingdom, YM Group’s massive implosion is just the latest in a trail of web firms that ran out of road.

Surprisingly, Shenker had nothing but praise for the US Postal Service, referring to them as “still a bargain.” He had fewer plaudits for Canada Post, who are “more expensive”. Catalogue distribution is not specific to the mails either. Uline takes full advantage of the thousands of packages leaving their warehouses each week to insert printed materials or special editions to specific users.

This column originally appeared in the July/August 2022 issue of PrintAction.

In the 1920s, German printers started paying attention to the new offset technology now underway in America. In the European world of stoic letterpress, Roland was an outlier and exhibited the most interest in developing radically new offset machines that would soon displace centuries-old typographic art. Therefore, it was a bit of a shock when the German juggernaut, Koenig & Bauer (K & B), made a deal with Roland in 1921. K & B agreed to cease production of their offset presses while Roland stopped its cylinder letterpress manufacturing. K & B mistakenly assumed letterpress would continue to dominate the market. A few years later, another surprise lit up the German press when the much larger Planeta aggressively pursued a merger with Roland. In 1927, both companies called off the deal, which was initially orchestrated by Planeta, and designed to remove a competitor from the marketplace. If only foresight was as reliable as hindsight?

Jumping ahead to 1934, Miehle Printing Press & Manufacturing Co. agreed to license certain Roland features for use in their offset program. Miehle thought so highly of Roland’s new Ultra RZU, first shown to the public at London’s 1936 Olympia Exhibition, that they negotiated a further licensing agreement. It allowed them to use additional patents and drawings in the construction of their Chicago-built Miehle 60- and 76-in. offset presses. A fee of USD100,000 dollars (USD2-million today) was agreed and paid, but later seized by the US government at the beginning of the Second World War.

Breakout year

New Roland offset technologies had come a long way, especially in the post-war years. Roland now had an industry-first and well-accepted five-cylinder design delivered on a stable of platforms such as the Parva, Rekord and Ultra. The Mabeg feeder would prove to be the world’s best feeder—it spawned today’s hi-tech versions. Ultimately, all these attributes along with the rare use of anti-friction-bearings and easy operational adjustments forced the industry’s operators to take notice of the brand. Great Britain and the United States, both major markets outside of Germany, would be home to thousands of Roland offsets from 1951. Roland started conservatively in America by initially selling single colour 29-in., and then 36-in. presses.

A Roland Rekord printer in action.

The first US printer to install a Roland

On July 27, 1951, the first Roland Parva RP (known in America as the Miehle-29SC for its 23 x 29-in. sheet size) went to the Philadelphia firm of Edward Stern & Co. The company can trace its history back to 1871. Incidentally, Roland was established the same year in Germany. Bearing the serial number 8162-2, this Parva RP single color caught storm quickly, and by 1954, over 250 Roland presses were sold in America.

On November 10, 1955, the first Rekord (Miehle-38SC), a 25 x 38-in. single colour, was sold to the Jersey City Printing Co. A two-colour version (Miehle-38TC) made its way to San Francisco’s illustrious James H. Barry Co. in 1955 too. On August 6, 1959, Roland’s first Rekord RVK (Miehle- 38FC) four-color size three press was running at Georgian Lithographers Inc. of New York City.

Roland’s first 49-in. four colour press

The Ultra range of presses, with sheet sizes of 41- to 63-in., would soon find homes in book and folding carton plants. The first recorded Ultra four-color RVU-5 (Miehle-49-FC, a 36- x 49-in. sheet size) was installed on August 10, 1960, at Gulf States Paper Co. in Maplesville, Alabama. Gulf States prospered over the following decades while remaining a loyal Roland and Manroland customer for a good portion of that time. Today, after numerous mergers and acquisitions, Gulf States is part of WestRock, the country’s second-largest paper packaging producer.

Spy vs. spy

The Favorit (Miehle Favorite) officially launched at Drupa 1967, but was already in development by 1964. It created a buzz around the world. After the Miehle coming out party at PRINT-68 (Chicago), Favorits’ started selling briskly even though they were an expensive 19 x 25-in. press. The earliest serial number [press]—3914/21181—was on display at Miehle’s showroom in Chicago for a few years, and then sold to Bradley Printing Co. of Des Plaines, Ill. Not far behind was the Ray Printing Co. Inc. of Kansas City, Mis., when their Miehle Favorite (Roland Favorit RF01 with serial number 3919/21257) was installed on May 14, 1968.

Perhaps the most interesting sales were to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Washington. On September 3, 1968, two Favorites, serial numbers 3934 and 3935, were powered up at the CIA’s rather large and well-equipped printing plant in Mclean, Vir.

PRINT-68 was also the year Miehle asked Roland to change the colour of their presses from grey to blue. Roland agreed, but only for North America. Only in 1974 did other presses follow suit.

In 1971, when Roland’s 100^th anniversary was being celebrated, over 5,000 offset presses had been delivered to countries around the world. Roland held 21 per cent of the Japanese market, well over 40 per cent of the American, and even higher in the United Kingdom. If experience and longevity count, then Manroland has held a pre-eminent position for the last 70 years in offset.

Nick Howard is a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works. He is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. Contact him at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article originally appeared in the May/June 2022 issue of PrintAction.

His father was born in Nova Scotia. He later relocated to the village of Vienna in southwestern Ontario. In 1837, Alva’s father was embroiled in the Upper Canada Rebellion and was forced to flee to Ohio in the United States, where Alva was born.

As a child, Alva became fascinated with the world of science and would spend countless hours preparing various chemical experiments at home. An incessant need for money to support his expensive hobby drew him into the world of printing. Alva reckoned that a newspaper with space for people who rode or worked on the railroad to advertise in had the makings of a lucrative business. Even by late 19^th-century standards, his equipment was rather sparse. Three hundred pounds of used lead type was soon purchased from the Detroit Free Press while a crude hand-crank proof press, capable of printing a 12 x 16-in. sheet, was scrounged along with inks, a type stick, and paper. The whole shop fit into a corner of an old boxcar that was once used as a smoking compartment.

Getting started wasn’t easy. Alva cut a deal with the railway company. After composing the paper, he’d be kept busy printing the couple-of-hundred papers while bouncing along the railway track to and from Port Huron and Detroit. Stories of the people who worked in the railway found themselves in print along with small advertisements, timetables, and gossip. One such ad offered “office copying presses,” an early and only way to make copies from a typographic form. At such a young age, Alva often added his own “Op-ed” philosophy: “Reason, justice, and equity never had weight enough on the face of the earth to govern the councils of men.”

Even though he was busy, Alva found time to conduct chemical experiments. One day, a bottle of phosphorus, one of the many ingredients that had accumulated in his shop, fell down. The acid quickly set the boxcar on fire. Thankfully, the conductor saw the smoke and managed to put out the fire. However, he tossed all of Alva’s print shop materials and chemicals out of the train in anger. He also gave Alva a good thrashing, which included boxing his ears, before forcing him out of the train. It has been suggested the beating may have resulted in lifelong deafness.

Reports indicate that after his rapid expulsion, Alva drudged back along the tracks to search for, and retrieve, his possessions; including all of the eight- and 12-point types used to print the Herald. Despite this setback, the paper continued.

By the age of 13, Alva was said to be earning $50-per week ($1,700 in today’s money) from his paper, in addition to sales of everything from candy to vegetables. In contrast, at 12, I was too busy watching Heckle & Jeckl cartoons and getting into mischief. Serendipity would intervene soon.

In 1862, Alva saved the life of a toddler whose father was a station agent in the railway office of Mount Clemens, Mich. Grateful to Alva, the child’s father offered to train him as a telegraph operator. Alva soon found himself out of the newspaper business and holding a new position in the telegraph office of the Grand Trunk Railway in Stratford, Ont.

The telegraph was revolutionizing communication, and by the age of 19, Alva was working for Western Union in Louisville, Ky.

Although captivated with Samuel Morse’s telegraph, he continued with his chemical experiments until the day a bottle of sulfuric acid spilled onto the floor. The liquid wicked through the floorboards onto his boss’s desk below. This resulted in another quick dismissal.

Perhaps no one could have anticipated what was in store for this young man who simply couldn’t stop experimenting. Alva then moved to New York City. A parade of inventions began hatching in his lab in Menlo Park, N.J.

He would soon be recognized as one of the world’s greatest inventors, credited with discovering the light bulb, phonograph, and power generation technologies that have reshaped early 20^th century. I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I’ve been talking about Thomas Alva Edison, “the Wizard of Menlo Park,” a boy genius with minimal homeschooling and a constant desire to discover something new.

How ironic that just a few years after Edison left Stratford, another inventor, Alexander Graham Bell, would make the first telephone call in the town of Brantford (Ont.), which was only an hour away?

It is worth remembering Edison began his professional journey as a printer. Who said the best and brightest minds don’t have ink in their blood?

Eric had a younger brother. Born in 1913 into a Budapest printing equipment family, Siegfried, who went by “Fred,” Tanzer was seven years younger than Eric. The brothers learned the print trade while selling letterpress platens in their father’s firm.

Fred would soon play a pioneering role in the Canadian Printing scene. He was often the first to import machines never before heard of in the West (e.g. Komori), and go on to develop new markets.

In 1931, Eric immigrated to England just before anti-Semitism rose to the boil. However, Fred stayed on, all the way through the World War II. It is unknown how he and his family managed to evade the Hungarian NKVD and German SS, but somehow, they did. Daily life would have undoubtedly been soul scorching, and it’s possible those turbulent years helped Fred develop strong defences to guard against those who would threaten him or his future. One example was a conversation between Fred and my father, who worked for Fred between 1959 and 1964. Discussing the recent resignation of a key employee at the firm, my father asked Fred if the person could be lured back.

Fred’s response was, “I just tell myself he died, and I cannot bring back the dead.”

Married in 1946, Fred set sail for Israel in 1951. He soon altered course, immigrating to Toronto the same year.

Life in Canada

In the 1950s, Canada was a vast open country with sparse population. It embraced largely European immigrants while offering opportunities as boundless as a Saskatchewan sky. Indeed, Fred would devour his chance to build a new life in an industry he knew so well: printing.

Shortly after arrival, he was hired by the British firm, SOAG Canada. SOAG distributed several lines of machinery including the Printomatic stop-cylinder press through their sales office in Toronto. A few years later, around 1955, Fred seized the opportunity to purchase SOAG’s Canadian operation and changed the name to F.S. Tanzer Ltd.

Siegfried Tanzer sold the first Komori press in the West in April 1956.

New to North America

Almost immediately, Fred introduced Canadians to many new agencies. Some were entering North America for the first time. Among them was Komori Printing Machinery Co. The first Komori press in the West would be sold by Fred when he flew to Japan in April 1956, and secured the sales rights of what was then a two-colour, 39-in. model KW-2. During that same period Fred received the agency for Hans Müller AG of Switzerland (now Müller-Martini). Additionally, Swiss manufacturer ColorMetal and the British firm, Waite & Saville, with the “Falcon,” fell under Fred’s control. Krause-Wohlenberg, the West German builder of diecutting platens and paper cutters, also proved a strong seller.

However, a much bigger fish was ready for netting, and in 1957, the East German combine of Planeta, Brehmer and Perfecta, became available. East German equipment was cheap, and Canadian sales quickly followed. Hostmann-Steinberg inks and other consumables would help round out a sizable stable of offerings by F.S. Tanzer.

Fred later secured the agency for Albert-Frankenthal (now owned by Koenig & Bauer). Albert was well known for stop-cylinder presses, and publication webs in gravure, letterpress and offset. In 1962, one notable Fred sale was to the United Church Publishing House in Toronto. A massive Albert Rotary letterpress web, designed to print books, was installed at their Ryerson Press facility (now home to CITY-TV). The press was a disappointment and not specified for the type of work Ryerson required. Rumours of inducements between seller and buyer clouded the Albert sale, as the press cost $650,000 ($6 million today). In 1971, the Albert was sold for scrap when no takers were found.

The East German Polygraph equipment would turn into a windfall in later years as many sheetfed Planeta presses would find homes, mostly in Ontario and Quebec. PZO-6 and PVO-6 (two- and four-colour) presses popped up in folding-box and commercial establishments. Then in 1965, Planeta built the Variant, a unitized press, which furthered Fred’s penetration into Canadian pressrooms. Planeta’s large-format carton “Variants” were quickly in vogue at many Canadian paper-box plants. Rolph-Clark-Stone Packaging, Toronto Carton and Howell Litho & Cartons were heavy users of the 55-in. models because of the superior design for board printing. Unfortunately, Fred lost control of most of the lines due to poor sales, but the East German equipment remained with him until his death at 68 in 1980.

Working style

My father worked for Fred as his salesperson for Quebec until 1964 when we relocated to Toronto. Fred was a taskmaster, and as my father later told me, difficult to work for. In looking back through time, I can see how Fred operated in the background, only embracing the light with an equipment sale that jolted his competition, such as selling two Planeta P-44 Variants to Commercial Printcraft in Woodstock, Ont. This ability to upsell eight printing units to one customer in the early 1970s was remarkable, especially for an unknown brand. The sale kept the competition whispering that it had to be the price when it was just crafty salesmanship.

Working under the radar brought wealth to Fred, who also held an interest in Falcon Knitting Mills, a Toronto knitwear company, through relatives in Europe. In 1969, Fred (loaned) a new two-colour Planeta Variant P-24 press to the Toronto Lithographic Institute.

The differences between Eric and Fred Tanzer are vast but they both had the uncanny ability to find key equipment agencies before anyone else. Manroland, Komori, and Müller-Martini are three such firms that are today respected the world over. In a mid-1950s Canada or USA, you’d be hard-pressed to know these companies. There have never been two brothers, separated by thousands of miles, who have made such an impact.

Nick Howard is a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works. He is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. Contact him at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of PrintAction.

For decades it was impossible to find anyone in the UK printing scene who didn’t know Eric. I knew him through my father, as Eric’s brother Siegfried once employed my dad in Montreal. On that aforementioned morning, I missed the chance to speak with him. Luckily, a few hours later we both found ourselves at the Newcastle airport departure lounge waiting to board a flight to London. I took the opportunity to introduce myself and have a chat. We talked about his brother, my father, whom he fondly remembered, and a myriad of other topics lost to memory. Tanzer was warm, kind and sincere.

In the presence of a legend

Like many European Jews who were born in the 20^th century, Eric led a tumultuous life. He was born in Budapest in 1906, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Eric learned the printing equipment business through his family’s distributorship firm, Globus, which then represented many printing equipment including the famous German Rockstroh Victoria art platen.

Eric immigrated to England in 1931 where he met Pierre Bausch, a Luxembourg businessman. Eric was immediately offered a job as a salesman in the newly incorporated Price Service & Co., which was financially associated with another machine dealer, Frank F. Pershke. Pershke’s fledgling business, which dates to 1908, also represented the Victoria platen. Although Pershke’s name was on the door, a good portion of the ownership was held by Pierre Bausch. In 1934, Eric married Bausch’s daughter.

Life in England at least meant some of the horrors beginning to take place in Hungary was at a distance. Both businesses sputtered along through the depression years until the end of WW II. In March 1947, BUGRA, Germany’s first post-war print expo, was held in Leipzig.

BUGRA-47

Faber & Schleicher AG had taken space at BUGRA. They are one of the world’s oldest offset press manufacturers, eclipsed only by Harris-Seybold-Potter in the USA, and George Mann & Co. Ltd. in England. Their brand, “Roland,” is still used today. The first rotary sheetfed offset would leave their Offenbach factory in 1911, quickly followed up by more advanced designs in one, two, and, by 1950, a four-colour “Ultra” version. The five-cylinder design was unique. A module (often referred to as a “machine”) would incorporate a user-friendly upper and lower printing unit while printing on one common-impression cylinder. The resulting design would become a worldwide favourite of both presspersons and owners. However, in 1947, Roland was struggling to rebuild along with other German firms.

A deal was struck at BUGRA that would last an amazing 55 years, ending with Man Roland Germany taking over the UK agency. Perhaps, and it’s just conjecture, Eric may have considered the Planeta range of presses. However, in the mid-1930s, Planeta had agreed to license two of its designs, the “Quinta” and “Tertia” to George Mann & Co. Mann had been selling their “Fast Three” and Fast Five” versions of the Planeta all over the UK and British Empire, and Eric would have known that importing German-built originals would end in court. Besides, at the end of the war, the Planeta factories were stripped of machine-tools as reparations to the Soviets. Many East German firms had faced similar fates, which gave West Germans, such as Roland, a distinct advantage.

The letterhead of Price Service in early 1950s.

The union between Roland and Tanzer

As excited as the two men were to win a major dealership, they soon found a British import license was needed. Surprisingly, it would take four years to get one, and in 1951, the same year as the first Drupa trade show, Roland presses started to pour into Britain. The first sale was made to Ben Johnson Limited of York. Britain wasn’t thrilled with anything made in Germany so soon after the war, and it’s a credit to Eric that he was able to successfully compete with British makers such as Crabtree and Mann.

In 1951, the American “Miehle” company caught wind of the happenings in the UK and jumped at the chance to work a similar deal with Roland. The Miehle/Roland relationship would last 39 years.

The results of the United Kingdom’s success with Rolands reached as far as East Asia. The models “Favorit,” “Parva,” “Rekord,” and “Ultra” were best-sellers globally.

I doubt early acceptance of the Roland would have been as dramatic without Eric. Britain’s love affair with Roland offsets made other regions take notice and catapulted Roland into the premier position, if not the top-selling rank over the next 40 years. As many have mentioned, Eric met the right press manufacturer at exactly the right time.

Eric loved to entertain customers at the symphony or opera, but never in a nightclub. He jogged regularly, was fluent in many languages, and, ultimately, changed the way graphic arts equipment was sold. It was said that after his retirement in 1992, some loyal customers insisted on only dealing with “ET.”

I was fortunate to catch up with Eric again in the early 1990s. Eric, in his eighties, still spoke in a soothing voice. His unmistakable kindness along with an amazing ability to remember intricate details of each customer solidified his place in the global printing industry.

Eric died in 1996 at the age of 89. He was an outstanding human being and printing equipment salesman, and, above all, a true gentleman.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article originally appeared in the December 2021 issue of PrintAction.

Sefton was in a fledgling sector of making the newly invented corrugated board from yellow straw, referred to as strawboard. The company had started manufacturing wooden butter dishes. However, this changed when Jeffrey T. Ferres, an employee, patented a new principle to an existing ‘corrugator,’ known as a pressure-roll single facer.

Unfortunately, the glass executives were not convinced a rigid and pleated strawboard box would be better than their current wood box filled with excelsior (shredded wood).

Wooden boxes

Wood packing was the only option until then. It was expensive. Further, fragile items like glass globes often broke during transit.

The novel idea of a corrugated box had the added benefit of reduced weight, but it was unproven in the days when everything had to travel by train. Despite Sefton’s sales team citing how glass products were already being shipped to as far off as California, the glass executives weren’t biting; they needed a better sales pitch.

Therefore, Sefton’s design team got to work and designed a square carton with die-cut sunburst trays at both ends. The globe was now firmly suspended without touching the sides of the box. Now, for the demonstration. A dozen glass globes were packed in these newly designed cartons, taped shut, and brought to the top floor of Sefton’s Chicago building. In a stairwell, each box was booted down the stairs, floor after floor, until they arrived in the basement looking battered. When the cartons were opened, the glassmaker was surprised, as none of the globes were broken. This moment in time would be instrumental in bringing the corrugated carton out of the dark shadows of irrelevance and mistrust.

