# The Story of the House of Cassell/Part 2, Chapter 10

CHAPTER X.
THE MACHINERY AT LA BELLE SAUVAGE
To few people is there fascination in machinery. Cogs and wheels, and whirling cylinders, are so much confusion and nerve-racking noise. The poetry of motion with its pulsating rhythm does not call to the heart of the majority. But it is the experience of the kindly chaperons who "show the works" to the visitors that the printing machines enchain the interest of all alike. There is a magnetism of attraction as one stands on the flying balcony overlooking the main machine-room. One inky leviathan in the well below is turning blank sheets into neatly printed pages, another is converting a mass of white into a bright-red section of what will be a sheet of coloured illustrations for Little Folks. In another part of this orderly medley of waving racks, revolving cylinders, and mysteriously disappearing rolls of paper, magazine sheets and other periodicals are tumbling out of the forest of rollers which represent the "rotary" that produces them from the blank paper, printed, stitched and counted, ready for the hungry trolley that whisks the piles away at top speed to the lift.
Yes! a marvellous advance from the early days of the Yard, when the coaching inn was first converted into a "Working Men's University." In the 'sixties Cassell's were proud of their machinery. Just on the left, where to-day the publishing department dispenses literature to the trade, and in the basement, where now is the paper store, the first lot of printing machinery was located—twenty-three machines, which were then considered to be the very acme of progress, the high-water mark of perfection. Dear old things, rumbling away at a most sedate speed—it was marvellous then; it is almost ​laughable now that that type of machinery has long been obsolete.
In those not forgotten but happily superseded days there were seventeen machines constantly running in No. 1 building. The best class of work was done on double platens built by Hopkinson and Cope, and by Brown and Kirkaldy. A practical printer would be interested to learn that the output of these machines was very limited—say, 500 per hour at each end—the sheets, of course, printed only-on one side. They required very careful boys, both layers-on and takers-off—especially in the former case when "pointing" or perforating was being done. Undoubtedly, also, they were expensive to repair, as the crank working the platen was constantly getting out of order owing to the sudden jar of the impression.
An improved platen was invented by Messrs. Napier; the pressure being exerted by a pair of knuckle-joints. This machine was decidedly superior, but was eventually discarded owing to its limited capacity. Two Double Royal Napier machines were also in work. The large (quad royal) Anglo-French machine was at this time a general favourite, and turned out really good work. It was employed to print the Quiver and Cassell's Magazine. But the speed of these machines was only about 700 per hour, which compares somewhat unfavourably with the speedy cylinder machines and the improved rotaries of modern construction.
FLEET LANE VIEW OF CASSELL AND COMPANY PREMISES
​It was, roughly, half a century ago that these many machines reigned in the dingy old corner of the Yard. After being lifted from the press, every printed book-sheet that was turned out was carried to the drying-room (the paper having been previously wetted), and after hanging on racks in a heated drying-room for several hours, removed to the warehouse, and sheet by sheet placed between glazed boards in the hydraulic press for several hours under a pressure of about two hundred tons in order that the impression marks might be taken out. This was, of course, a very considerable addition to the cost of printing. Under the present system it is entirely unnecessary.
In these days the various branches of the printing department are housed in the huge building which was reared in the 'seventies at the back of La Belle Sauvage Yard. The spacious, well-lighted composing-room is at the top, on the fifth floor. Not without reason it is called the conservatory in the summer, for the glass roof is apt to make the work trying when the sun-blinds are not drawn.
The composing frames of the case-room are arranged in a double row extending from one end of the building to the other, each set of frames being devoted to special kinds of work. This room contains about two hundred compositors. About the year 1900 the increasing number of publications of the firm necessitated the introduction of mechanical means of composition, and linotype machines were installed. Since then the installation has greatly increased, until at the present time eighteen linotype machines are constantly at work, some of them doing twenty-four hour turns. At this time of day it is hardly necessary to describe the linotype machine with its typewriter operating board, its harp-like type channels, and its pot of fuming molten metal, which is so rapidly converted into a line of type as to be welded into the solid line by a deft stroke before the metal hardens.
​In some printing rooms the unwary has a time-honoured joke played on him. He is asked if he would like his name and address, and as the finished "line" is thrust out from the machine the operator gravely and with deliberation hands it to the confiding visitor, who finds it decidedly hot and drops it with more speed than dignity, to the delight of the operator, whose hands have become inured to the temperature of the "line." But the visitor to Cassell's may go sans peur, for their men are sans reproche; at least, their overseer would have us believe that gentle fiction.
The development of science has brought in yet other devices in the march of mechanical evolution. As well as the linotype, the monotype finds a home at the Yard. This last is a double machine—its brains in one room and its body in another. There is the keyboard as in the linotype, but it operates on a series of needles which have the seemingly purposeless mission of piercing a roll of paper with idly scattered perforations each no bigger than a pinhole. As the worker is watched it is soon evident that there is a regularity and method in the stabbing process—and not a little scientific ingenuity, for when a complete roll is pin-holed to the bitter end it goes to the other room, and, as the "brain" should, "tells" the "body" what to do. If you happen to be there when the chief operator has a moment to spare, and he is in good stride, he will reel off, with a sincere desire to enlighten you, and in undeniable wealth of technicality, all about the monotype principle. Compressed air, he would say, is forced through each pin-hole, blowing molten metal into the matrix of the particular letter wanted. But of all the vicious machines—truly printers' devils—ever created, the caster, or body, of the monotype is one. It looks in a perpetual state of sustained spitefulness as, at lightning speed and with a noise that sounds like malice unrestrained, the centre of the machine darts hissingly here and there, conveying the mould to receive the modicum of molten metal necessary to make the required letter. ​Unlike the linotype, the monotype delivers its type in separate letters—hence the name.