Double-face cartons

Jeffrey Ferres improved the single-face corrugator, which was designed in 1895 by Philadelphians Charles Langston and David Weber. He added a liner to the open corrugated flutes. This would soon develop a double-facer, opening up corrugated materials to the modern age.

There were many more hurdles to overcome since printing on paper cartons proved difficult. Hooper presses were the only way to print, and these machines were designed for wood boxes, not corrugated. They were unforgiving. Since they embossed deeply—and ideal for wood —corrugated materials were crushed by the press. Modifications and new printers soon solved the problems, but with type only being applied.

The introduction of aniline (flexo) ushered in an era of improved graphics along with rapid ink drying. Even today flexo is widely used for printing directly on corrugated double-face cartons. A pizza box is a popular example of flexo in action.

As the wood packing industry slowly fell out of favour, corrugated took another giant leap with litho-printed paper laminated to flat boxes. By the mid-20^th century clerks and salespeople started disappearing from stores. This meant that the products on the shelves had to become the salesperson while safely holding the contents. Today we are witnessing the same transformation of retail job losses; the only difference is that the catalyst now is IT.

Printing on flutes

Corrugated straw paper was initially patented in England by Edward Healey and Edward Allen in 1856. However, the patent was not for making a box, but for creating flutes without liners to protect delicate glassware inside a wood box. Their invention was a by-product of the laundry industry where young women hand-fed the edges of window curtains or collars of shirts and blouses. Today corrugated materials are widespread with the recent addition of micro-flutes, specifically F- and N-flutes, which can be easily printed while offering rigidity and protection for everything from cosmetics to foodstuffs. In the 1970s, Planeta promoted the ability of their Variant offset press to print on F-flute since the variant could handle over 50 point materials.

The genesis of modern corrugated production began at J. W. Sefton’s factories in Chicago and Anderson Indiana. In 1930, Sefton was purchased by Container Corporation of America. Today, the remnants of J.W. Sefton are held by RockTenn that merged with MeadWestvaco in 2015 to form WestRock, the world’s second-largest rigid and corrugated packaging manufacturer after International Paper.

According to Dublin-based Research and Markets, corrugated board sales are growing fast. In 2019, the sales were worth USD262.61 billion. It is expected to grow to USD339.95 billion in 2025.

Eighty-eight per cent of new corrugated includes recycled materials, a big win for environmentalists. This stat is also attractive to consumers who want companies to adopt eco-friendly practices.

Easily recycled corrugated has indeed changed the way we buy goods. From frugal beginnings to today’s modern, strong and lightweight box, there is no stopping our love affair with fluted cartons: a win-win not only for the environment, but also commerce. Perhaps we can say WestRock is the father of the modern corrugated shipping carton business.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article originally appeared in the November 2021 issue of PrintAction.

Unhealthy conditions

After the First World War, there was fierce competition and slim profits in the ink business. Okie’s ink company wasn’t an exception. A company in the business of beveling glass for mirrors and tables shared space with Okie. Grinding and sanding glass meant the shop was always encapsulated in a massive cloud of dust. On one visit, Okie learned the owner wanted to sell out, probably due to the unhealthy working conditions. That’s when a lightning bolt of an idea struck Okie. Why couldn’t these dry-grinding materials of garnet and flint be made waterproof and used in combination with a liquid to keep down the grinding dust? Why, indeed!

Okie started to experiment with waterproof adhesives that could be applied to a paper with a sprinkling of garnet laid onto the sticky surface. Garnet proved a poor abrasive and the right glue formulation was elusive, but Okie soldiered on, experimenting with a variety of materials until one day he went searching for a better supplier of grit.

On a frigid January in 1920, a letter arrived at the offices of a fledgling abrasives firm in St. Paul, Minn. Established in 1902, the company was in the business of mining and selling all sorts of abrasives, including sandpaper. Okie had actually written to the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Company (3M) to enquire if he could receive samples of their minerals.

The breakthrough

The request intrigued 3M enough to meet Okie. In Philadelphia, the Minnesotans studied Okie’s breakthrough. 3M also learned Okie had received a sample batch of wet sandpaper from a 3M competitor, but they never bothered to ask why he wanted it. In 1921, a deal was struck between the two, and 3M would soon have its second major product, now with its own brand: “Wetordry”. This was a perfect fit for 3M as they were already supplying flint, emery and garnet papers. Wetordry would take the world by storm. Every automotive body shop and metal polisher jumped at the chance to use a waterproof paper that didn’t clog and reduced dangerous dust in the workplace.

The rich history of 3M was built on an off-chance letter from an ink manufacturer. As a result, 3M would earn billions of dollars. Decided his invention offered higher rewards than blending lamp-black inks, Okie closed his business and moved to 3M’s headquarters in Minnesota. He worked at 3M until retiring in 1930 to devote himself to writing religious poetry. He lived a long life, passing away in 1975 at the age of 95.

Had Okie not had the glassworks next door, who knows if 3M would have had the opportunity to build on Okie’s innovation with thousands of more inventions—many in the graphic arts—and become a symbol of American ingenuity?

Today, 3M is a USD32-billion business manufacturing 60,000 products worldwide. Okie, the ink- maker in Philadelphia with creepy ads, has left his indelible stamp on 3M’s success.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article originally appeared in the October 2021 issue of PrintAction.

From the 1970s to 1990s, the industry experienced many transformative phases. During the 1970s, the federal government’s position on “Printing in Canada” drew a lot of criticism. Canadian and/or U.S. tariffs were either placed on or taken off many mass-produced products such as books and magazines. Parliament waffled between groups who wanted cheaper printing made in U.S.A. and those who pushed to protect Canadian workers.

Canadians were afraid of their American neighbours, who had bigger plants and could produce print at a cheaper rate. PrintAction made it a point to amplify and promote our country’s printers and featured articles both railing against and encouraging parliament to do something about work being lost to the U.S.

Technological changes

Technology advances, with a constant stream of new devices, filled PA’s pages in the 1980s, as prepress was turned on its ear with computer-driven solutions. These new technologies would soon drive out film. At one time, it was possible to clearly distinguish printers that typeset and output film (and plates) and press owners. PA educated us on how the two distinct sectors would soon embrace new tools and become one. By the mid-1990s, virtually all prepress houses either closed shop or realized they only needed a printing press to stay in business. Also, a cursory perusal of some back issues of PA illustrates that mail rate fears are generational. During the 1970s and ’80s many articles appeared in PA about the negative impact of postage price increases.

Holistic coverage

PrintAction covered the Canadian printing industry’s biggest stories whether it was the dawn of DTP or the latest innovation in die cutting.

The 1980s

In my experience, PA is/was a must read for our industry. In the early 1980s, Canada was starting to recover from a severe recession. Interest rates hovered around 20 per cent at that time. Times were tough and many shops closed down or were sold off for pennies on the dollar. However, business started to improve by mid-1983 when a firestorm of major announcements erupted within months of each other.

Linotype Canada

Linotype Canada had, for decades, been a large supplier of equipment. However, Linotype was not doing well in the early 1980s and started to lose many of its prized dealerships, particularly Komori, Stahl, Schneider and Brandtjen & Kluge. Shortly after the highly successful Graphic Trade 81 (October 1981) show, the Komori agency went into the hands of a new company led by former Linotype Canada manager Frank Wilson. The new business would later be formerly incorporated by the Komori Corporation of Japan as Komori Canada.

While chaos surrounding the Linotype fiasco played out, another drama emerged on the front pages of PA’s April 1983 edition. Under the caption “Komori opens H.Q. with Tea Ceremony” was the news that Bill Sears, scion of the Sears family and president of the largest graphic equipment supplier in Canada—holder of the Heidelberg agency for over 20 years—had resigned from Sears Ltd., a division of Reichhold. It was suggested Sears had made a play to repurchase the company from Reichhold, and when rebuffed, tension and bad feelings entered the picture, resulting on Bill Sears getting the last laugh.

Over the next six months, printers would eagerly wait for each issue of PrintAction to read the industry-changing stories. By the end of 1983, Heidelberg Canada was incorporated and it began selling directly to Canadian printers on January 1, 1984. Through it all, Miller Corporation aligned with Sears and a fierce battle raged for a few years until Heidelberg came out victorious.

The go-to magazine

PrintAction remains the go-to magazine for print service providers, sharing Canadian stories from coast to coast. They have been a strong supporter of education, trade shows and “women in the graphic arts”. When it comes to trade shows, PA was not only visible, but also a strong supporter and organizer, often producing special show editions. For many years (up to December 1993) PA was printed as a tabloid, and on newsprint.

Key events

All major events have been covered by PA from the launch of Heidelberg Speedmaster in 1975, Komori Lithrone in 1982 and Manroland’s 700 in 1990 to CTP, coating techs, electrophotography and inkjet. All of these were well discussed so printers could take informed decisions.

Further, the rise of media company Quebecor is an important part of our history—they purchased Ronalds Federated from Bell Canada in 1988. In 1990, they acquired Robert Maxwell’s Maxwell Communication Corporation.

Another company that must be mentioned is Transcontinental. In 1976, it started off as a flyer printer, but is now Canada’s largest printer.

One PrintAction feature, long retired, was the “Company Reports” column, which published the financials of some of the largest public companies. Many of these firms have vanished today, but were they ever making money! In April 1981, the Toronto Star a profit of $22 million for 12 months. That is $65 million today. Moore Corporation earned in profits $110 million (U.S.) or $325 million today. The rest of the industry, struggling for a seven per cent net margin, could only read it and weep. Printing on newsprint had its advantages; PrintAction easily soaked up the tears.

All business trade was placed under the watchful eye of government agencies, and I was accompanied by a Chinese representative who liked to be called “Jack”. We got along quite well, as Jack was knowledgeable about the global printing industry.

I was shocked by what I saw during those marathon visits. Virtually everything was a duplication of German machines. If it was a guillotine, it looked like a Polar; presses resembled Heidelberg machines; diecutters were a duplication of Bobst, Gietz or Wupa technologies. Factories were often filthy, and some had dirt floors. It was interesting to note that many cities had new world-class hotels. The divide between a new China and homes and factories with corrugated roofs and ‘bedsheet’ doors was very visible.

There was a great deal of head shaking, as I tried to understand how it was possible to rip off a copy of a Heidelberg easily. At the time of China’s great awakening, there was a tremendous need for speed, and what could be easier than simply taking apart a used Heidelberg or Polar, and making patterns from the parts? Intellectual property protection didn’t exist then; its highly flawed even today.

Quality issues

However, the most pressing issue was that none of the equipment I looked at had quality engineering. “Rough” would be a kind description of the state of engineering. I saw a rapidly growing China that had no guardrails to hinder what it decided to do. This was made abundantly clear during meetings with facility owners. The CEO spoke only Chinese, and often seemed less informed about the technical aspects of what his factory was producing than I did. Men who held key political positions before the open-door era were first in line to take advantage of the new system, and became rich beyond the wildest dreams of average Chinese worker’s.

The best factory I visited at that time was in Beijing. The Beijing Remin Machinery Co. (Beiren), had been building printing presses since 1952. The facility was making knock-offs of the Man Roland Parva Rekord, in addition to a variety of strange web presses. Years later, Beiren would manufacture inker and deliveries for Mitsubishi Diamond sheetfed and knock-offs of the Harris M300 folder.

With a population (1990) of 1.2 billion people, China held all the ingredients for rapid growth.

Armies of low-cost labour were begging the west to do business while offering unbelievably cheap prices. There were no federal watchdogs enforcing laws against pollution: the nearest ditch would suffice to dispose of liquid waste emitting from pop-up factories. Fines were unheard of, and still today not nearly as strict as in western countries. The pet food and infant formula milk scandals of the 2000s are just recent missteps.

Stringent quality protocols for everything from machines to pharmaceuticals were often void of any rigour in those early days.

One of the reasons for poor cast iron at that time was because they typically tossed all types of ferrous products into the pot. During the early 1990s, western buyers flocked to China. These people typically shut down their local factories because it was profitable to buy from China. Why pay taxes and high wages to workers when you could offload the manufacturing of running shoes and other labour-intensive products to China for less than half the cost?

Along with our European colleagues, our company also leaped at the boundless opportunity of selling hundreds of printing and bindery machines to China; and it’s all still going on today.

Guillotine castings waiting to be machined after they are stress relieved with age in Shanghai, China.

Positive changes

I made another trip 19 years later, and what I saw then was dizzying. Factories hadn’t changed much, but printing equipment quality had improved tremendously. Unique “Made in China” designs were on full display. It’s no surprise Bobst, Polar and Heidelberg have built factories there that churn out machinery, which is indistinguishable from what is produced in Switzerland and Germany. Heidelberg recently announced more than 33 per cent of all their production emanates from the Shanghai factory, and more models will be produced there going forward. Many other substantial digital platforms ranging from proofers to metres-wide inkjets are growing wildly. Some of you might be surprised at how much of your production equipment is produced in China.

The Chinese success story is one of resilience and a constant push for more and more. They are easy to do business with. They never refuse to climb the mountains appearing on the horizon. In 1989, the Chinese strategy was to copy and build. Now with a few decades of experience, China, Inc., produces better ferrous and non-ferrous castings, uses quality machine tools, and trains their workers to embrace skills once only found in the west. All this progress happened in the blink of an eye.

Still, the world is wary of China’s single-party system of governance. Life is heavily regulated by government officials in that country. Unless there are political reforms, there will always be friction between democratic countries and China.

The Chinese miracle continues, and the rest of the world is both fearful and envious when dealing with that country.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

“Credible” is the keyword when preparing an assignment, just as is expert knowledge of a specific industry. I’ve been carrying out plant appraisals for over 40 years, and, almost exclusively, for the print communications industry, although anything from five-axis machine tools to a winery have been part of recent assignments.

There are good arguments to be made in support of an appraisal. Banks and leasing sectors insist on a valid and certified opinion of value and often turn to professional appraisers or auction companies, most of which offer this service. Although it’s always possible to guess a value, lenders prefer professional evaluators who hold accreditations with an accepted appraisal society or foundation. Becoming an accredited appraiser requires industry experience, study and constant training since regulations constantly change.

The joint U.S. and Canada benchmark standard involves a thorough understanding of Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP). The Appraisal Foundation, a recognized source of appraisal requirements, developed USPAP after the savings and loan crisis in the early 1980s. It is designed to tighten up the responsibilities and ethics appraisers must follow. However, USPAP doesn’t provide the appraiser with specific know-how on arriving at a credible conclusion, but rather the proper procedures and responsibilities each appraiser must conform to. Essentially, it’s to ensure members impart fair, balanced and truthful assignments that are void of misinterpretation or bias.

The need for USPAP and continual updating of rules and ethics took on new meaning during the subprime financial meltdown of 2008/09. It became painfully obvious USPAP had to be updated when thousands of real estate assessments, well short of the mark, turned out to be lacking credibility. Only after home foreclosures fell off a cliff did some funders discover valuations that were biased at worst and incompetent at best. Some local lending offices, in their eagerness to close mortgages held rather unhealthy symbiotic relations with appraisal firms who didn’t understand the word “no”. As house values took flight, no one considered that both the appraiser and bank played a role in what seemed “perpetual-motion” accounting. The dollar value index only pointed up: Today’s home, at say $400K, was tomorrow’s assessment at $425K.

For the appraiser, there is a great temptation to acquiesce when lenders and, especially, potential purchasers of a business make insinuating comments as to where they “hope” to end up and how they wish the valuation comes in at a number that will let the transaction proceed. Many of my appraisals have received a similar preamble. Although I listen intently, these comments would never affect my conclusions. Impartiality is also why lenders have no interest in considering a manufacturer as an appraiser, even though the company may have produced the asset.

Appraisals don’t always just provide a financial value, they can include an asset’s condition and usefulness. Software, now a key element of a machine’s operation, is expensive. However, perhaps surprisingly, software often retains no monetary value in an appraisal, as systems under assessment are older or licensing restrictions negate a transfer to another firm. Just like dry ice on a hot summer day, the software only has monetary value before it’s installed.

A particular example of this is in Canada. One of the world’s largest digital equipment manufacturers usually leases their equipment. However, because of lower finance rates, printers are outright purchasing instead. This manufacturer’s contract has buried in small print a clause that precludes a buyer from actually owning the intellectual property (IP), even though the buyer owns the hardware. If that same buyer attempts to sell his machine (in Canada), the manufacturer will initiate hefty fees to re-certify and/or permit their software to be used. Not only does this severely affect a machine’s value, but also kills any transaction unless the manufacturer is involved.

Printers can take many steps to maximize their asset’s dollar valuation. The initial appearance of the plant, offices and machinery is important. Messy shops and filthy machines are a drag on valuations, particularly if the equipment is only a few years old. I recently appraised a two-year-old 140-in. inkjet roll-to roll that had filthy ink tanks. Also, the flushing tank looked like someone had thrown a gallon of ink at the machine. Regardless of performance, poor housekeeping is often reflected in an appraisal.

A Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 is being apprised in Toronto.

Depending on the degree of an appraiser’s knowledge it’s pointless to provide a “Walt Disney” tour, pointing out what you believe to be relevant about the equipment. Often this is the case when I arrive at a plant. Sometimes, the printer would provide a list but I rarely use them, as I insist on verifying everything myself. Once, a funder called to clarify the serial number of two assets. I confirmed the numbers. After some investigation, the funder realized the serial number was noted incorrectly during a previous appraisal. The resulting mix-up went on to generate substantial work to re-register these assets. If they had not caught the error the funder could have lost all legal rights to the chattels.

A large sheetfed manufacturer has been buying LCD sheet counters, since about 2002, with a flaw. These counters are installed to record the total impressions of a press, but when a $3 lithium battery is depleted, the counter’s display goes blank. The total use of a particular press is now unknown. If accurate (service) records are kept, the technician might have written down the impression count. Today, when I see machines of this builder with very low impression counts, I know the reason. Use is a major input to valuation dollars and opens up the potential for deceit if attempting to sell a press with more impressions than advertised. Knowing how to access the overall condition is key for the appraiser, as he or she has to be familiar with wear and tear.

Over the years, I’ve carried out assignments for various interests and across North America. The majority have been lenders and businesses buying or selling to each other. However, I also have had some avant-garde files.

One rather memorable, and with hindsight slightly humorous, episode occurred in the northwest United States, where I completed two appraisals for that state’s justice department. Two of the largest printers were involved in litigation with the revenue department over tax-related asset book values. On arrival at one of the businesses, a group of government staff and I were sequestered in a boardroom awaiting to be escorted around the facility by a senior member of the management. It seemed as if we were in that room for hours and since a massive amount of work was involved I could sense delays in what was already going to be a long couple of days. We were finally given a frosty reception when the executive turned up.

I went to work with the gaggle of five accountants and attorneys in tow firing off questions in my direction. The plant was a substantial web and bindery facility. Late in the day, as we neared completion, the executive turned to us and asked, “anything else?” I quickly mentioned the pollution control equipment and suddenly he opened a side door through which we all shuffled out to a rear parking lot. Once outside, he strode up to each of us and unsnapped our visitor passes while muttering, “Here’s the door: over there is what you wanted to see.” Without another word the man spun on his heel and disappeared with the door slamming shut behind him. There we were, standing in a parking lot wondering what had just happened.

The West Coast file isn’t typical but did have one thing in common—plenty of variety, and, if you love to travel, then that too. Another assignment provided both when I was assigned to appraise the largest printing operation in Atlantic Canada. This involved 12 individual plants across four provinces. Just the physical process of travel kept me away from the office for more than a week. The plants ranged in sophistication from large web, sheetfed and bindery to small-town businesses. Hundreds of miles later I managed to complete the inspections and fill several binders. Not only was each facility unique, but also the individual management styles varied, with some plants highly organized and using up-to-date management tools while others looked like they were stuck in the 1970s. Just as I was to fly from Halifax to St John’s, a once-in-a-decade snowstorm hit Newfoundland and I was stuck in the airport for a day.

Whether it be one company buying another, a loan for a new piece of equipment, estate planning (especially if families and real estate are involved), or tax matters, a good appraisal firm, fluent in print technology, can handle the assignment.

Today, an appraiser must also be conversant in the new technologies appearing on shop floors. For me, it’s obvious how our industry has changed so rapidly, as I appraise more digital (both inkjet, dry, and liquid toner) platforms than offset. The large format and point-of-sale businesses have blossomed, and with it an increase in cutting tables and routers. The bindery has also changed considerably as traditional manufacturers of large signature work are purchasing lighter duty equipment designed for speed and short runs.

All this digital technology contains wide variables in value retention as compared to older traditional equipment of the 1990s. In many cases, depreciation is swift and suppliers are investing massive resources into research and development. This pattern will only increase because digital is the future. However, without a credible and accredited appraisal, our financial sector cannot function with a sense of assurance and continue to support the printing industry.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

Winnipeg, M.B., is often called the gateway to Canada’s west. Situated far north and west of Toronto, it takes a hardy bunch to live there year-round. The Arctic winters seem to last forever, only to be interrupted by short, hot summers when mosquitoes reign supreme. You won’t find a better class of people than Manitobans. You’ll be surprised by how many famous people grew up in towns where car tires develop flat spots from the cold. I’ve never been as cold as in Winnipeg.

Early inhabitants and settlers ranged from Indigenous, Ukrainians, Germans, English, Scottish, French and the Dutch.

Post-war migration
The Second World War left scathing wounds all over Europe, and the Netherlands was no exception. Dire conditions saw many families surviving on tulip bulbs to fend off starvation. Life wasn’t better in the western city of Enschede, as it was only a short distance from the German border. A young Gerrit (Gerry) Kuik served his apprenticeship as a printer and typesetter in that city. Kuik was also a member of the Dutch Resistance. He used his printing skills to produce anti-German propaganda. Unfortunately, the Germans caught up with the teenager. In August 1944, Kuik and two of his brothers were arrested. After weeks in solitary confinement, Kuik was released; his older brother wasn’t as lucky and ended up in a concentration camp where he died.

Premier Printing
After the war, Kuik completed his trade school courses and continued in printing until 1950 when he and his family immigrated to Carman, M.B.

Post-war Canada was a magnet for many, and thousands of Dutch families settled in Ontario and Manitoba. After taking on some back-breaking work in sugar beet fields and mink farming, Kuik found an opening in a small printshop in Carman. After 12 years, Kuik was able to open his printshop on the outskirts of Winnipeg. Thus, in 1962, Premier Printing came into existence, thanks to Kuik’s hard work. Plenty of that perseverance and determination would follow in succeeding decades.

Kuik passed away on January 2, 2021, at the age of 96. I was blessed to know him, and in extension, many in his expansive family. Kuik and his wife Johanna had seven children, 40 grandchildren, and 95 great-grandchildren. This alone is a legacy. As we go through life and bump into people along the way, few of us are fortunate to meet remarkable people like Kuik. Since the early 1980s, our business lives intertwined. I got to see firsthand how Kuik built a formidable printing operation. It was not only hard work, but also due to a guiding principle of absolute honesty and decency that permeated the whole company.

When I was busy at not being busy as a child, my father would often say, “make yourself useful”. Kuik was always useful; not just in the printshop, but also in the community and local church. Kuik was instrumental in building their church and was a constant helping hand to all members in the area. A park is named after him in recognition of some of the efforts he put into supporting his neighbors. Kuik was deeply spiritual. He used to do a lot of charity work but never sought praise or adulation because acts of grace are simply “doing God’s work”.

Pushing the envelope
In 1982, we sold a Heidelberg SORSZ to Premier. It was to be the first two-color, 40-in. in the shop. I should have been paying attention to the weather because I only had a windbreaker, and the new press sat on the floor frozen; the frost was visible. However, I sensed this shop wasn’t a typical printing place. Everyone carried out their work with a sense of purpose and in a refreshingly friendly and positive mood. Kuik’s son Ben, and nephews John and Lawrence Toet, stayed with me the whole time and extended all the help I needed. They have become good friends. Bert Kuik, Gerry’s brother, was also a joy to be around. I didn’t know then, but he was an electro/mechanical wizard who went on to build custom machines and modifications for the burgeoning Premier School Agenda business.

In 1990, I installed a Miller TP29S. After the installation, John said, “I just read the specifications in the manual and this press can run a 12,000 iph.” We were cruising at around 8,000 to 9,000 iph at that time, and I must have muttered something about manufacturer’s specs being guidelines. However, John insisted on trying. We fiddled with the feeder until he finally got his 12,000 out of the machine. This type of thinking was one of the gifts Kuik left for his family. I grew to love going to Winnipeg to just be around these extraordinary people.

In 1990, I was in Fargo North Dakota to install a press at Knight Printing. Kuik had recommended our company and also happened to be in town that cold, winter night. Since we were staying in the same hotel, Kuik invited my colleague Francis Danquah, and I to the game room for a round of ping pong. The owner of Knight Printing also joined us. Danquah was really good at the game and he trounced Kuik and Knight Printing’s owner while letting out huge belly laughs. I was not sure if it was smart to pummel two of your customers, but at the end of the game, Kuik offered everyone drinks. We all sat down to hilarious stories while emptying Kuik’s rye.

Kuik was also the driver behind the hugely successful Premier School Agenda business. These books are packed with information for school and college students. After an initial run of 300 in 1982, the business grew to a yearly total of more than 25 million books by 1989. In all the years I knew Kuik, we never had disagreement. Although things were not always smooth, I never saw him lose his composure. He is a true gentleman and an icon of the printing industry.

Bill (Wilhelm) Gortemaker
Kuik’s daughter Grietje married a newly transplanted Dutch immigrant in Ontario. After a few years, the family moved to Winnipeg where Bill (Wilhelm) Gortemaker joined his father-in-law at Premier Printing.
Schooled in administration back in the Netherlands, Gortemaker soon took on more responsibilities and began to control the purse-strings of the thriving Premier enterprise. Kuik and Gortemaker think in a similar manner. In my dealings, Gortemaker often cast himself as the ultimate “Dr. No”, but beneath that exterior was a wonderful human being. I would often joke with Gortemaker that the Dutch invented copper wire. “How so?” he would ask. “Well, it started with two Dutchmen fighting over a penny,” I’d reply. I think Gortemaker liked that joke. Sadly, he passed away in 2015.

Our firm made many sales to Premier in the 1980s and 1990s with occasional hiccups. We supplied the first Manroland 708-SW in Canada to Premier in 1998. The press arrived from Germany to our yet-to-be-finished facility. Since our equipment wasn’t installed, the cleaning had to be done by hand. When Gortemaker saw the press, it was in a million pieces sitting amongst construction debris. He looked at me straight in the eye said, “I hope it works.”

For another press sale John Toet and I travelled to London to see a Komori L628C. When the press arrived at a seemingly always frigid Winnipeg, two print units had not been fully drained of water and the freezing en-route had blown out the inkers, causing massive repairs. We had to fix it. During the entire time, Gortemaker never raised his voice. He had faith the machine would be fixed.

This isn’t a story about buying or selling printing and bindery equipment, anyone is capable of that. It’s a lesson on how doing the right thing while caring deeply about the people around you changes your perspective on what is important. My memories are not of doing business, but rather how we can be successful when we take Martin Luther King’s words to heart: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you are doing for others?”

Both Kuik and Gortemaker touched many lives while demonstrating how devotion to good values can make a lasting impact. Premier Printing remains a success story, not only for the print industry, but also for people everywhere. In Winnipeg, Kuik and Gortemaker’s legacy now rests with Will, Dave, and Ted Gortemaker, three capable scions. As one would expect, they are limbs of the mighty oak that is Kuik.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com. 

The back of the postcard read, “Wish you were here.” Vinyl albums have risen from obsolescence to capture a small bespoke segment of the music industry. If any Winkler & Dü nnebier record jacket machines have not been turned into car doors or gas pipes, they are just about the hottest commodity on the market. Although the choices were bleak in 1975, the vinyl record with emblazed graphics—and possibly a souvenir card—has managed to become relevant, especially for die-hard fans.

The postcard’s journey dates back to 1840’s England when an Englishman mailed himself a simple, hand-drawn card as a joke, apparently.

In 1861, John Charlton of Philadelphia patented a “private postal card,” and a trickle of cards started to appear in household mailboxes. Soon after, in 1865, Heinrich von Stephan, a Prussian established the “open post-sheet” in Germany. Postal rates (for envelopes) were expensive and Stephan surmised that a thin piece of card would reduce the costs and encourage Germans to stay in touch with family and friends. Although Stephan was a director of the Royal Prussian Post, the government was cold to the idea. However, the populace loved it and pushed through legislation allowing single cards at a reduced rate.

The back of a 1898-dated private mail card from Harris Printing Press Co.

“Shine on You Crazy Diamond” – Printers, that’s you

In 1870, the first mass-produced cards were being printed, many with lithographed images designed to catch the eye. The Austrians beat the Germans by a few weeks, but Stephan and the Germans are credited with the win. Also, in December 1870, the postcard was introduced in London, England, in time for the Christmas season. There were said to be riots on the streets, as Britishers descended on post offices to purchase the new cards. Nearly a million postcards were sold in England during the first week of launch itself.

Then British Prime Minister William Gladstone was so taken by the postcard rage that he announced he would quit and begin writing an epic book about the postcard. Common sense must have gotten the better of Gladstone, and he never gave up his job. Besides fervently supporting the postcard, Gladstone is also remembered for this memorable quote, which is valid today too: “We look forward to the time when the power of love will replace the love of power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.”

The New York Times reported that in May 1873, the first American illustrated postcard was sent by S.S. Bumstead of Springfield, Mass., to fellow town resident M.M. Burt.

Originally penny postcards were only supplied through the post office. They were plain looking, and included a government stamp. The first U.S. printed stamp was the head of the proposed Statue of Liberty. France would donate the statue, but Americans had to pay for the pedestal and Bedloe’s Island where the statue would be situated. A major fund-raising drive was organized for the same, but Americans proved cool to the idea of shelling out cash for what seemed a superfluous idea then. The Statue of Liberty stamp changed all that. Americans across the country instantly became aware of the iconic face of liberty, and money started pouring in for the project almost overnight.

A 2014-front/back card that Howard Graphic Equipment used quite often.

Some people believe the postcard also helped launch the American coffee break. Most businesses kept a kettle of boiling water going most of the day. The steam dampened the foul-tasting glue used to seal envelopes. With hot water seemingly in limitless supply, employees started making cups of coffee and tea. Since penny postcards were half the postage and didn’t require envelopes, the boiling water started to disappear. So, some employees began stepping out to buy the hot beverage, and thus the coffee break was born.

Picture postcards appeared in force by 1880. The Germans, who were quite advanced in the use of stone lithography, became a major supplier of postcards (and greeting cards) for the next 35 years. It wasn’t until the First World War that nations started to invest in printing. The majority of cards then were issued by various governments and included a stamp. In the United States, Congress reduced private cards from two to one cent in 1898, which unleashed the modern age of postcards. With low mailing costs and increased travels, millions of cards were mailed, and an equal number were probably purchased for family albums.

The zenith of first-class postcards in the United States was 1990 when 3,307,076,000 were mailed. That’s a lot of print! In the same year, bulk advertising cards, known as pre-sorted postcards, amounted to an additional 1.5 billion. As is the case in the printing world, the use of traditional postcards has declined over the years. In 2020, only 4.8 million were mailed.

However, advertorial cards (pre-sorted postcards) continue to grow. Although facing some headwinds, these bulk cards amounted to two billion mailings in 2020 alone. That’s a lot of mailouts in a relatively young segment, which was first tracked by USPS in 1977.

Bulk mailing is the darling of a vibrant direct-mail industry that demonstrates the power of a simple piece of 10-point cardboard in getting and retaining business for their customers. Stats by Canada Post further emphasize the power of the postcard. Canada Post claims 30 per cent of consumers pay more attention to direct mail, and this includes the cards we receive from realtors and lawn-care businesses. With the number of letters and paper bills falling by 55 per cent since 2006, direct mail and cards have rushed to fill the void.

Canada Post recently announced they will print 13.5-million postcards that will include free postage. These cards will be sent to households across Canada in the hopes that residents who are tired of COVID-19 will use them to send a note to a friend or loved one. This is a major expense and sentiments are mixed, but it shows the power of postcards to connect people, even in this day of instant messaging and social media.

Recently, we discovered a French postcard mailed by my grandfather when he was stationed in France during World War One. The image is of a square in the town of Douai (France) with the Estaminet De La Petite restaurant in the background. Amazingly, that restaurant is still there and the square looks exactly as it did over 100 years ago. This card is not a piece of ephemera, but a lasting link to our family’s past.

The front of a Canadian card from 1944/45.

Welcome to the machine

So, is this article just about the history of the postcard? No. It’s much more than that. If anything, the postcard highlights the unique place print has in our everyday lives. While many printers surviving in the world of commercial work cast envious glances at those that are or have moved into packaging, the power of print, whether a direct-mail flyer or postcard, cannot be surmounted by the Internet and social media. If you need a plumber, a postcard probably won’t help if it arrives at the wrong time; you’ll have to Google a name for sure. However, when it comes to things you never thought about until a card arrives in the mail; well, that’s when the magic happens.

Mailchimp, the e-mail marketing service company, has introduced actual printed postcards for their clients. They refer to printed cards as “e-mail for mailboxes.” The templates allow their clients to use the postal service and take advantage of the power of direct mails. There are plenty of examples where a simple postcard can reach a higher percentage of buyers than the endless ads in social media. Yes, it’s more expensive to produce and mail a postcard, but you must be unique to stand out today’s market. Printed cards have started in to grow again and perhaps it’s because we, as an industry, tired of the doom and gloom, are now starting to realize print has something to offer that no other medium can touch: the ability to draw attention to some service or product we didn’t know we wanted by delivering the message through an exclusive portal: the mailbox.

Still, I’m disappointed in our printing equipment manufacturers for not taking advantage of the postcard more often. On a late Friday afternoon when the boss is usually found sequestered in the office reviewing the week’s activities, he or she spots a mailed card promoting a shiny new press or special offer. Recalling how one of their machines requires major repairs this decision-maker visits a website, and maybe, just maybe, leaves a message for someone to contact them. After a busy week, there was no thought of replacing their machine, but a chance encounter spurred an inquiry that just may turn into a sale. This is just another example of the power of printed postcards.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and certified appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at  nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

Starting a business amid a Depression
In 1918, William set out on his own to form William Gegenheimer Offset Press Engineering, later changed to Baldwin-Gegenheimer Corporation, adding his home-town name to the company masthead. William would enter a potentially lucrative business of designing offset press enhancements, and in 1927 a novel inker wash-up device was patented. Initially the press washer was slow to sell, but as word spread, everybody wanted one. Early attempts at forging alliances with press manufacturers soon paid off and virtually all new U.S. presses were equipped with a Baldwin wash-up device.

William had a son who would eventually overshadow the old man. Harold Gegenheimer worked part-time in the Brooklyn shop, and while still barely a teenager it became evident that he was destined to be a mechanical engineer. Off he went to Georgia Tech, where he graduated in 1933.

Photo of mechanical drawings from Willard, Electric Boat and Miller Printing Machinery in the Howard Iron Works collection.

The Willard: right press, wrong time
On Harold’s return to New York City, he found his father designing and constructing a new offset press. The single-colour offset took a sheet size of 22” x 34” and offered two types of infeed: feed-roll or three-point register (transfer grip from lay to impression). Two years later, in 1935, the new Willard prototype press would be completed and a new company, The Willard Manufacturing Corporation, was formed in New York City. Harold had jumped right into working on the Willard after college and there was great hope that the press would catch favour. However, while previously the Gegenheimers had symbiotic relationships with the big press manufacturers, the Willard press now made them competitors and therefore outcasts. With the U.S. and most of the world still in the grips of the Great Depression, 1935 was also the worst time to be spending money, let alone offer something new to an industry struggling to keep its doors open.

1946: the financial floodgates opened and the war was finally over
As war approached, the prognosis for survival seemed bleak, and there is no record of anyone purchasing a Willard. But as the war ended, many defense industries started to look around for new opportunities in a more peaceful world.

Scan of an advertisement for Electric Boat (EB Co) in 1947.

In 1946, the Willard Manufacturing Corporation would be sold to Electric Boat (today General Dynamics Electric Boat), which seemed to now be in the printing press business. The Willard name would be retained, now referred to as the EB Co – Willard. Probably due to lack of business, Harold Gegenheimer had already left his father several years before the Willard sale; first working for ATF-Webendorfer, and then Rutherford Machinery. With capital now behind the new press, Harold Gegenheimer would return and be appointed division manager of the Printing Press division at Electric Boat. That same year (1947), Electric Boat announced its first sale to Ardlee Service Inc. It took 12 years after the Willard was designed to finally find a buyer. As it turned out, plenty more EB Cos would follow, well into the mid 1950s.

Harold was a gifted engineer, and it wasn’t long until he designed a larger two-colour press. However only a few years went by until the new atomic threat from Soviet Russia fell over the west. Electric Boat went looking for a buyer for their printing division. In 1952, EB Co found an ideal suitor.

The right time and the right place: Miller’s smart move
The Miller Printing Machinery Co. was primarily a cylinder letterpress builder. Miller once manufactured gravure web presses and owned a specialist valve manufacturer. But print’s future would be offset and the chance to purchase the EB Co press provided Miller with a ready-to-sell platform. In 1952, Miller officially joined the offset business.

Harold Gegenheimer was still working on his two-colour when a year prior (1951) he decided to return to Brooklyn and his father’s fledgling wash-up and now water-leveler and water-stops business. He had not only been designing a new offset press but a radical new mechanism to turn over or tumble a sheet of paper while it sped between two printing units.

The Miller Company and Harold Gegenheimer soon spent a great deal of time together. With the assistance of EB Co’s engineer, Carl Siebke, Gegenheimer hand-drew a concept that was assumed impossible at the time: a convertible perfector. In 1950, the only possibility of printing both sides of a sheet was upper and lower units with a common gripper in a blanket-to-blanket arrangement. This type of press was only a perfector and not nearly as versatile for penny-pinching printers. Of course, Miller would also enjoy exclusive use of the technology for years, maybe decades!

Gegenheimer’s perfector broke just about every rule of printing press design. It’s important to mention that a 1952 offset press already had plenty of adventurous register and chemistry problems. Gegenheimer and Siebke’s design had an uphill battle getting refined and completed, especially after failed tests, which were numerous.

Scan of Harold Gegenheimer’s original patent from 1956.

For the perfector to be completed there had to be a second cylinder to adjust for various sheet sizes, with vacuum suction holding the tail of the sheet. The vacuum would act as a mechanical gripper when transferring the tail to the third perfecting cylinder. But most importantly, the entire job had to hold hair-line register. The same year Miller took possession of the press, a patent application bearing both Gegenheimer and Siebke’s names was filed in the U.S. Four years later, on August 7, 1956, the printing industry changed forever. A U.S. patent was granted and assigned to Miller. Siebke would go to work for Miller and, over the next decades, continued his print-related inventions.