The same year which saw the linotype installed on the top floor saw the monotype make its home on the floor below. The monotype machine was introduced for the purpose of setting the numerous novels and magazines belonging to the House, the linotype being devoted more to the setting of weekly newspapers and serials. The monotype installation now consists of five keyboards and five casters. The result of the introduction of the linotype and monotype machines has been that the combined output of this department is over 80,000,000 words per annum.
There is still a fair amount of work which needs hand-setting, and the equipment of "cases" for "stick work" remains considerable.
After the copy has been set up, either by hand or by machine, it is passed on to the readers. In the early days of the firm the Reading Department occupied a suite of quiet rooms at the summit of a tower built at the top of the grand staircase, but the number of readers so increased that it became necessary to find accommodation for them elsewhere. They are now on the second floor, where they occupy two sides of the "well" around which the works are built. After the proofs have been read and corrected they are returned to the composing department and made into pages for printing straight from the type, or the type is sent to the stereotyping department to have facsimile plates cast from it, as is the case when more than one set of a particular job is required, or when the length of the "run"—i.e. the number to be printed—would wear out the type if the printing were done direct. The stereo-typing department is distributed between the second and third floors.
The electrotyping department, which particularly caters for the illustrations, contains the most modern machinery required for this process, and the excellence of the electroplates produced may be judged from the illustrations ​with which many of the works of the firm are lavishly embellished.
The stereotyping and electrotyping departments vie with each other for the distinction of being the most interesting in the House. What they achieve in strength of atmosphere, owing to the combined fumes of acids and gaseous emanations from boiling metals, needs a visit to understand, but it is worth the experiment. Machines, handled by deft workers, trim and cut stereo and electroplates like butter; illustrations are improved by hair-pointed chisels manipulated with feminine delicacy. Tiny hammers wielded by men who work with magnifying glasses remove excrescences invisible to the naked eye. Then, in the electro moulding rooms, shiny figures flit to and fro—for the plumbago clings to flesh and clothing and, in the flooding light of the casting-room, when a furnace door opens, produces weird Mephistophelean effects worthy of the Lyceum in Henry Irving's day. And so runs the tale of achievement; backing-up rooms stinging with chloride; electrotyping baths mysterious as a fathomless lake; a testing torture-chamber from which issue unscathed only blocks and plates that are perfect—such are a few of the million and one details that go to the making of an illustration.
After the type has been passed for press and thoroughly read by the readers, the forms are taken to the main machine-room in the basement. This floor space covers an area of 12,600 feet, and contains about forty large printing machines. It is lighted from the glass roof already referred to, some 60 or 70 feet above. The most striking peculiarity of this machine-room is that the looker-on sees a number of printing presses at work without being able to discover whence they derive their motion, no shafting or bands being visible, no confusion of ever-shifting belts. If he asks, he is told that each machine is driven by a properly protected electric motor directly coupled to its starting gear. The printing machines themselves are of various kinds, according to ​the nature of the work they have to perform, most of them, however, being adapted to the production of the high-class illustrations which characterize the publications of the House. In 1896 rotary machinery was introduced, and at the present time the majority of the magazines are printed on these machines. The rotaries are of various kinds and do a widely differing range of work, from the two-colour wrapper of the Penny Magazine, to printing, folding and cutting into 32-page sections the monthly pages of Cassell's Magazine of Fiction at the rate of 128,000 pages an hour.
It is a sort of backward sequence to go from printing machines to paper supply. Yet, as the interest is still gripped by the process of printing, the mind becomes conscious that every minute or two a trolley load of paper is run through the alley ways between the machines, coloured paper for covers and "jackets," toned paper for books, and piles upon piles of sheets glistening white in the light, coming to satisfy the appetite of the machines printing the serials which bear the imprint of the House. From the machine-room itself it is seen that the paper appears through wide swinging doors. Following the tram-lines out into the crypt-like subterranean corridor, one reaches the paper store. On the way, beneath the Yard itself, and also on the other side, the crypt is flanked by underground machine-rooms where busy rotaries sing out their ceaseless drone. But there is one gap, opening mostly to the sky, and with a hydraulic crane frowning above, whence some hundreds of reels of paper are lowered daily for feeding the rotaries, and cartload upon cartload of paper in the flat is conveyed to its temporary resting-place in the vast cellars which modestly figure in the language of the Yard as the white paper store.
All printed sheets are conveyed by electric lift to the warehouse on the floor above, where practically every sheet is carefully examined before being passed on to the stock room or sent to the binders. This remark, ​obviously, does not apply to rotary work. There is also a lift constantly in motion between the machine-room and every other floor in the building, whereby a continuous supply of printed matter is flowing from the machine-room to the warehouse, and also to the binding department on the second floor.
After the sheets have been thoroughly scrutinized in the warehouse, those that are to be bound are conveyed to the binding department, where they are folded, stitched, and otherwise bound into the form in which they reach the public. The binding department is fitted throughout with the most up-to-date machinery for dealing with the class of work produced by the House, consisting of automatic gathering machines, vertical and horizontal book-covering machines, and patent trimming machines for cutting the edges of the bound books after they have been wire-stitched and the covers have been glued on.
An up-to-date bindery is an object lesson in progressive method. It is a revelation in the art of economized energy by the elimination of unnecessary steps for the workers and avoidable delays for the machine. To tell all there is of interest in this department would itself be a long recital, and we have dallied too long in watching wheels go round and describing how they do it.
LA BELLE SAUVAGE YARD, 1921
​five doors leading into La Belle Sauvage Yard and two into Fleet Lane, affording ample means of escape in case of fire. The passages are protected by iron doors, which are all shut at night; and in every department fire buckets are suspended and kept filled with water. A system of electric bell alarms is also installed throughout the building.