The TPJ would forever shake the printing industry
Harold Gegenheimer remained with the Baldwin-Gegenheimer Corp and led the business while inventing new tools for sheetfed presses and the roaring web offset sector. I was fortunate to meet Gegenheimer in 1982. I recall him as a soft-spoken, warm man who seemed to have time for everyone. His openness made me muse on the full extent of his genius, not only as an inventor, but as a corporate leader. Gegenheimer died in 2006 at the age of 95, having led Baldwin’s products into virtually every printing company around the globe.

Miller at first struggled with the Gegenheimer perfector. They didn’t have a completed workable two-colour and no major improvements to the EB Co, either. In 1955, Miller became the U.S. and Canadian distributor for MAN Sheetfed.

Scan of 1958 advertisement announcing Miller TPJ, the world’s first convertible perfector.

The difficulties finally ended when in 1958, Miller introduced the world’s first convertible offset press in the TPJ. This new design, including Gegenheimer’s revolutionary perfector, was offered up as a two-colour 23 x 36-inch. In early 1962, Miller announced the 25 x 38-inch TP-38. The TP-38, enhanced over time, would become the mainstay of the Miller lineup for the next 28 years and ultimately bring about the TP-104 platform; the last press design before Manroland purchased all Miller U.S. and German interests in 1990.

For 17 years, Miller held the convertible-perfector advantage, but in 1975, once Heidelberg’s perfector hit the market, Miller’s days of dominance were numbered.
Today the press of choice in the commercial print sector is an eight-colour perfector. Every manufacturer licensed or have reverse-engineered some portion of Gegenheimer’s 1956 patent. Certainly, vast improvements have been made during the last 64 years, but the essential fundamentals remain unchanged from 1956.

Convertible-perfecting is possibly the most important development ever invented in the offset printing industry. The Gegenheimer invention further epitomizes America at its finest. The next time you walk near that new or old perfector, take a moment to salute two guys and a nuclear submarine manufacturer who defied logic.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. He can be reached at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article was originally published in the March 2021 issue of PrintAction. 

In one notable case, when a rabbit pelt seller in France learned that his largest customer, Haloid/Xerox, found a new man-made material to replace fur wipers for their 714 photocopiers, he committed suicide.
Perhaps the next behemoth to fall will be “Big Oil.” Radical new battery technologies will empower more fuel guzzlers to use the grid and thereby reduce the oil demand. The reduction of crude will slowly trickle down to petrochemical refineries and result in price increases for the host of oil-based by-products humans desperately need.

During the printing industry’s existence, there are many examples of technologies that were supposed to solve problems and failed. During the early 1800s, printers were increasingly on the lookout for a new process or machine that would increase print quality and raise production levels.

My good friend, Frank Herrington, once opined that a machine’s mechanical concepts can be simple to understand. “Motion can only travel up and down, back and forth or around in circles,” he said.

Printers knew this to be true, as did anyone attempting to invent or improve a mechanical device, and printing presses were certainly clumsy devices that needed all the help they could get. A circular motion was key to increased speeds and when the first Gravure attempt was identified in 1852 England, progress on a new technology began.

The radical new process of Gravure

Image is Gravure, produced in Germany in the early 1900s.

Nicephore Niepce and Fox Talbot hand-engraved copper plates for a radically new process which even today is still in use. Gravure (or Tiefdruck in German) is an Intaglio process. The history of Intaglio dates back centuries before Talbot and still commands a percentage of print today. One only needs to look at paper money or a stock certificate to see and feel the difference. In 1852, Talbot wasn’t attempting another “engraving,” but rather a new way to utilize the wondrous invention of photography.

With film developments beginning in 1839, Gravure printing could increase reproduction quality. It wasn’t until Mungo Ponton discovered a paper soaked in bichromate of potassium that he realized he had made the paper light-sensitive, thus leading to another compound, bichromated gelatine. This last bit would lead to Karl Klic, a Czech, to invent the Carbon Tissue Resist and usher in the real beginnings of applicable Photogravure in 1877. This process utilized the gelatine applied to the carbon sheet, which is impervious to the acids used to etch the image on a plate or later a roll (Rotogravure). The results were mind-blowing. For the first time, images, such as a halftone, could be printed as if they were the original photograph. A long-plagued problem for printers was in replicating the wide tonal values in letterpress. Film improved tones and Gravure was now thought to be important and would be continually improved to exploit the opportunity.

Letterpress soon discovered a use for film in the discovery and development of “electros.” Electros are usually copper plates that would take the bichromated gelatine discovery for their gain and produce much finer reproductions than lead or hand-carved woodcuts. Although initially a hopeful new technology, Gravure faced the headwinds of Letterpress for decades to come. As hard as they tried, Letterpress Printers would never reach the quality of Gravure, and ironically, Gravure found new markets.

Well into the 20th century, Gravure was (and still is) used for everything from long-run magazines to packaging. The trouble was, the process was incredibly costly. The agony of preparing a cylinder or plate required hours of tedious work by specialists. Complete chromium plating lines and spindle grinders were only but a few of the expensive pieces of auxiliary equipment needed. Then there were machine-room costs to prevent explosions and fires. The flammable solvents used in the ink were not only toxic, but easily ignitable. Large Rotogravure plants would require expensive fire-abatement systems including carbon dioxide, stored in bottles, and made to release in the event of a fire breaking out. If the bell rang and you were slow, chances were, you’d be carted out of the factory boots first.

The Direct-Lithographic or Zinco press

Huber Direct Lithography press from 1898.

Gravure would also harm Planography (Lithography) during the late 19th century. Stone printing had been the best way to reproduce fine art and anything with shading or half-tones, and although agonizingly slow, drew clients who insisted on only the finest reproductions. Gravure had been gnawing away at Lithography because it excelled at everything Lithography was good at. With massive infrastructure costs, Gravure printing was also the most expensive. What to do?

The old stone-men figured that if they could eliminate Solenhofen limestone in favor of a thin metal plate, they could alter the landscape tremendously. Zinc plates were first chosen as zinc could be rolled down to a thin sheet of say 0.024 inches and made sensitive with a series of processes similar to Gravure. This attempt grew legs and by the 1890s was being used sporadically in Europe and America.

Initially, a modified letterpress was chosen, but talk soon turned to devise a “special machine” that didn’t have a back-and-forth bed, but two rotary cylinders: a plate cylinder and an impression cylinder. If you took a modern offset press, removed the blanket cylinder, and placed the plate cylinder (with ink and dampener) in its place, you have a Direct-Lithographic, or Zinco press. The terms Zinco-Lithography and early in the 20th century, Aluminographic-Lithography (the first use of aluminum) would enter our vocabulary. Dozens of press manufacturers rushed Zinco presses to the market and clambered to take advantage of the faltering stone industry. These rotary presses didn’t suffer from the old ways of back-and-forth letterpress, plus the plates were cheaper than stone.

New technology was born and ready to take over the entire industry. Only, that’s not what happened: zinc and aluminum plate processing was fickle. Add the expense of large cameras, platemakers, graining machines, and skilled “touch-up” artists, and you can imagine the road to modernity was fraught with potholes. Direct-Lithography saw its peak between 1898 and 1904, when Ira Rubel re-discovered the long-forgotten Offset principle. Its time in the sun was over, not because of niggling plate problems, but because the print quality was not great. Manufacturers, who must have poured fortunes into machinery, found no buyers and even today, I have never seen a surviving Zinco or aluminum press. Just as quickly as it appeared, Direct-Lithography was gone to history.

Gravure, of course, didn’t disappear and went on to be dominant well into the 1990s, only losing much of its magazine work to the surging Web Offset market. Recently, the British press reported that OK! and Hello! magazines had changed printers and would no longer print Gravure. In the 1980s, Playboy and National Geographic were just some of the bigger names that heralded a massive switch to Web Offset. But Gravure held onto labels, packaging and various important elements of print. Technology advanced accordingly to reduce the costs of cylinder preparation, with sleeves often used. Gravure, through its spinoff Aniline (flexo) even gave Offset printers the technology to incorporate a doctor blade and screen-roller in their coating units. If you have a TRESU or Harris & Bruno coater, that’s Gravure in action.
History teaches us a great deal when we apply the lessons learned to our current lives. Few bother to take advantage of the numerous mistakes our forefathers made. If we did, we would see how history is often repeated. With today’s amazing progress of digital devices, we must determine what platform will ultimately prevail and use caution when assuming nothing can ever defeat the status quo. Meanwhile, if anyone has a Direct-Lithography press available, I want one for the museum!

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article was originally published in the January/February 2021 issue of PrintAction. 

Only the Rubel discovery wasn’t so new. Since Austrian/German Alois Senefelder’s accidental discovery of lithography in 1800, lithography using Bavarian limestone had been discovered, yet developed very slowly. It wasn’t until 1821 when Barnett & Doolittle opened shop in the U.S. that the Americas even had a practical stone printer. The real Eureka! moment actually arrived in 1875, when Englishman Robert Barclay invented what would be true offset. Barclay was a metal decorator, and his new machine featured an extra cylinder with specially treated cardboard as the transfer medium. Nobody ever thought to attempt printing on paper other than tin printing (printing on steel sheets). At least, until the little mishap in New Jersey at Rubel’s Litho-Print Company 30 years later.

Rubel got busy. He hired an engineer who designed a single-colour 36” with three cylinders (plate, blanket and impression) of the same diameter. A suction pile feeder supplied by the E.C. Fuller Co. of New York was added. Word spread throughout the United States that a newfangled contraption had been invented that just might make letterpress redundant.

The Jenison C. Hall printing company of Providence, RI had expanded and opened up an office in San Francisco in 1887. But J.C. Hall, a big player in producing bank stationery, farmed out all their lithographing to New York’s Schmolze & Hildenbrand printers. J.C. Hall’s west coast plant would soon be renamed the Union Litho Company. Luckily, the Spanish-American War proved a boon to Hall, since they were in a select group of seven contractors appointed in 1898 for imprinting stamps on checks. In 1905, Hall’s owner, Bert Hubbard, contacted Rubel and requested a visit to see the press as he heard whisperings about the Rubel machine.

Cartels seldom work for long

Nick Howard took this photo of the Rubel offset press at the Smithsonian’s American History Museum in 1988.
PHOTO: NICK HOWARD

Under a cloud of secrecy, Rubel agreed, and the two met in the confines of the Eastern Lithoprint Co shop in New York City. Until then, nobody from the east coast was allowed to see the new machine. Hall’s plant in San Francisco apparently wasn’t a problem, and at this meeting, Rubel agreed to sell J.C. Hall two offset presses for a sum of $11,000. ($325,000 today). Considering a typical flatbed letterpress cylinder was selling for $1,500, one can sense the excitement of owning a true offset press. One press was delivered just as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 struck northern California, but luckily, the press was still sitting at an Oakland transport depot and was undamaged. Once installed, the press took months to get going, and Ira Rubel’s brother, a mechanic, was put in charge of the installation. This press is now at the Smithsonian Museum.

The same year, Ira Rubel announced that he was forming a joint venture with a Chicago printer, Ike Sherwood, and the new entity would be called the Sherbel Syndicate. Ike Sherwood had many reasons why he didn’t want any other printer in Chicago to get the offset advantage over him: mainly, Charles Goes of the highly-respected Goes Lithographing Co. As partners, Rubel and Sherwood laid a plan and announced they would grant only eleven printers the “opportunity” to purchase the Sherbel offset press.

Oddly, Rubel attempted to register a U.S. patent for his invention, but was stifled. The Patent Office ruled that “offset” was already an accepted art since the metal decorating industry (printing on metal) had been using the technology for at least 30 years.

Initially, the two partners would be introduced to machine builder Andrew Kellogg. Kellogg manufactured his press in New Hampshire but soon left the partnership, leaving Rubel and Sherwood to fend for themselves. Money was tight and the iron casting foundry would not release any materials until paid in full. The syndicate was in serious trouble.

Sherwood went to the Premier-Potter Ptg Press Co. of Plainfield, New Jersey, for assistance, and Potter agreed to build the Rubel press going forward. Sherwood’s partnership with Potter ended the syndicate, and in 1906, Rubel found himself in England. Although his many stories have managed to live on, one trait stands out: Rubel, with his derby hat, was a born salesman and a hustler; he just couldn’t run a machinery enterprise.

Boy blunder heads for greener pastures

In England, Rubel contacted the well-respected printing machine builder Waite & Saville of Otley. The two worked a deal for the Rubel to be manufactured, but Rubel was still contacting other manufacturers. The George Mann Co. in Leeds came into possession of various sketches and print samples left at Rubel’s hotel and quickly decided they too would manufacture a press of their own design. Rubel would die virtually penniless of a stroke while still in England in 1908.

An advertisement for Potter Lithographic Presses, from Metal Plate Printing.
PHOTO: NICK HOWARD

Back in the United States, Potter Ptg Press Co. was busy working the kinks out of the original Rubel press and stepped up production to become the first offset press manufacturer in the world. Ripples of interest turned into torrents when the Harris Automatic Press Co. modified a 30” rotary letterpress (the S4) and turned it into an offset (S4L). Several others, including the Andrew H. Kellogg Co., who was an early participant with Rubel, the Hall Printing Press Co., Walter Scott & Co., and the R. Hoe & Co. entered the fray with various models of their own. Hoe and Scott both pushed hand-feed presses, while the rest had aligned with some of the suction feeder firms such as Fuller and Dexter.

As we now know, Harris received the most significant life changing benefit of offset, but Potter was not far behind. In the United Kingdom, Potter held a premier position in offset presses for over 19 years, before finally being engulfed by Harris in 1927.

This short review of the dawn of the offset press has been repeated many times. However, what has not been discussed are the mistakes both Rubel and Sherwood made in attempting to “corner the market” on a blazing new technology. Provided that Rubel was able to finagle a U.S. patent, would he have been able to decide who he would sell to? The answer is absolutely not. Somehow any new technology will find its way to market: either through the inventor or by reverse-engineering. The Sherbel Syndicate fiasco is still a lesson for today, especially in world trade, where threats of duties and restrictions negatively impact all human beings.

In this year of remarkable events, current offset manufacturers have either learned from Sherbel or not. I think for various reasons, they have. Print technology’s future is not going to be offset, but imminently starting to look a lot like the hybrid offset/digital processes are being intertwined. Koenig & Bauer is putting resources into new platforms. The Delta SPC 130 FlexLine Automatic is a joint venture with the Italian inkjet company Durst. Although specified for corrugated, the press combines tried and tested elements of K & B’s sheet handling and coating technology with Durst’s inkjet platform. The VariJet 106 is a further example, for paper and carton, using Fujifilm Dimatrix Samba inkjet heads. Komori decided years ago that ignoring the higher-tech digital manufacturers might be a mistake. Komori’s partnership with Konica Minolta for a smaller inkjet press, and more recent association with the Israeli firm Landa Digital, sends the same message. At one time, offset manufacturers turned up their noses at the smaller toner and inkjet suppliers, as if these digital guys were annoying, but never a threat. Today the tables are turned, and offset presses are starting to embrace digital.

Starting from scratch has a massive cost if anyone not already in the game wants to attempt a new inkjet alternative. The only ones that can do this are companies that have already spent the R & D money and have the resources, engineers and scientists already deployed.

The lessons of controlling production and deciding what a printer gets to buy are long gone. The printing industry has very little time to think long-term. The Sherbel disaster, had it played out differently, would have left more of us remembering Ira W. Rubel’s name.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article was originally published in the December 2020 issue of PrintAction. 

Three innovators used this willingness to invent to take a unique idea and develop it. In 1853, 14-year-old Robert Gair arrived in New York City from Edinburgh, Scotland. An enterprising young man, in 1864, Gair soon set himself up as a paper jobber (buying and selling paper and cardboard goods) at a remote location in Brooklyn. With the arrival of newly-invented corrugated materials before 1870, Gair invented several machines to manufacture these fluted corrugated sheets. The idea of a paper box was still in its infancy, as most goods were either wrapped in paper with string or placed in veneer-wood boxes.

In 1879, Gair went further and was credited with the machine invention that would produce “folding boxes.” In so doing, he is also credited with manufacturing the first pliable steel rule. The use of a metal rule was first attempted earlier when Gair had been manufacturing flat-bottom paper bags. One day a simple metal ruler used to crease the bags shifted, and instead cut a bag. That mistake lead to the discovery that in using a steel rule, both scoring and die-cutting were possible simultaneously, which prompted Gair to go on to manufacture prefabricated boxes. Later in 1887, the British printing giant E.S. & A. Robinson (soon to be known as the Dickinson Robinson Group) caught wind of Gair’s breakthrough and brought the technology back to England.

An old process called “dinking” actually predated Gair’s invention but not in the paper industry. Shoe manufacturers developed a sharpened die to cut out various shoe and boot parts appearing in the mid-19th century. Although occasionally used to punch metal, dinking techniques were closely held and seemed bespoke to shoes, and possibly other leather goods.

Along the way, Gair would amass a sizable fortune in New York City real estate, primarily in an area called “Down Under the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridge Overpasses,” which the locals refer to as DUMBO.

Robert Gair set about patenting his invention in 1879. He referred to it as “the improved apparatus for cutting and creasing paper in the manufacture of paper boxes” when he swore an oath for a U.S. patent application. Unfortunately, Gair never completed the paperwork, and a U.S. patent was never granted to him. During the remaining years of the 19th century, the steel rule concept spread around the world as various industries appreciated its usefulness and labor-saving profitability.

Meanwhile, fast forward to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and an inventor by the name of Joel Welty. With no previous experience in the printing industry, Welty somehow caught wind of the need to bend and cut steel rule into intricate shapes for use in paper labels and gaskets. The device he would invent, in 1902, would form the next critical phase of steel rule die development, now including the growing paper-box industry. Branded the “Multiform,” this little gadget borrowed from similar technologies used in the sheet metal industry. The Iron-Worker, a multifaceted tool, still in everyday use, showcases some basic concepts Welty applied to invent his little bender. When I say little, I mean little, as it weighs less than 10 pounds with two levers working in an arc around a center mandrel. Just bolt it to a bench, and you were ready to use it. Welty sold quite a few; however, one lucky sale Welty made was to the Fort Wayne Paper Box Company.

The final phase would not appear until shortly after Welty died in 1910. On a spring day, John Richards, who hailed from Albion, Michigan, was returning to the train station after visiting his brother. The path took him past the Fort Wayne Paper Box building, and through the window, Richards noticed a young man using an unusual tool to bend steel rule. He enquired and found out that the device was made across the street. Off Richards went to meet Welty’s widow and purchased the patents, patterns and business of the J. Welty Co in a very short time.

As written later in Richards’ book, The Art of Die Making, he says, “[Welty] had sold [Multiforms] all over the world, but in a remarkable coincidence, I first saw it where it was designed and built.” No stranger to the printing industry, Richards had worked as a mechanic for the Miehle Printing Press Co. then the Campbell Printing Press Co. In 1906, Richards would start his print shop, which included making dies and even designing a bender.

Richards’ fortune would result in a dynamic business that would become the centre of a booming die-making industry – the J.A. Richards Company. Months later, the firm improved the original Multiform bender with a patent issued in 1911 and made substantial changes by 1913. With his growing family, which would eventually include ten children, Richards needed a bright mind and the urgency to support his brood. In 1916, the company relocated to Kalamazoo, Michigan. Rapid new developments in tools to manufacture complex shapes and now using Lignostone base plywood uncovered a further unique opportunity for Richards as these boards needed kerfs cut. Complex machines incorporating a jig-saw, drill and saw made it easier for a skilled die maker to create the inlay necessary to fit the rule.

Indeed, most of the printing and paper box industry is familiar with the J.A. Richards Co, but steel rule travels far beyond print. Metal punching proliferated with everything from fan blades, automotive body panels, and even aircraft components “punched” with equipment made in Kalamazoo. Then there are the gasket and fabric/leather industries, which quickly noticed the massive production savings using a hardened flexible rule that could be bent to any shape.

The J.A. Richards Co would remain in business until 2003. They prospered in both good and bad economic times, continually inventing and improving all sorts of die-making machinery. They also supplied special tooling, blanking-dies and die-board. However, the paper box industry was rapidly changing. The arrival of the laser, to cut a die board, started to eat into sales of mechanically jigged die-boards, and with it went the die-saw business.

Furthermore, computerized tools to bend the rule had left Richards without an answer in this segment as well, although thousands of Richards’ tools are still in use for smaller jobs or emergency rule repairs.

Today the remnants of the J.A. Richards Co are owned by the Porth Products Co in Paw Paw, Michigan. It was during an afternoon conversation with Mr. Karl Porth that I learned of the demise of J.A. Richards Co. I had called him to see about a replacement spring for a Richards cutter we were restoring for the Museum. Although familiar with the company, having bought and sold quite a few of their tools in the past, I had no idea of Richards’ historical background and mostly how vital Mr. Richards was in developing today’s flourishing paper-box industry. During that call, Porth mentioned he had an original Welty “Multiform” from pre-1910 and was gracious enough to donate it to our Museum.

We are indebted to Mr. Porth and also to the American spirit, which may not seem beaming as bright in 2020. I’m confident our “can-do” neighbour will be back again soon to continue bringing the world revolutionary inventions!

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This article was originally published in the November 2020 issue of PrintAction. 

A photo of John Thomson in The Heritage of the Printer, Vol. 1 (1965). Photo: Nick Howard.

Fresh off the boat, a young Scottish lad named John Thomson soon found himself nailed to a pew at the Marion Presbyterian Church just east of Rochester, New York. The Thomson family, newly emigrated from Foonabers, Scotland, sought a new life and more significant opportunities. From 1866 to 1869, the teenaged Thomson, eyes glazed over, developed two vexations. First, the pastor harangued loudly. Second, he spoke with a strange (Yankee) accent. The Scotchman’s burr clashed with a Western New York twang. The Reverend was a fiery western New Yorker by the name of Merritt Gally. Young Thomson immediately disliked Gally, and this hatred would survive both men for the rest of their days.

Gally had been an apprentice printer before he altered course to enter the clergy instead. At a young age, he learned engraving and design and worked for his stepfather, a master mechanic. The knowledge of mechanical engineering would come in handy. After a year, Gally designed and constructed his printing press while opening a print shop with his brother. But the pulpit beckoned, and Gally gave up his life of print in exchange for the Bible.

A short three years later, Gally was forced to retire from the ministry due to severe bronchial health problems and threw himself back into the printing world. This time Gally used his obvious high intellect to invent a radically new printing press. What transpired was a platen superior to anything on the market, utilizing a never-before-seen mechanical movement. The Universal, as the press would be named, was born in 1869 in New York City.

Before Gally’s press, there were three major types of construction: the Gordon, Boston and Clamshell (often referred to as Liberty). Gordon took its name after the American inventor George Gordon and appeared in the 1860s. Eventually manufactured in the hundreds of thousands by many builders, the Gordon Principle held the upper hand and the lion’s share of the exploding print industry. Gordons were produced not only in the United States and Canada, but also in Britain and Europe; if you have ever seen a Chandler & Price, you’ve seen a Gordon.

The Boston principle would also receive wide recognition, mainly after Heidelberg chose it as the famous T Platen press’s foundation in 1914. Boston is a simple design of the platen pivoting on a spindle and “swinging” up to meet the bed.

Finally, the Clamshell (or Liberty) worked just as the name implies, similar to a clam hinging open and closed, and as a result, proved to be the least expensive to manufacture, but the one with the weakest design. Often these types of machines were endowed with the most outlandish names, such as Dauntless, Lightning or Merveilleuse (marvelous in French). Marketing was important in attempting to attract buyers for these inferior imitations.

The Gally “Universal” is now referred to as the PARALLEL IMPRESSION due to the platen’s unique action that, instead of swinging into the bed, was directed by a massive “S” shaped cam to become perfectly parallel just before making contact with the type matter. In a short period of time, the Gally would become the talk of the Northeast. In later years, the Gally would also be nicknamed the ART PLATEN for its superior impressional strength.

Are you following me?

With no way of affording to manufacture his now patented “Universal,” Gally sought out the Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, based in Hartford, Conn. Between 1877 and 1886, over 2,000 Gally Universal presses left the Colt factory. Unfortunately, 1886 was also the year Gally’s patents expired, and Colt seized the opportunity to manufacture the Universal on its own, with only the gunmaker’s name on the press. As an odd coincidence, John Thomson happened to be the Universal press division manager at Colt. Of all the people Thomson wanted to meet again, Merritt Gally wasn’t one of them.

An ad for the Gally Universal Printing Press, circa 1886. Photo: Nick Howard.

As a young man, John Thomson continued his education and was now an engineer of considerable talent. Over Thomson’s life, he would work in various fields other than printing. Thomson designed water meters and was a consulting engineer to the New York Electric Subway Commission. The Thomson Water Meter Company (1890) was housed in a wonderfully Beaux-Arts designed building in Brooklyn that remains fully restored. After Thomson’s death, the building was sold to the New York Eskimo Pie Corporation, where Eskimo Pies were produced as late as 1966. Over 200 patents were granted to Thomson during his lifetime (deceased in 1926). During his tenure as Colt’s manager, he also made substantial patented improvements to Gally’s original press, which he retained personally. Of all the wide-spread inventions, Thomson is best remembered for his involvement in the printing industry.

Gally was outraged. This former preacher breathed fire as he aggressively litigated against Colt over the theft of his design. But Colt and Thomson would win the case as the patent laws were clear, and Colt owned all the tooling, patterns and machinery to make the press. Gally attempted to continue, but his days of press building were winding down. The National Machine Company of Hartford would take over the original Gally design but would eventually be purchased by Thomson to form the firm that still exists today: The Thomson National Press Company (1923). However, there were other opportunities for Gally outside print. One of these was Gally’s improvement of automatic musical instruments and construction of the Orchestrone and Gally automatic piano. It was claimed that nearly all modern pneumatic church organs were equipped with his `back vent’ pneumatics.

Thomson was most likely delighted to see his nemesis go down in flames in a New York courtroom. And between 1886 and 1902, John Thomson would remain employed at Colt. By May 1, 1902, Thomson succeeded in purchasing the complete press-manufacturing division from Colt and relocated the business to Long Island City, N.Y., where a new factory was completed in 1906. Several models were supplied, generally for printing. The Universal design’s robustness also established an unexpected opportunity in the rapidly-growing paper-box industry where the platen proved superior to all others. Universal’s superiority brought about rapid changes, now relegating the printing version to obsolescence. Larger, even more robust platens were designed, and Thomson quickly caught the attention of the Germans. Dozens of European (primarily German) firms started to copy the Universal, and most included inkers for printing. One of the most famous machine builders was the “Victoria,” manufactured in Leipzig. The Italians’ Nebiolo and Saroglia, even the famous German Planeta, offered a version.

As time went on, the original Colt’s Armory presses faced stronger competition from German imports entering Britain and the U.S. Victoria offered multiple options and many enhancements not available on Thomson’s presses. By the end of World War I, Thomson had been building machines exclusively for cutting, creasing and embossing. Thomson even designed the first heated bed for heavy embossing and foil stamping.

After the Second World War, the desire for larger cutting platens increased tremendously and attracted further newcomers. As always seemed the case, these new builders also hailed from Europe. The results were a much wider availability of super-large sizes explicitly built for cutting and creasing. Three iconic manufacturers, Rabolini (Imperia) from Italy, Crosland from the U.K., and Kerma from Germany, held top positions, especially for die-cutters larger than 40 inches (102cm). During the early 1970s, Eberhard Sutter (Spain) quickly picked up market share as the hand-fed business and high manufacturing cost placed the German and British at a significant disadvantage. Sutter (now owned by Spanish firm Cauhé) rapidly expanded their production, even offering a massive 71” x 126” (180 x 320cm) version.

Invented in the U.S. and mass-produced in China

A portrait of Merritt Gally, the inventor of the Universal principle, circa 1902. Photo: Nick Howard.

As the 1980s wound down, the Chinese had awoken from a deep Mao-induced hibernation and had no trouble dealing with environmental issues that so plagued American and European foundry operations. Add in cheap labor, and virtually overnight, hundreds of versions of the Universal were being manufactured in the thousands. The competition was so intense that often the Chinese would produce copies of copies of copies. Quality control was especially problematic during the 1990s, but the selling prices were incredibly low, and sales to Europe and America did nothing but increase over time.

During Thomson’s lifetime, there were no safety devices on these rather dangerous presses. The only protection was whatever was between the operator’s ears. Mechanical clutches soon eclipsed the old fast-and-loose pulley and was superseded by pneumatic and electro-magnetic clutch/brake combinations. It was a relatively normal instance to see men walking around a shop missing digits or complete arms: everyone knew the cause.

Today these types of Universal platens are still counted in the thousands and in operation worldwide. They are used in the gasket and veneer industry and print’s own point-of-sale signage and display sector. Due to fast make-ready, the Universal platen today remains an ideal tool for very-large-format work. Only recently has new technology made inroads in displacing the Universal. The Swiss firm Zund and the Belgian Esko-Kongsberg  are two of the most popular CAD cutting table manufacturers. While being slower, these machines don’t require a steel rule die and take advantage of software that allows the operator to do very little work. As run lengths decrease, these platforms have a negative impact on the Universal platen press. Just as the offset press’s twilight is close at hand, with digital presses making substantial progress, the programmable cutting table is knocking off a 151-year-old technology that is easily the printing industry’s longest and most successful production tool.

After all these years (1869 to 2020), the Gally-Universal press continues to be called something that it isn’t; a Clamshell platen. The correct designation is a Parallel Impression platen. Merritt Gally’s brilliant invention and John Thomson’s improvements have stood the test of time.

Just think, it all started in 1866 in Marion, New York, when a Scottish boy met a Yankee Pastor and they somehow developed a lifelong dislike of each other.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com 

This article was originally published in the October 2020 issue of PrintAction.

Armed with a small notepad, Miehle began drawing sketches of potential design improvements. Without an engineering background, Miehle spent his off-hours studying books and learning the art of mechanical principles. He spent countless hours crawling under his press during the day, intently observing the drive and bed mechanisms. By 1884, Miehle had a solution; one that would drive the bed and cylinder in perfect harmony and, more importantly, eliminate the jarring that occurred with the Mangle! That same year, Miehle was issued his first patent, followed quickly by two other revisions.

Most improvements don’t last for 60 years, but Miehle’s did

A portrait of Robert Miehle, taken circa 1920.

What Miehle was able to accomplish would resonate for the next sixty years. Using a novel mechanical movement called “The Scotch Yoke”, Miehle then discovered Englishman Joseph Whitworth’s alteration known as “The Whitworth Quick Return Mechanism”, the imparting of a rotational force (gear) into a linear force (bed) with the bed increasing speed upon its return. Miehle’s design provided a much smoother, and ultimately superior, printing result. These mechanical principles were also finding their way into many other new technologies, including machine-tools and reciprocating engines. Large pipe organs were also early adaptors of the Scotch Yoke principle. Miehle claimed that, “a pica em quad standing on the bed would not be tumbled over even at a speed of 4,000-bed reversals an hour”. However, what was even more remarkable was that Miehle’s design displaced the cylinder gear, which removed the jarring effect of typical printing presses of the day.

During the late 1800s, our industry primarily used two design systems: the “Single-Revolution” (characterized by a massive impression cylinder and Mangle) and the “Stop-Cylinder,” favoured by the Germans. Robert Miehle had now surpassed both earlier methods and did it in just a matter of months. Miehle established the “Two-Revolution” as an industry standard; however, Miehle didn’t invent the Two-Revolution, which had the impression cylinder take two full turns on each printing cycle. David Napier, a Scot, developed it in the 1820s. Napier is also considered the inventor of the first metal “gripper”, which eliminated silk bands or string to transfer the sheet.

It wasn’t long before competitors were to discard previous prior-art and embrace (copy or reverse engineer) the Miehle design. German manufacturers, including Koenig & Bauer, quickly came up with identical machines, as did the majority of American builders. Plenty of court cases ensued in the United States, with one particularly nasty fight that played out in a Cook County courtroom and the public press. In 1899, the Campbell Printing Press Company was sued by the Miehle Printing Press & Manufacturing Company, with Miehle citing patent violations used by Campbell. Miehle lost and Campbell took out full-page ads touting their win and superiority over the Miehle Two-Revolution design, even though Robert Miehle’s DNA was all over Campbell’s machines. In the case, the Judge concluded that Miehle had used a version of the Scotch Yoke principle and could, therefore, not sue to stop others using something considered in the public domain.

By November 1885, Robert Miehle finally completed wood patterns and had the parts cast in iron at Tarrant Foundries. Once completed, the castings were taken to a Chicago Avenue printing shop where Miehle’s brother, John, was employed. After assembling the first press, word spread quickly through Printer’s Row saloons and a steady stream of industry types, from pressmen to owners, paraded through Miehle’s shop, all praising the design. Now all Miehle needed was something he never had: money. The old saying, “he doesn’t have a pot to pee in, nor a window to throw it out off,” summed up many inventors’ financial situations in the nineteenth century. Robert Miehle had to find someone to fund his new printing press.

“Mr. Miehle, I have a proposition for you.”

An early advertisement for a Miehle press, from 1892.

Samuel K. White would become that money source for Miehle. White already had a going concern at a building on Market Street, between Washington and Madison. Although known for his paging and numbering machines, White also dabbled in machine-tools and occasionally tried his lot as an inventor. White had even designed and constructed a paper cutter. It wasn’t long before White realized the significance of Miehle’s invention. In short order, White rustled up two business friends to form a partnership of what would become the iconic Miehle Printing Press & Manufacturing Company. On December 8, 1890, the three men convened for the first meeting of the new company. However, Robert Miehle wasn’t invited. Miehle had no way of coming up with his share of the $50,000 seed money ($1,415,000 today). Instead, Miehle cut a deal directly with White that would have his patent rights assigned to White in exchange for a royalty on all presses sold and a ten-year contract as chief designer. The company that bore Miehle’s name would ironically never have Robert Miehle as a shareholder; a blunder he would come to regret.

The first press produced by the newly incorporated company would leave the White factory in March of 1891, and to the surprise of Robert Miehle, would not bear the name “MIEHLE” on its side-frame, but instead, the name “S.K. WHITE,” in bas-relief. Our Howard Iron Works Museum has one of these early S.K. White machines. Business became so brisk that the factory expanded later in the year and moved to the corner of Clinton and Fulton Streets in Chicago. With profits rolling in, the three partners were making substantial returns on their investments. Robert Miehle, stung by his gullible mistake, left the company in 1892 only to return later that year after his compensation was increased, and the “S.K. WHITE” moniker was replaced with “The MIEHLE P.P. & MFG CO.”

During Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, Miehle showcased their press and walked away with a medal and a prize diploma, and was chosen to print The Book of the Fair. It was about this time that a lawyer hailing from Canada set eyes upon the Miehle Company, who just happened to be across the street from his thriving sash and door weights factory. Canadian John Hewitt emigrated to the United States, but not to practice law, as it turned out. Hewitt began his American dream selling lightning rods to farmers across the country until he settled down in Chicago. Eventually buying into Miehle, Hewitt would ultimately force White out and ascend to the Miehle Company’s presidency.

The multi-purpose Miehle

By 1919, Miehle was manufacturing 23 models, including an earlier introduction of a massive 7/0 that handled a sheet size of 49 ½” x 73 ½”. Robert Miehle continued developing technologies, obtaining patents, and with his improved financial remuneration, soon found himself living in a large home on the North Side while being driven to and from work in his prized Stanley Steamer automobile.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there seemed little fear that Robert Miehle might find himself ensconced in front of Chicago’s Wrigley Building, selling used pencils from a tin cup for a penny apiece.

The company’s early foray into Europe also proved surprisingly lucrative. In 1899, Hewitt traveled to England, where he consummated a deal with the Printing Machinery Company Limited (later renamed Linotype & Machinery) to manufacture Miehles under license in Great Britain and Ireland. This deal alone brought in £20,000 (an astounding £2,586,000 today!).

Quickly the Miehle Printing Press Company gained a substantial share of the world market, which positioned them at the pinnacle of a burgeoning sheetfed printing industry. A timely encounter with a Milwaukee inventor in 1920 would provide another milestone for the company. Edward Cheshire had designed a new little 13 x 19-inch printing press that ironically used the “Stop-Cylinder” principle long discarded by Miehle. Instead of a normal horizontal plane of the type bed, this machine held the bed and type vertically. The Miehle Company soon latched onto this concept as they were looking for a small “jobber” to complete their offerings. In 1921, Miehle purchased Cheshire’s “Milwaukee Automatic Press Company,” and the now renamed “MIEHLE-VERTICAL” would quickly become a top seller; remaining in production until 1974! After some research, I estimate well over twenty-two thousand MIEHLE-VERTICALs were manufactured.

“You never hear of a Miehle press being scrapped.”

Considering the length and breadth of the Two-Revolution Miehle success, including Europe, Scandinavia, South America, China, Japan and most of Southeast Asia, Miehle would reign as the undisputed leader in its field. The Chinese even printed currency on a Miehle, and the Swiss loved the Miehle, especially for printing Bibles. American and Canadian printers would also purchase the lion’s share of Miehle presses for generations to come.

Robert Miehle would live until 1932, but his legacy and name would remain at the forefront of the North American printing industry until 1990, when Rockwell International (who had purchased MGD in 1969) discontinued what had been a 39-year relationship with Germany’s Faber & Schleicher, now known as Manroland. Since 1951, every Roland press that arrived in Canada and the USA was emblazoned with the MIEHLE name. It wasn’t until several years after Manroland’s arrival that the Roland name would supplant that of Miehle to Americans and Canadians alike.

Ironically, I have one of those “six degrees of separation” tales concerning Miehle. The Toronto Type Foundry represented the Miehle Company for decades, going back to before 1912. My father worked for TTF, and I remember when he came home and told the family TTF was closing their doors. Miehle (which was now part of a triumvirate of three businesses – Miehle, Goss, and Dexter) decided that they (MGD) wouldn’t renew TTF’s contract and would instead sell directly in Canada. In 1966, TTF simply closed shop after being in business since 1887. The TTF owner was Mr. W.J. Palmer, whose family roots went back to San Francisco in 1878 and a type foundry and press builder known as Palmer & Rey.

MGD’s destruction of an 80-year-old sales partner remained an invaluable business lesson I have never forgotten. When you work for, or represent a manufacturer, nothing is assured, and you might go to bed a peacock, but awaken as a feather duster. My father’s abrupt unemployed status resulted in our company, Howard Graphic Equipment Ltd. Perhaps had it not been for Robert Miehle, I may never have written this article.

There was an old slogan Miehle often used: “You Never Hear of a Miehle Press Being Scrapped.” Robert Miehle was no doubt proud of that phrase and, more importantly, of how, as a young man of twenty-three, lying on his back in a noisy and hot Chicago pressroom, he discovered such a breakthrough that would change the face of print for almost 60 years!

NICK HOWARD, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com

This article was originally published in the September 2020 issue of PrintAction.

Since 1820, a few years after American George Clymer had finally invented the first “all iron” printing press, without a “wine screw,” he found himself in a dog fight with Englishman Richard Cope and his all English “Albion” design. For the next 25 years, Clymer’s Columbian and Cope’s Albion would battle it out for a printer’s favour. So began the argument of who makes the best printing press.

As with my DeVilbiss JGA, I bonded with a tool that seemed never to let me down even though there are similar arguments amongst the trade favouring other brands. Humans act like this, bringing preferences and bias to play. We don’t have far to look for it, either. Polarizing politics, now entirely on display in the United States, is full of often ridiculous drum-beating for one party or another. Facts rarely play a role. Often gut instinct prejudices our ability to reason and access correctly.

Today’s printing machines are truly amazing. Nobody makes an awful press, digital or offset. Some are more user friendly, while others have features only they can offer. However, every press can produce a high-quality saleable print. Twenty-five years ago, offset press manufacturers started to take waste seriously. This period was well after a milestone of press innovations, including plate loading and preset functions, which appeared around 1992.

The year 1998 brought new trends such as inker response times and getting up to colour in less time. One particular manufacturer drastically reduced the number of rollers in their newly designed inker. Fewer rollers provided a faster reaction, except that’s not quite how it ended up. Severe ghosting was an unfortunate result. Back to the drawing board they went, to correct the flaw, but not before word spread throughout the industry. Someone once said that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth can get its pants on. How true, and yet how unfortunate. Most likely spurred by competitive salesmen, design missteps such as this are the elixir of the competition in the hope customers will form negative opinions. Potential prospects were treated to an off-the-cuff remark from a competing salesman, and it had a negative effect, though the design issue was solved in a very short time.

During the summer of 1995, a battle was in full swing to win a crucial order from a large packaging printer in North Carolina. As is often the case, the various press manufacturers were whittled down to only two. One of them was manroland. I knew the salesperson for the competing press quite well, and he had worked hard to win this order. Demonstrations and press trials all went well, and there seemed no potholes on the road to victory. Then he got the call to come in. He was ensconced in a chair in the company board room when the CEO gave the salesperson the bad news: manroland was winning the order.

Great news obviously for manroland, but utter dejection for the competing salesperson. When pushed, the CEO could not come up with one technical issue that moved the needle. All the CEO said was both presses performed well – there were no real differences noted. However, one thing swayed the decision: “That manroland sure looked damn good.”

In the mid-1990s, manroland certainly had the sleekest and most technologically advanced press in the 700. The press stood out just in appearance. Under the covers, the 700 was bursting with all sorts of futuristic technology as well. This CEO felt he was buying the future, which, in fact, he was. Looks alone will not drive sales, though. If it did, Nebiolo would still be in business. What Nebiolo could do with metal covers and the Italian flair for style was so amazing, someone should have written a book called One Hundred and One Things You Can Do with Sheet Metal.

A good friend told me a story about how he started his print shop. Looking to purchase some machines, he called a local rep of one of the most prestigious manufacturers. Describing the type of work he wanted to produce, the salesperson, looking disinterested, gave him some unsolicited advice: “you’ll never make it, give up now.” Angered, the printer did not “give up” and, to this day, has refused to buy a press from that manufacturer. That meeting and the salesperson’s stupidity proved costly, but not for the printer, who has gone on to great success. This manufacturer simply lost out by making wrong assumptions. How crazy to lose a potential order when the loss had absolutely nothing to do with the actual printing press or the company behind it.

To impartially rate presses is Mission: Impossible

A DeVilbiss spray gun, the author’s personal favourite paint spray gun brand. Photo: Nick Howard.

In my 40-plus years spent in this industry, I worked hard to read a person’s bias and preferences. Our usual clients were small to medium-size firms, and often the owner started the business working like a dog to build and nurture it. As the company grew, employees were hired, and they brought along their own opinions and preferences. In those early days, if a printer purchased a press that seemed never to let them down, they generally stuck with it. I especially loved dealing with those entrepreneurs because they were genuine. If they cut their teeth on a particular press, they stayed loyal.

Salespeople play essential roles in decision-making and, ultimately, which machine ends up as number one. The owners that have operated machines could see through any rep’s sales pitch and personality. If the salesperson had experience running a press (and this is quite rare), then they often spoke as peers. However, if that salesperson was fast and loose with facts, or offhandedly muttered untruths or repeated manipulated gossip, a void could quickly form. Today’s printer/manager who is the decision-maker rarely has the “on-press” experience and is much more likely to use a salesperson to arrive at a decision. That same manager is also less likely to be loyal to a brand.

Ultimately. coming to a determination and therefore rating a top choice can be quite simple when other variables are factored in. Is the current service support pleasant? Were the suppliers easy to deal with and willing to solve problems quickly, or was it always difficult to get parts and service in rapid time? How many technicians are in my area, and of those, how many are any good? If every time you need assistance and someone has to always fly in, this is both costly and slow. When you look at the entire industry, there is a wide disparity between the best and the worst manufacturers and dealers when it comes to the most crucial decision factor: service and customer care.

Whether your choice is German or Japanese, the best press doesn’t care what language the factories speak. Although both ecosystems try and do the same quality work, that doesn’t always mean they are equal. Consider how language could impact your choice. Is there confusion when you’re desperate for the right information? Are there difficulties having the press serviced or updated? Can a foreign language affect the speed of response?

Communication and methodologies can be troublesome and not intentional, but one wonders if an Enigma decoder is needed to unscramble some manufacturers’ thinking processes. Difficulty dealing with a supplier is a crucial reason why printers choose the machines they do and alter their preferences and bias towards a specific manufacturer.

Listen and learn from your customers

So, if we are going to rank equipment from first to worst, it’s the overall picture that counts more than a particular brand and machine model. Whenever we had customers at our plant for a press inspection, I took particular interest in getting to know all the entourage members, from the owner to his designated pressman. Understanding how both think and what biases they hold helped me focus on what decisions they would ultimately make.

The best press is more than a salesperson’s chatter. It’s about harmonizing one’s instincts with positive experiences. Indeed, in today’s environment, with younger managers making critical choices, the price still gets top billing. But after price, there is that gut impression often based on previous experiences. If it were fair and easy to rate machinery based on simple criteria such as a manufacturer’s experience or the number of units in the field, decisions could be clear. For example, if you appreciated legacies, of those that have been manufacturing offset presses the longest, manroland wins that prize, with Komori and Koenig & Bauer not far behind. If it’s based on units sold, then Heidelberg takes the win. Innovation? Now that gets much more difficult.

Koenig & Bauer, the world’s oldest press builder, has launched a brand-new press: the Rapida 106 X. Not be dismissed, Komori, manroland, RMGT and Heidelberg have also recently upgraded their platforms. There is no clear ultimate number-one here, even though the Rapida is said to be able to run carton at an unfathomable 20,000 sheets per hour.

Every press manufacturer builds fantastic equipment that, given the right set of circumstances, would be a wise choice. Ranking these companies is misleading to anyone not coming in at the top spot. The best way to rank presses is to weigh other factors, including price, service response time and your own experience and bias. Just recently, a large high-end cosmetics printer bought a new press. This firm had been loyal to a supplier and had several of the manufacturer’s presses on the floor, going back to the 1970s. A new plant manager arrived about a year ago, and things changed quickly. This plant manager had a decades-long association with another press builder, knew most of the people, visited the factory a few times, and guess what? This printer just changed suppliers.

We all have particular tastes and prejudices that are instrumental in how we live our lives and make the decisions we do. I will never change my DeVilbiss JGA even though there are possibly better alternatives. My brand of vehicle hasn’t changed in almost twenty years. I choose what I like, but it may not be the best. The one that gets the winning order either has the cheapest press (especially a factor today) or has understood a buyer the best, and shown it exemplary service. That manufacturer gets the number-one slot.

NICK HOWARD, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com

This article was originally published in the July/August 2020 issue of PrintAction.

The Primefire 106 came to me in puzzlement, but VLF not so. The moment I laid eyes on the launch press at Drupa 2008, I could see one obvious shortcoming. The press was too monstrously over-built. It seemed unimaginable that in such a small yet exclusive sector, Heidelberg would ever sell enough given the magnificence of the design. Too big and too expensive: customers also had to essentially engineer massive foundations, with Heidelberg factory engineers and bespoke erecting teams on-site to put the presses together. In 1972 Heidelberg made a similar decision building a massive size six (56 inch) Rotaspeed V1 that never even made it out of the factory. Was this a scene out of the movie Groundhog Day? Didn’t that earlier lesson suggest something?

Koenig & Bauer and manroland also build large format but not to the overblown extent of Heidelberg. A Rapida 162A can be quickly dismantled to fit regular shipping containers except for the feeder and delivery. Rigging requires nothing particularly special and installation very quick. In Heidelberg’s case, special rail systems, super-size crates, and associated freight cost just added a higher expenditure to an already pricey press.

Commercial print buyers were scarce

As it turned out, these monsters were absolute winners when it came to uptime and productive running speeds. Shortly after the 2008 launch, a perfecting option was added, but that horse had already bolted with a severe reduction of four-over-four commercial and book work. Printers were dealing with shorter run lengths and preferred smaller B1 (forty-inch) presses. The few web-to-print wholesalers, some even installing the roll-to-sheet CutStar option, were scarce. Folding-carton was a much different story as the Speedmaster VLFs eclipsed what had previously been possible in terms of throughput and make-readies while stealing the crown from the other two manufacturers. No doubt, a massive sigh of relief emanated from Würzburg and Offenbach when they read the news.

The co-developed Primefire 106 struggled to gain sales, mainly because of the sale price. Still, everyone knew digital, and most assuredly, inkjet would soon be the technology that would displace the Offset method. However, the shock of termination amplified in our current climate, where no one can afford to wait for the rest of the industry to arrive. These two changes appear devastating, but in reality, machine tools and real estate are liquid assets. In the case of the Primefire 106, it was mostly composed of an existing Speedmaster 106 with only a specially designed imaging unit, and a console shoved into the delivery. As Heidelberg is legendary for its spare parts and service, these will likely continue well past the end of natural life.

So, it seems the printing industry will not spend millions of dollars on technology that runs at speeds of the 1950s. Price is an obstacle that every potential 40-inch seller, including Landa and Komori, may face.

The joint venture with Fujifilm is the second go Heidelberg has had with digital. The first ended in tears back in 2004 when Heidelberg ended their venture with Kodak. At that time – as it is today- everyone knew the industry was changing, and sooner or later, printers would convert to some version of the digital method. Trouble was, not many were willing to write checks. Time and massive write-downs forced Heidelberg to react the same in both cases.

The life of machine builders, and that includes our printing machine manufacturers, are continuously fraught with whether or not some new device or design will be a winner. Numerous examples exist of machine concepts that came out of departments with shelves groaning under the weight of drawings, only to belly flop. Every builder has these miss-fires during their lifetimes. I’m sure Komori would like to re-think the decision to build a sizeable perfect binder without a gatherer back in the mid-1970s, but they didn’t. Neither did Koenig & Bauer with their chain-transfer bright yellow SRO presses. Disturbingly this time the (PrimeFire 106 and VLF) problem was not performance, but financial.

And so it was, back in 1967, when Heidelberg thought they were on to something that could breathe new life into letterpress. The mid-1960s were inundated with print—notably books. Newfound technology in perfect-binding solved the problems of having to use animal glue and side nailing to keep the increasingly popular paperback books from falling apart. Everyone it seemed was installing perfect binders with the new “Hotmelt” adhesives, and book prices were coming down. To produce these books ideally meant perfecting (printing both sides in a single pass). There were not many sheetfed choices in those days, unless printers purchased a dedicated offset press such as the Crabtree SP56 or similar models made by MAN and Marinoni or many other blanket-blanket presses, three of which would be soon to arrive from Japanese builders Komori, Akiyama and Mitsubishi. Of course, first-generation “convertible” perfecting with Miller TP-38 or TP-54 presses was also popular.

“Two Waldorf salads, please!”

Heidelberg’s perfecting press was able to turn out pages at a reasonable speed of 5,500 impressions per hour using inexpensive relief plates.

Heidelberg wanted to catch the wave of new letterpress plate technologies that rapidly appeared with both DuPont’s Dycril and Germany’s BASF branded Nyloprint plates. Both were metal-backed, about 0.8 mm thick and used not only for letterpress but with the film flipped on exposure for right-reading, ideal for Dry-offset on an offset press with requisite ground plate cylinder. Besides, Heidelberg wasn’t entirely new to this game, and especially with DuPont’s efforts in America, Dry Offset was also gaining popularity for books and other simple monochrome work. In 1962, Heidelberg designed a small two-colour (non-perfecting rotary press), the 40 x 57cm KRZ. Now, why not design a much larger format, say in the SRA1 (640 x 900mm) sheet size that could accommodate A4 sixteen-page work, perfected in one pass?

During May 1988, I was visiting the Heidelberg rebuilding center, just near the main Wiesloch factory, in the town of Waldorf. Yes, the same Waldorf that would lend its name to the salad. This shop was magic. Speedmasters and S-Offsets were rebuilt entirely along with all sorts of letterpresses, from the T-Platen to SBDZ. Finished machines looked like new! Packed away at the rear storage area was a press I’d only read about in a Heidelberg catalog. My eyes were drawn to it in fascination. The press was a model SRDW. The designation is loosely translated as fast-rotary-perfecting-press.

During our years in business, there are but only two models, excluding the VLF and Primefire 106, we never bought and sold. The first was a very short-lived KSL, which was a flat-bed letterpress with an offset upper unit. The second was the SRD series. We have sold everything else: from the iconic little T-platen to the Speedmaster 106. Initially launched at Drupa 1967, the press came in only the SRA1 size but in three variants: SRDE-single color, SRDZ-two-color, and SRDW-two color perfector.

“We have built the best performing technology. What could possibly go wrong?”

At the time, I just looked at it, amused. Why in 1988 would anyone buy such a thing? Hadn’t the industry moved on from letterpress? Furthermore, why on earth would Heidelberg even have such a fossil ready to be rebuilt? But as time went on and we started to think about building a museum, I remembered that SRDW and started to envisage having such a unique piece of history: we just had to have one of these. As it turns out, Heidelberg made very few: our research indicates less than 126 in all three variants were made between 1967 and 1973 when it was quietly put to rest. Finally, after years of searching, our museum found one parked in a Berlin book bindery. The company was using the SRDW to die-cut with foil dies. Diecutting was never in the scope of work for this press, but it must have done the job judging by all the waste we had to clean out. The upper first unit has an extra cylinder that carries the sheet to be printed, and then back to the main double-size impression cylinder where the bottom unit prints the backside. Some type of anti-marking tympan was used – probably 3M’s Spherekote, which was invented in 1947.

Our press was manufactured in 1969 and would have had the original Spiess BX stream feeder. But the Spiess was upgraded to the newly developed Heidelberg head (invented in 1969 by Arno Wirz). The press was originally black but had been repainted grey, which became Heidelberg’s new livery in 1972. Could it be that  the press I saw 32 years ago in Germany is our press after a makeover? We may never know—but one thing is for sure, it is a beautifully designed piece of equipment. From the user-friendly feeder to a swing-arm in-feed with pull side-guide, the SRDW used some existing technology but also was responsible for designs that would be used later on with the S-Offset: delivery grippers being a good example. The way it perfects is the most fascinating part for me.  Anyone who has run older Heidelberg rotaries can easily navigate through the SRDW and a key argument of why Heidelberg has always been considered the pressman’s press. Now, after a full restoration, our SRDW – probably the most unique machine Heidelberg ever made, is on display and soon to be printing again at the museum.

Heidelberg certainly had a good idea back in 1967. They designed a perfecting press that could pound out pages at a reasonable speed of 5,500 impressions per hour using inexpensive relief plates. Heidelberg foresaw the need for perfecting and the public’s appetite for pocketbooks. What they couldn’t know was the speed at which Offset would eclipse letterpress. And just as they did recently with Primefire 106 and VLF models that offered little return or were too expensive to build, they hit the brakes on the SRD series and moved on. Others had similar harsh decisions to make. Koenig & Bauer spent years pushing their Rotafolio version of relief printing before they too put a stop to it. Dry Offset, or Letterset as it’s called in Germany, lives on today, especially for metal decorating and label printing. But for book work and any other type of B/W printing, even the offset press struggles to maintain a hold as most of this work is slowly vanishing.

The SRDW is the story of machine development, and every single press manufacturer has a book full of missed or unprofitable equipment that either because it was not the right time, or the market wasn’t willing to buy enough, was forced into painful decisions. In 2020 no one, including Heidelberg, can afford to wait it out. Today this is our reality. Heidelberg made the right call. Meanwhile, for anyone interested in the rich history of printing presses, we have saved an extraordinary piece of Heidelberg engineering you may never see anywhere else.

NICK HOWARD, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment.
nick@howardgraphicequipment.com

This article was originally published in the June 2020 issue of PrintAction.

How quickly our everyday patterns of life changed with COVID-19. Once this virus is isolated and a vaccine developed, there will still be trillions of dollars left unrecoverable, along with potentially millions of shattered lives. But there are significant problems for various commercial segments of the economy: those who have been waging battles of survival for the last 25 years. One of these is of course our own printing industry.

It would be totally inappropriate for anyone (me included) to suggest how COVID-19 will play out. But I come from the printing industry and this article is read by our community. So, I must pass on what seems obvious. Whenever a catastrophe arises, and no one living has seen this latest incarnation, humans somehow adapt. The 1973 Arab oil embargo crippled supplies of gas but also changed our driving habits and the way we built our cars. Fuel efficiency was the new buzz word. Even with this inherent ability for survival, we slowly went back to our old ways, but never exactly the same as before.

The Spanish Influenza of 1918 infected 500 million people, of which 17 to 50 million perished. I researched our museum library to see what, if anything, print publications were reporting during the period between January 1918 and December 1920. Virtually nothing — not one line in any significant print industry publication mentioned the noticeable adverse effects this influenza was having. I also couldn’t find the words “flu” or “influenza.” The closest comment was tucked away in 1920 by the British Penrose Annual’s William Gamble: “then there have been the deaths of a number of older workers in the trade – deaths hastened in many cases, perhaps, by the trying conditions of the times.”

Most of the newspapers of the period spun a completely counterfactual story that suggested because the Spanish King (Alfonso XIII) was gravely ill somehow, the virus must have emanated from Spain just as today countries looked for someone or some state to blame. Today, historians are divided on the epicenter pointing to two locations: Haskell County, Kansas, U.S. or Étaples-sur-Mer, France. The experts are, however, in agreement that the Spanish Flu had nothing to do with Spain.

But there is one remarkable difference between the influenza pandemic of 1918 and COVID-19: the ability for businesses and the general public to bypass the printed word. By the end of 1919, the market was back to normal. The Great War had ended, soldiers returned to their jobs, and the printing industry was experiencing a significant boom. Today, with so many people either working from home or laid off, unless they’re sequestered with a book, they are on their computers or watching television. Should they get hungry, they order-in using many of the home delivery apps. But today the virus is front and centre. Unlike 1920, everybody is calling it out and not burying it as if it is someone else’s problem. One hundred years later, society has vastly more tools at our disposal, some of which can further damage print.

In the United Kingdom, there is a growing dislike by shop owners accepting cash. The chance of catching germs from paper notes and coins is a possibility, and now more than ever. So, we tend to use credit cards or our smartphones to pay for things, even a cup of coffee. How will the long-term effects of virtual cash help the security print industry, including the manufacturers of specialized machinery? The COVID-19 virus just sped this transition from paper to digital, and it is not reversible. Even a few years ago, several countries, particularly Sweden, discouraged the use of cash, and many establishments simply refused to take it. The trend was already there before the COVID-19 boost.

The clear benefits of embracing software have a startling effect on jobs, too. Banks used to be nothing but bricks and mortar with ridiculous closing times, such as 3:30 p.m. That’s why everyone joked about “banking hours.” Tellers, long the only connection to your money, are vanishing and replaced with machines and online banking (which is the most profitable). The same is happening in our stores and supermarkets. Self-service checkouts are an everyday thing. News now flows in a continuous stream 24/7, and we are not only hooked, but extremely comfortable paying our bills or buying a new pair of shoes with our smartphones. Gone are the early days of E-Commerce when we were scared to leave credit card information on a website. For the porn industry, print versions were systemically wiped off the face of the earth by the internet. The printing of porn was something few printers were proud of, but it sure put a lot of their kids through college and made millionaires of more than a few.

Add the excellent fortune of enhanced and more abundant data, and no wonder businesses increasingly want to become not only paperless but also cashless. This nasty virus is merely clearing the path faster than anyone expected. Today there is not only a wish for streamlining business but an actual need. As of this writing, most restaurants are closed, as are coffee shops that have seating. Effectively, these businesses cannot survive unless they have drive-thru or can deliver. Each step forward means one step back for print. Our ecosystem just got a whole lot smaller.

COVID-19 now makes it even more difficult to at least sustain the small slice of the communication pie. During the early stages of a mass shutdown, many print clients had no choice but to reassess how they could maintain marketing campaigns without the need to print anything. A most explicit example of this about-turn is in companies now communicating how they are coping with disruptions and encouraging customers to follow them on social media or company websites. Staff working from home linked by cloud-based software: Voila! No changes at all to how we serve you. Perhaps you noticed your suppliers had communicated lately only via social media or email?

Conceivably, packaging is immune. Oddly the “eyeball” sector of signage, banners, and point-of-sale should be safe. Eyes don’t reach out and touch signage as fingers do a magazine or envelope. Besides, we will be excited to get outdoors, and guess where most of the large format is? Outside.

For everyone else, we have reached another setback. With so many people impacted by COVID-19, anything that can be transacted remotely will be. No building can be completely sealed to prevent vermin from finding a way inside. So it is with technology. The moment a better or cheaper way is invented, humans will find it. I’m less concerned with COVID-19, more worried about how we charge back. Fasten your seat belts, our mighty print industry will need to be brilliantly creative to win some of it back.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com 

This article was originally published in the May 2020 issue of PrintAction. Click here to check it out.

Back in 1986, I was in the midst of another Heidelberg offset installation, way out west in the pretty little town of Woodinville, Washington State. As every mechanic will tell you, challenges are just part of the job when you’re out of town. Woodinville was no different. No, it wasn’t the surprise of seeing the wall feet from the press receive a massive hole; the next-door occupants were in the broadloom business and to move large rolls of carpet, they used a forklift with a specially mounted steel pole, something similar to a jousting lance. The operator misjudged the distance and all of a sudden, the drywall exploded with this pointed pole inches from where I was working.

I had another problem — one that was rather frequent in a country that still refused to go metric. I needed a few 6-mm hex bolts. Such a simple request could have been as easy as running down to a local hardware store if I was anywhere other than the United States. In 1986, unless businesses ordered fasteners from a specialist metric supplier, there were none. In larger printing plants, the maintenance departments usually had assortment kits but generally guarded these as if they were Lady Aster’s jewels. Since the area was new to me, I did the next best thing and went to a Volkswagen dealership, paid a princely sum and solved the problem.

Our museum has just completed a restoration of a Heidelberg stop-cylinder press which was manufactured in 1920. The press is known as the Schnelläufer-Exquisit (fast press) and is handfed in a 70- cm sheet size. But if you need any hardware, be in for a surprise. All threads and nut/bolt faces are English Whitworth, not metric. This proved to be a bit of a puzzle since the DIN metric profile, developed in Germany in 1919, came about well before 1920 when the German, Swiss and French established the Système Internationale (SI) in 1898.

Imagine that! The Germans used British screws

In 1841 Joseph Whitworth, the legendary English toolmaker suggested standardizing threads. Since the invention of the screw, hundreds of profiles have existed and were often made in-house by machine factories. We constantly run across some very odd sizes and pitches in our restoration of pre-1850 machinery. Whitworth chose an angle of 55 degrees and standardized the number of threads per inch, fixed for various diameters. It is considered a credible fact that Frederich Koenig, upon leaving England for Germany in 1817, took with him English tooling and at least one Whitworth lathe. Such was the quality and acceptance of the Whitworth name.

Photo of the 1920 Heidelberg Exquisit that Howard Iron Works imported from Hamburg, Germany, and recently rebuilt. Photo: Nick Howard.

However, Whitworth threads were difficult to cut as they featured a flat milled surface at the top of the thread. In 1864 an American, William Sellers, came up with what would become the American-Uni fied-Course Series (USS). This thread had a 60-degree angle, similar threads per inch as Whitworth but a sharply pointed thread that was much faster to manufacture. In 1948, Britain, the U.S. and Canada agreed on a new standardization for threads using the Imperial measurement — Unified-National-Standard or UNC. The reason UNC surfaced was due to major “tower of babel” bottlenecks during the Second World War. Machinery, armaments, and vehicles manufactured in these three countries would run into trouble when repairs had to be made. For example, a British tank with Whitworth threads breaks down at a Canadian frontline and all the Canadian bolts don’t fit!

Although the metric system of sheet size and thickness was prevalent before 1919 Europe, changing tooling and specifications just to suit the new system was incredibly expensive. Whitworth’s specifications had spread throughout Europe, and Germany was becoming the juggernaut of machine building. Tooling cost money which few companies, including Heidelberg, had available just after the First World War. Every printing press we have worked on, some built as late as 1930, used imperial hardware and that includes Koenig & Bauer, Johannisberg, Mailänder and Planeta. These printing presses used British threads, but our museum also has a 1927 Heidelberg Platen, and we do know that between 1920 and 1926, Heidelberg did adapt to the metric system.

Why are toolboxes so heavy?

To mask the fact Europe was still maintaining an imperial unit for hex bolt and nut faces, odd sized wrenches appeared with a metric identification, and sometimes with applicable fractions, to accommodate the use of the Whitworth size. Metric hex bolt face sizes of 14, 16, 18, 20, 25 millimetres (now obsolete), were conversions from Whitworth. For example, early German wrenches would sometimes be stamped 25 mm and 9/16 inches. If by chance a fine thread was used (BSF) that same bolt would have a completely different wrench marked 5/8 inches — Whitworth, for some reason altered the faces from course (BSW) to fine (BSF). To make matters worse, various European countries, as well as the United States, developed their head sizes which meant mechanics needed more tools to lug around.

In Japan, the situation wasn’t much different. A 1928 Komori press in our museum is not only manufactured to Imperial measurements but all the fasteners are Whitworth. When Germany and its neighbours, tired of the heavy English threads and bolt faces, eliminated the irritant and then went completely metric. Metric bolts maintained the American 60-degree angle but altered the thread pattern towards a slightly finer pitch.

Top: A German Whitworth Wrench. Bottom: A British Whitworth Wrench. Photo: Nick Howard.

Unusual thread patterns only added to the grief in the United States. Smyth bindery equipment didn’t use any typical threads and simple things, like screws, bolts and nuts, were all listed in their parts catalogue as unsuspecting mechanics would soon find out they were non-stock at most suppliers. I spent hours re-threading a hole to accept a standard thread for a Smyth case maker — frustrating and wasteful but potentially profitable for the manufacturer.

DIN’s other wide-reaching standards also had a profound effect on virtually everything else. Paint colour a good example. The RAL standard also came with a number. In the United States, they were still using catchword monikers such as “battleship Grey”; The Germans: RAL7003. Every shop in Germany made that colour the same.

Sorry… we can’t supply that!

“Non-standard” wasn’t isolated to just hardware, it included ball bearings as well. New Departure (now Hyatt-New Departure), was once owned by General Motors. During World War Two, ND manufactured 287 million bearings for the war effort and they went into everything from aircraft to tanks. As the war ended, New Departure came up with a novel annuity revenue stream. Various odd dimensions were designed into some New Departure bearings and if a manufacturer specified these bearings when it came time for a replacement, the customer could only purchase it through the same manufacturer as bearing suppliers couldn’t sell it. Our British friends are quite familiar with this money-maker as they had various firms, such as Hoffmann, knocking off unusual products only they could supply. Just as with a simple concept of standardizing a bolt, history shows what a waste in capital differentiation can mean.

Today, access to metric fasteners in North America has greatly improved. Hardware stores usually supply the most common items. Whitworth is still alive, mostly centred in the U.K. but specified for various items such as cameras. The threads make spinning on a nut much easier than metric or UNC. The marine and shipping industry often specifies Whitworth. Japanese metal shipping crates use Whitworth 1/2-12 hex bolts for some unexplainable reason. BSPT (British Standard Pipe Thread-Tapered) is also used extensively around the world, although Europe generally accepted the American NPT (National-Pipe Thread). Probably many of you have struggled to match electrical connectors with European hardware. That’s because of the PG standard created within the German DIN system. Panzergewinde is the name of these tapered threads and requires yet another set of taps few in North America even know about.

Ultimately if every bolt and bearing is simply defined by a single standard, “billions” of dollars could be saved along with endless hours of searching. There would be no need for multiple sets of taps and dies, drawers of wrenches, Allen keys and eye-watering SKUs of dissimilar stock. Ponder the benefits for paper and even lumber specifications — massive savings. Canada officially adopted the Metric system in 1970, but most Canadians my age weigh themselves in pounds and measure their height in feet and inches. Thousands of my fellow print industry mechanics have suffered from non-standardization for decades, perhaps our governments will finally do something about it.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com

This feature was originally published in the March 2020 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

By early 1940, an equally loathsome character, Alfred Helmut Naujocks, set to work. First, with the difficult task of creating identical paper, then the printing plates. The paper proved to be a challenge. The British banknote was a special all-rag content paper, but in Germany, lignin was primarily available. Turning to the paper mill Hahnemühle in the northern city of Dassel, various tests were performed without the cellulose addition. Still, the results proved unacceptable: the paper was simply too white! Someone suggested sending the rags to local industrial companies to use as cleaning cloths, then returning them to the mill to be washed and processed. An almost perfect match resulted, but this exposed a new flaw: The paper did not have the same crispness as the original. Trial and error eventually found the problem: the English water.

After further experiments, this, too, was overcome, and the process continued with the next rather tricky task of replicating the incredibly intricate watermark. Beautiful screens using the cylinder mould-process were fabricated to produce a sheet of four notes. Banknotes were produced – probably at, or near, Berlin – until an abrupt and unexpected stop was ordered by Heydrich. Seems in 1940, Naujocks had fallen out of favoru with a guy you didn’t want to upset. The plan limped along with Albert Langer, a mathematician, and code breaker, who had been recruited for his expertise and abilities to decipher the alpha-numeric British serial numbers. Supposedly, some £500,000 worth of superb counterfeit £5 notes were printed by the time Heydrich pulled the plug by early 1942. None of the notes seem to have ever circulated.

“The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency” – Vladimir Lenin

As early as November 1939, the British caught wind of the plot through a chance meeting in Greece between the British Ambassador and a Russian émigré, who spilled the beans. London was informed, and this brought about restrictions on paper money arriving in England from abroad. The Bank of England took a further step introducing a special “blue” £1 note with a security thread, while also ceasing production of fivers for the duration of the war. All would not disappear, and the Nazis revived the plan in July 1942; with the encouragement of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. But the new program had a different mission. This time, the Nazis would counterfeit the most circulated £5 note and use the fake money to finance German intelligence operations, which were underfunded continuously by the Reichsbank. Himmler also had other wild ideas, including the forging of British stamps (laughably replacing King George’s image with that of Lenin). A new man arrived to run the operation: SS Major Bernard Krüger.

Operation Bernard would take its name from Krüger. Scouring the offices of the now-defunct Operation Andreas, Krüger located most of the copper printing plates, watermark screens, and printing presses; but needed printers. Skilled men were readily available at death camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. No persuasion was required when the options for the selected Jewish prisoners was either a bullet to the back of the head or working in a print shop. The selection process focused on skills required, such as artists, typographers, machine operators, and cameramen. Historical documents suggest some of the Jews didn’t have any of these skills, but to stay alive insisted they were seasoned tradesmen.

One hundred and forty-three men were selected and quickly transferred to the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp in northern Germany. Ensconced within the walls was a prison within a death camp where these men were isolated by barbed wire from the general population in two purpose-built barrack blocks, 18 and 19, and guarded by a select elite S.S. unit. Although history suggests Krüger wasn’t a cruel man, every forger knew the German’s allegiance to the Reich, and should any of them become unable to work or get sick; they knew the Nazis would simply shoot them rather than risk a trip to the hospital where the possibility of leaking the plan could expose the operation.

Later in 1944, Krüger transferred a convicted forger by the name of Salomon Smolianoff to the unit. Smolianoff was a master, and although Jewish, became ostracized from the other forgers who looked upon him as a “real forger” and, therefore, a crook. Smolianoff was an expert at forging, and the Nazis considered expanding their printing skills to include the American $100 bill. The Yankee Greenback proved extremely difficult compared to the £5 note because it was printed Intaglio and on both sides of the sheet. The British note was one-sided and without Intaglio.

German paper, German ink, German machines, Jewish forced labour

Each bill would be subject to a “wearing in” procedure that involved prisoners passing them between themselves.

With 12,000 sheets of paper arriving each month from the Hahnemühle paper mill and equipment set up, production of the British forgeries began in January 1943. The prisoners would eventually find 150 security features that were hidden in the genuine British notes, including intentional minor defects (that are still part of today’s modern currency). The notes were printed four-up on a sheet, then separated by hand with a ruler to replicate the rough edges of the original. Each bill would be subject to a “wearing in” procedure that involved prisoners passing them between themselves, folding them, and building up grime and sweat. Often, they would also write a British address on the back of the notes, as this was common among original banknotes. The printing machinery was suggested as being stop-cylinder presses. Still, it would have been possible to run the notes on a parallel impression (or Art platen), which, ironically an American invention, was extremely popular in Germany. Details of the printshop indicate there were only four printing presses. Whether they were cylinder or platen, one thing we do know is they were all hand-fed. The printing plates were likely to have been copper plates with a light-sensitive coating applied, then exposed using a glass negative. The plate would later be dropped in an etch bath to remove all non-print areas. Perhaps these were hardened with nickel to increase their sharpness and life. Another possibility is that these plates were used as “masters” and possibly made of zinc, then lead would be poured into a matrix or flong, taken from these originals.

The prisoners, some of whom were artists, would carefully alter the original images of original copy and glass film under a magnifying glass. Several features proved to be a challenge. The symbol of Britannia required great effort; especially the eyes, which the forgers never did get right. Plate alterations were constant and unwavering attention had to be paid to even the minutest detail. A second pass was required to add the numbering sequence. Notes were then put into four distinct groups. The best was to be used in neutral countries and for Nazi spies, the next to pay collaborators, the third in case they were to be dropped all over England, and the last, destroyed.

Fortunes were made by Nazi collaborators laundering the money

To launder the money, this fell upon a Nazi with a long history of deception: Friedrich Schwend. Schwend ordered that the finished banknotes should be delivered to a castle in the Italian Alps. Schloss Labers was an S.S.-run facility in the north Italian region of South Tyrol. From this castle, he distributed the forgeries to a variety of enterprises and individuals throughout Europe. Even Jews, as they would be seen unlikely to be collaborating with the Nazis. Some historians also believe £100,000 forgeries were used to earn the release of Benito Mussolini from Italian partisans in 1943.

The funny-money spread as far as Turkey and Tangier. It was in Tangier where the British finally caught wind of the forgeries. A banknote was compared with records in London, and the serial number was discovered to be a duplicate of an original note already remitted to the bank. Schwend would ultimately pass millions of pounds, many through Switzerland, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia. In the process, he became a wealthy man. The plan of paying the Nazi’s bills was working perfectly. But by January 1945, the writing was on the wall. The Allies had already entered Germany from the west and south; Russians were even closer in the east; and the clock for the Reich was ticking. The men who worked 14-hour days and nights slaving in the cramped concentration camp were ordered to cease production and be relocated to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria, along with all the printing equipment.

Krüger received orders to re-start the printing operation, but shortly on arrival at Mauthausen, another command was received from Berlin to stop production again. A further directive soon followed that had the Jewish prisoners transported to a nearby Vergeltungswaffen V-2 rocket facility, which also used forced labour: Schlier-Redl-Zipf. The operation was to be resumed once more, this time deep in the tunnels at Redl-Zipf, where the V-2 rocket program was in full swing. But the doors of opportunity closed. Krüger gave the order to destroy the equipment and remaining banknotes. By May of 1945, Operation Bernard came to an end, and also it seemed, for the Jewish forgers, as Berlin ordered them trucked to nearby Ebensee concentration camp for liquidation. The forgers were divided into three groups, and on arrival, as per usual, they would be sequestered from other prisoners until all three groups were together. There would be no chance for loose lips to give away the operation, and it would make the killings so much easier.

Luck intervened as there was only one truck available and necessitated three separate trips. Two groups completed the journey, but on the third and final run, the truck broke down, and the prisoners were force-marched to Ebensee: a journey that took two days. Serendipity finally provided a blessing for the printers as the delay coincided with the fleeing of the S.S. soldiers at the camp and release of the first two groups into the general population when the populace overpowered the remaining soldiers. As the third group arrived on May 5, they too vanished into the crowds and finally released the very next day (May 6) when the Americans arrived. If the truck had not broken down, every one of these men would have perished!

“No, I expect you to die, Mr. Bond!” – Goldfinger

One source suggests the value today could have been in the billions of Pounds.

So what happened to all the fake cash? As was later discovered in 1959, the Germans had loaded up horse-drawn carriages and transported boxes of money, plates, and the printing machinery to Toplitz Lake nearby and dumped everything into a bottomless abyss. Unbeknownst to the Germans, everything would be preserved due to a lack of oxygen below 65 feet. Talk of a German forger conspiracy grew in intensity and worried both the British and Americans; as both feared an Alpenfestung (National Redoubt) or potential uprising in the Alps of Austria. The place was festered with what remained of the Nazi menace, and having a constant supply of money could reignite hostilities.

In 1959, German magazine Stern, alarmed by a series of mysterious deaths near the lake, commissioned a dive to search for Nazi loot rumoured for years to be gold bars. Urban legend suggested a massive hoard of gold bricks lay at the bottom of the lake, but none would be found. Amusingly in the 1964 movie Goldfinger, James Bond shows off a Nazi bar said to have been unearthed at Toplitz. The divers did, however, uncover a massive trove of wood crates with perfectly preserved £5, £10, £20, and £50 notes along with some U.S. $100 bills and printing plates. There was finally proof, but the British were already well acquainted with the affair. Right after the war ended, four men traveling from the Netherlands were stopped on entering England, and counterfeit notes were seized. One official remarked how rather unusual it was that four men would have bills with consecutive numbering on them.

The Jewish prisoners were scattered on liberation, some never speaking again. Two men, in particular, have shed some light on events. Adolf Burger, who passed away at 99 years of age in 2016, was a Czech typographer who had been arrested early in the war for forging baptismal certificates for escaping Jews. Burger would later write a book of the horrors that also took the life of his wife in Auschwitz. Avraham Sonnenfeld was from Transylvania and his family owned a printing business. Although not highly skilled, Sonnenfeld was able to pass the Nazi rudimentary printing test (printing a greeting card).

One source suggests the value today could have been in the billions of Pounds.

Most experts agree that Operation Bernard forgeries were the finest ever seen In 1967, a couple of pipe organ repairmen were dismembering an old organ in the Italian church of San Valentino. They were looking for a nameplate to determine the organ’s age, but instead stumbled across £5-million worth of almost flawless banknotes. The rippling effects of the Bernard operation simmered long after the war with notes popping up all over the place. The Bank of England did not even resume printing a £50 denomination until 1981 – such was the seriousness of the counterfeiting effort. Some allege that fake notes were also used by Jews to finance travel to Palestine in 1948.

At Howard Iron Works Museum, we have one of the Operation Bernard £5 banknotes and an authentic £5 note. The resemblance is remarkable in almost every detail, including the distinctive watermark – a virtual copy. No wonder experts pronounce these forgeries the best they’ve ever seen.

The Hahnemühle paper company is still in business to this day but only producing innocuous artist’s paper. Bernard Krüger would go to work for them for a short time after the war. No one knows for sure exactly how many banknotes were produced during Operation Bernard, or worse, how many escaped detection. One source suggests the value today could have been in the billions of Pounds. Let us not forget the 143 Jewish Printers who faced unimaginable horrors, and completed such a monumental feat. They are the true heroes of this story and must be remembered along with the six million who perished at the hands of the Third Reich.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and certified appraiser of capital equipment. You can reach him at nick@howardgraphicequipment.com.

This feature was originally published in the April 2020 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

But there was a time when printers focused only on finding ways to produce more for less. Today it’s the opposite — produce less for more money. During the early periods of offset (1906 to 1960), printing press functions hardly changed. Makereadies and wash-ups were long and physically demanding, especially as VLF grew exponentially in the mid-1950s. Three- and sometimes four-man crews manually washed up and pulled dampeners out each night, only to reinstall them the next day.

The offset riddle is still a mystery to most pressmen. The idea that ink and water don’t mix was complex. Water dampening was always segregated and had one job to do — dampen the plate. Ever since the first offset press, dampening was carried out using an absorbent cloth-covered roller. It could hold and retain enough solution and was fed by a ductor roller connected to a roller sitting in a water tray. At the end of each day, these three-rolls-per-unit had to be lifted out of the press, washed (usually in a solution of Pine-Sol), and reinstalled. Not much fun, especially if it was a 77-inch Harris or Miehle.

Woven coverings would have to be changed periodically, and that too was a chore. Still, the biggest flaw was the inability to control the amount of water on the plate precisely. Skill was a prerequisite for the pressman as they balanced the dampener, so a minimal amount of water would not affect the print quality and emulsify the ink. The constant variable in the offset process – going even further back to the very first attempts in 1875 – is the interplay between water and ink. The industry seemed so preoccupied with keeping up with production that few thought of finding a better way — that is, until a young man from Mobile, Ala., did just that.

A photo of Harold (Hal) Dahlgren from 1968.

In 1942, a 20-year-old of Swedish lineage had just signed up to join the U.S. Army. Having previously worked at the U.S. Engineer’s office in Reproduction, Harold Phillip Dahlgren (known as Hal to his friends) first set his eyes upon an offset printing press. While working on a Harris press, Hal searched for a better way. Armed with only three years of high school, he certainly didn’t possess the engineering abilities one would assume to be essential, but that didn’t hold him back. After serving out his military service in the print shop at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, Hal learned enough about offset to get a job with the Harris Intertype Company as a press erector.

“I didn’t know what the answer was, but I did know what it was not.”
By the early 1950s, Hal went freelance so he could put more thought into the problem of eliminating molletons. Science was required – skills he didn’t have – so he set about to simplify the problem. One night in 1954, while brushing his hair, he saw droplets of water on the mirror and in a moment he thought he had seized a solution: A brush roller! Hal moved to Dallas, Texas, built one to fit a web offset press and it worked. A large press manufacturer came calling and agreed to provide annual royalties. Hal was in heaven and quickly took off for a Mexican vacation with thoughts of grandeur. By the time he returned, he realized the brush dampener wasn’t the answer.

Hal described the problem this way: “I didn’t know what the answer was, but I did know what it was not. So I kept thinking.” One day when driving from Dallas to Fort Worth, he recalled something he learned from an old pressman years before. The man ran his finger over an ink form roller to check the ink-water balance. “But… ink and water don’t mix! That can’t be true!” Hal turned the car around and headed back to Dallas, and by the time he got home, he had figured out what he needed to do. The second attempt became known as the Sponge machine, because a sponge roller sat in a tray and supplied water to a newly developed hydrophilic chrome roller and then to the inker form. Although the idea worked and Hal sold quite a few, a sponge was not the answer. However, the concept directs Hal into a new territory that would eventually lead to a fantastic breakthrough — altering the speed of the chrome roller.

Who knew that phosphoric acid made chromium hydrophilic?
The Dahlgren Manufacturing Company was off and running, or was it? Not so fast. There was still a variable and it was related to press speeds. The faster the press ran, the fewer problems. But slower (and at that time, any high-quality work was run at reduced speeds), and water streaks showed up on the plate. How could that be resolved?

This time, the answer came to Hal in a martini glass. “One evening, while racking my brain about those water streaks, I fixed a martini and sat down, and [was] rolling the glass in my hand. I was trying to think out a solution when I noticed the behaviour of the moisture right at the level of the martini. It was always working. Little things were running up and down. It occurred to me that alcohol mixes with water, and maybe that’s a good thing. Alcohol evaporates [and] leaves no residue.” Isopropyl alcohol (IPA) would solve a host of problems and also reduce the surface tension and amount of water needed. The old pressman’s catchphrase – “alcohol makes water wetter” – would live on until IPA was outlawed in the early 2000s. The addition of alcohol would also mark the start of refrigeration and recirculators.

“Thank God, the waitress did not take off the empty cans.”
Dahlgren had a workable dampener, one that was so simple to operate (only three rollers) and it provided instant ink-water balance and had virtually no maintenance. Foremost, there were no molleton covers to change and ink emulsification became a problem of the past. But a final hurdle soon appeared. It’s important to note that by 1960, the Dahlgren Company had virtually no assets, no manufacturing and only a few loyal employees. The debt was like a dark cloud hanging over Hal’s head. Only an offset printer would have seen the excitement building. For everyone else, it’s as if Dahlgren was discussing the merits of wall thicknesses on cast iron pipe — dull, to say the least.

The final hurdle was only unmasked after Dahlgren won a few orders to go on 60- and 77-inch presses. These large formats magnified the problem of rollers being too wet in the middle and too dry at the ends. Hal recalls the answer: “One afternoon in 1961 in a Mexican restaurant, I was drinking a can of beer, trying to figure out what would solve the problem. I finished the can and ordered another. I poured it into a glass. Thank God, the waitress did not take off the empty cans. I picked them up and rolled them together, twisting them a bit and then, bingo! There it was. The skew device — a metering roller adjustment that would let me positively control the moisture all across the plate.”

With a perfected dampener, it would seem that every printer would be knocking on Hal’s door, but few printers grasped the significance of the invention. The ones who did held it in secret, not wanting competitors to get the same edge. By 1962, the Dahlgren Company was at nearly US$250,000 (US$2 million today) in the red. Hal had to demand 50-percent cash upfront on new orders, and if a printer checked Dahlgren’s credit rating, it usually backed off assuming Dahlgren would be out of business in the next 72 hours. Plowing on a seemingly even steeper incline, Hal sought out an investor. This guy, who had made his money in trucking, hired the Arthur D. Little firm to survey the litho industry with an emphasis on plants using early Dahlgren models. The results were encouraging. Users of early dampeners said they had bugs in them. “Why don’t you take them off?” “They still work better than the conventional system,” they said. The investor made Hal a $1-million offer, and he thought about it before declining — he would go it alone. In January 1963, Dahlgren changed its sales pitch. Now Dahlgren offered to install its dampeners for nothing down and if the printer liked them excellent, if not, Dahlgren would take them off and reinstall the old molletons. “Once we put them in, the Dampeners sold themselves,” Hal said.

Images of the Heidelberg Speedmaster Air Stream Dampener from approximately 1977.

Today, every offset press uses Hal’s brainchild invention
Soon after, Hal – who held patents on his designs, signed agreements for licencing with Harris and Miehle. In Miehle’s case, a licence-royalty agreement that allowed Miehle to adopt the technology into its Miehlematic dampener. Because Miehle also represented Roland (now manroland), Roland entered a similar royalty agreement when it designed the Rolandmatic dampener. Some companies refused. Heidelberg, steadfastly defiant, warned off buyers of new presses, citing a potential loss of warranties and the negative impact of a loss of the first ink form, an issue Dahlgren would fight for decades. When it became apparent to the Germans that Dahlgren’s continuous flow dampeners were far superior, Heidelberg tried a workaround designing the ill-fated Air Stream Dampener in the late 1970s. When that failed, Heidelberg set about to develop Alcolor, first in 1979 (which also failed), then finally in 1982 the highly successful Alcolor II. Heidelberg would design a crowned rubber metering roller to counter the Dahlgren skew feature. Every press – and I mean every press – today uses Dahlgren’s technology.

Dahlgrens appeared everywhere in North America, but was very slow to catch on in Europe. Often the Swedish name Dahlgren was mashed to read Dahlgreen. Japan embraced the Dahlgren concept, and Komori soon had its version – Komorimatic on Lithrones and Sprints – but again with a necessary workaround reverse-nip to shield Komori from patent violations.

Having to give up the first ink form roller continued as an irritant for Hal. In 1977, his brother Harvey left the company to begin manufacturing his own version of the dampener, this time leaving the first ink form alone. Epic Products continues to this day. Epic also offered another revolutionary design, thought up by a California printer, then sold to Baldwin: The Delta [effect] dampener. Now commonplace, the altering of the form roller speed (7 percent slower than the ink and plate) reduced hickies and ghosting.

Ill-fated gambles, along with an ever-shrinking customer base, would prove to be insurmountable for Hal. First, an anti-ghosting inker retrofit, then owning an ink company, and a new radically designed Hustler offset press couldn’t return the magic that made Hal a household name. The concept Hustler did have some revolutionary features. It was a tandem perfector and printed four-over-four without turning the sheet. This design would be emulated by Akiyama then Komori 20 years into the future. However, Dahlgren tried to use only a chain with grippers to take the sheet from feeder to delivery, and that failed utterly. If you’ve ever seen a Bobst Autovariable, it worked the same way. Besides, Harvey’s Epic Products and most press manufacturers’ versions were nibbling away at a shrinking retrofit dampener business.

Eventually, Hal left the business, and ownership changed hands several times before disappearing from view. Montrealer Paul Belair purchased the business in the 1990s, rebranding under the name MMT. MMT now does business in Georgia under a new umbrella name, MMT Sales & Design, but the Dahlgren dampener ran its course.

For anyone running a press in the 1970s and 1980s, you already know what a revelation Hal created. For those young enough to start running presses in the last 20 years, you probably have no idea. Rapid inventions such as closed-loop colour control, automatic plate loading, in-press density and presetting features all came about by a natural inclination to use exciting new technologies, devices or software. But what Dahlgren did was more profound than that. Hal didn’t have all these technological tools at hand; he didn’t even have an education. What he did have was an idea and a dogged determination to succeed.

Improvements to the offset process mostly came about as technology improved — think electronics. Hal had to borrow a press to continuously refine his invention. He didn’t have a lab full of equipment and an army of engineers at his fingertips. There was nothing ‘natural’ about the Dahlgren theory as just about every rule of common sense was broken. As long as there is an offset press, his genius is at work. Makereadies and paper waste plunged with Dahlgrens. In 1985, Hal died at the age of 63, but what he left our industry lives and prospers to this day, and for however long, the offset press remains an integral part of print. I believe the Dahlgren dampener was the most profound improvement ever to be applied to offset.

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com

This article was originally published in the January/February 2020 issue of PrintAction, now available online.

If there is one thing any business owner can agree on, it would be that instability is bad for business. Our current global situation provides plenty of uncertainty. Politics offered by unstable leaders threaten many Western democracies, with a new form of nationalism spreading like it’s 1933 again.

In the United States, both Congress and President are at loggerheads over everything from immigration to trade. The United Kingdom struggles with Brexit. Hungary and Poland, even the Philippines, have turned sharply to the right. The near east is mired in bloodshed with over a million displaced people. We are in a very uncertain time where misleading rhetoric, particularly with trade, has hurt the Western consumer and supporting industries, including printing.

We recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and with it, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Few ever thought we’d see the day when the whole of Europe would be rid of the menace conveniently referred to as communism. Except those countries were never really socialist at all, just state-controlled fascists that stunted the growth of a once progressive people.
The state owned everything, and the dictatorship of the proletariat mandated that society held power, except it wasn’t like that. The Soviets and their satellite economies were just state controlled, everyone had a job, there were no rights to speak of, and there was the secret police to keep the masses in line. All orders came from Moscow, and life was miserable. The ultimate source of this madness in Eastern Europe derived from the Third Reich.

Neither socialism in its purest form or communism has ever worked, but there are plenty of examples of socialism working in western capitalist democracies, including the U.S. — medicare for one, old-age pensions for another. Our police and firefighters are part of this group too. In Canada and all of Western Europe, subsidized healthcare is a form of socialism. Governments cannot operate as if they are a business; they must oversee and set the rules, keep order, and supply a helping hand to those who require assistance. Democracies need a form of socialism, especially today.

Trade and commerce are the biggest elephants in the room at this moment. Getting this wrong has caused more chaos and wars than anything else. Even after a victor is anointed animosities percolate for decades after. In 1918, after the First World War, the Allies made Germany pay and pay they did. Besides financial reparations, chunks of Germany were lobbed off to settle years-old disputes with France. The impact on the German people was catastrophic and led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party in 1933. The Nazis seized on hyper-inflation and the weakness of the Weimar government then found scapegoats and went to work restoring Germanic pride lost in the war. The decisions made in the reparation agreement of 1919 would lead to another disastrous war in 1939.

World War Two was another bloodbath with millions of lives lost, and many industries ruined. For the printing industry, the worst was yet to come. The Soviet Union managed to get to Berlin before the Allies and overnight, the German state was hacked up with, as Winston Churchill would later describe, the Iron Curtain dividing more than half of Europe. Imagine for a moment what it would be like if your business, possibly handed down from generation to generation, was on the wrong side of that line and nationalized overnight. You wouldn’t own it anymore. This reality was precisely the fate that awaited a significant portion of Germany’s industry. The area around Leipzig was “ground zero” for the massive German printing industry, and its only luck was the Allies weren’t a day or two late; otherwise, Koenig & Bauer and M.A.N. would today be footnotes in history.

Companies that had been in business for decades simply vanished, as an example, Agfa’s plant in Leipzig was dismantled and shipped off to Russia, while the intellectual property transferred to the American firm G.A.F. as reparations (Agfa was then part of the infamous German chemical company IG Farben). The few remaining were reorganized into state collectives called Volkseigener Betrieb or V.E.B. Karl Krause was a substantial company encompassing over one hundred acres of land near Leipzig. The Biagosch family, decedents of the founder, were only an identity card border check away from not escaping to Bielefeld in the allied controlled west. Had this not happened, the printing industry would have never heard of Wohlenberg paper cutters. For it was the newly incorporated Krause that partnered with machine-tool maker Wohlenberg to start manufacturing Krause guillotines again. All was lost back in Leipzig, and the former Krause plant was taken over by the state.

Related businesses – Victoria Werk, Mansfeld, Druckma, Gutberlet, August Koebig, O. Hoppe & Co, Kohma, Vomag, Kama, Paul Glöckner and Gebrüder Brehmer – were rounded up and faced the future as V.E.B.s. Today almost all except Kama are just memories. Some more successful firms retained their names and would limp along under the weight of the D.D.R. Perfecta and Planeta brought in much needed hard currency. Planeta, in particular, was a thriving business before the war with exports to as far away as China. At the time of reunification in 1990, Planeta was the East German state’s most significant manufacturer employing over 5,500 people.

By 1990s, an agency was set up to dispose of East Germany’s V.E.B.s. Treuhandanstalt, “Trust Agency,” was handed the enormous task of restructuring or selling over 8,500 state-owned businesses that employed four million people. Massive closings soon resulted in 2.5 million employees losing their jobs within months. April 1, 1990, saw Detliev Rohwedder, Chairman of Treuhand, shot dead over civil unrest. Things were bad. What were once world-class printing equipment manufacturers before 1939 became inept and bloated state-run factories that no one wanted.

In 1990, Planeta was the jewel of former East Germany with sales of US$350 million, of which US$50 million came from the United States. Koenig & Bauer would end up winning the Planeta prize and would pay nothing for it, but assume the massive task of pumping millions into bringing Planeta up to western standards. First off, Koenig & Bauer had to offload a third of the 5,500 staff, then supplant West German management into a dilapidated factory to mend 45 years of socialist incompetence. At the time, Koenig & Bauer’s Klaus Schmidt pointed out that they were not getting Planeta for “an apple and an egg” (next to nothing), but rightly so, were taking tremendous financial risks to save the legendary press builder.

Ultimately the sacrifices Koenig & Bauer made turned fruitful as the one weak spot in its product line was sheetfed. At the time the company had sputtered along with a small sheetfed division that produced unusually designed equipment that had a very small following. To help boost its fortunes, a new ground-up design (the Rapida 104) would enter the drupa 1986 trade fair, but with meek interest. The sheetfed program was almost exclusively built at Koenig & Bauer’s Mödling plant in Austria. With Planeta well entrenched in B1 to size 8 presses, virtually overnight Koenig & Bauer became a player in offset sheet presses too. In fact even in today’s latest model Rapida 106, you can see the transfer of technology from Planeta, especially in the gripper systems.

As we look ahead to 2020, Planeta may have saved the company as the majority of Koenig & Bauer’s products have shifted from newspaper and publication web to sheetfed. Koenig & Bauer’s takeover spared an icon of the printing world, which would probably have collapsed along with almost every other East German enterprise and all because of war.

The tragedy of the Iron Curtain has its inception at the end of World War One. Disputes and quarrels most of us don’t even understand, caused by failed leadership, led to evil autocrats that had to be destroyed to save the rest of us. We see this problem again with recent trade disputes and far-right governments erupting everywhere. Where is our sense of history so we can avoid needless disasters of our own making? Planeta was lucky; it found an outstretched hand in Koenig & Bauer.

Global harmony must be taken seriously; no man can be an island in today’s fast-changing world. Our leaders must do better. Business doesn’t like uncertainty. Investment stops when commerce is restricted by borders and trade disputes. Let’s not find ourselves on the wrong side of history again with all lost. Leipzig and Dresden were the epicentres of Europe’s printing industry before the last war and still have not recovered after unification. Who’s to say it can’t happen again?

Nick Howard, a partner in Howard Graphic Equipment and Howard Iron Works, is a printing historian, consultant and Certified Appraiser of capital equipment. nick@howardgraphicequipment.com

This article was originally published in the December 2019 issue of PrintAction, now available online.