The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-02-17 00:00:00

CYLINDER PRINTING.

The grand improvement in the art was the invention in the
cylinder printing, which bears neatly the same relation in point
of despatch to block-printing by hand, as throstle or mule-
spinning bears to spinning by the one-thread wheel. This great
invention is said to have been made by a Seotchman of the
name of Bell, and it was first successfully applied in Lancs.
sliire, about the year 1783, at Mosney, near Preston, by the
house of Livesev, Hargreaves, Hall, and Co., celebrated for the
extent of their concerns, and the magnitude of their failure iu
1788, which gave a severe shock to the industry of that part of
the country. This new mode of printing may be thus described :
polished copper cylinder, several feet in length, (according
to the width of the piece to be printed,) and three or four inches
in diameter, is engraved with a pattern round its whole circum-
ference, and from end to end. It is then placed horizontally in
e. press, and, as it revolves, the lower part of the'circumference
passes through the colouring matter, which is again removed
from the whole surface of the cylinder. except theengraved pat-
tern, by an elastic steel blade,. placed in contact with the cylin-
der, and reduced to so fine and straight an edge as to take off
the colour without scratching the copper. This blade has re-
ceived the name of the doctor, which may he a workman's ab-
breviation of the word abductor, applied to it from the purpose
which it answers; or may have been given from a vulgar use of
the word to doctor, meaning to set to rights. The colour being
thus left only in the engraved pattern, the piece of calico or
muslin is drawn tightly over the cylinder, which revolves in the
same direction, and prints the cloth. After the piece is printed,
it passes over several metallic boxes, six feet long, ten inches
broad, and six inches deep, heated by steam, which dry it. A
piece of cloth may be thus printed and dried in oue or two mi•
-mutes, which by the old method would have required the appli-
cation of the block 418 times. Nor is this all. Two, three, tour,
and oven five cylinders may be used at the same time in one
.press, each cylinder having engraved upon it a different portion
ofthe pattern, and being supplied with a different colour. The
piece passes over them successively, and receives the entire
pattern almost in the same moment. To produce the same effect ,
by hand-block printing, would have required 896, 1344, 1792, or
2210 applications of th blocks, according as '2, 3,4, or 5 cylin-
ders may have been employed. The saving of labour, there-
fore, is immense: one of the cylinder printing machines, at-
tended by a man and a boy, is actually capable of producing as
much work as could be turned out by one hundred block-prin-
ters and as many tear-boys! In consequence of the wonderful
facility given to the operation, three-fourths of all the prints
• executed in this country are printed by the cylinder machine.—
Bainess History of the Cotton Manufacture.

The most marked traits in the character of Arkwright were
•his wonderful ardour, energy, and perseverance. He commonly
laboured in his multifarious concerns from five o'clock in the
Morning until nine at night; and, when considerably more
than fifty years of age, feeling that the defects of his education
placed him under great difficulty and inconvenience in con-
ducting his correspondence, and in the general management of
his' business, he encroached upon his sleep in,order to gain an
hour each day to learn, English grammar, and another hour to
improve his writing and orthography! He was impatient of
Whatever interfered with his favourite pursuits; and the fact is
too strikingly characteristic not to be mentioned, that he sepa-
rated from his Wife not many years after their marriage, be-
cause she,-convinced that he would starve his family by schem-
ing when he should have been shaving, broke some of his expe-
rimental models of machinery. Atkwright was a severe
economist of time; and, that he might not waste a moment, he
generally travelled with four horses, and at a very rapid speed..
His concerns in :Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Scotland, were •
so extensive arid numerous as to show at once his astonishing
power of transacting business and his all-grasping spirit. Tn
many of these he had partners, but he generally managed in
such a way that whoever lost he himself was a gainer. So un-
bounded was his confidence in the success of his machinery,
and in the national wealth to be produced by it, that he would
make light of discussions on taxation, and fay that he would`
pay the national debt! His speculative schemes were vast and
daring; he contemplated 'entering into the most extensive
mercantile transactions, and buying up all the cotton in the
world, in order to make an enormous profit by the monopoly;
and, from the extravagance of some of these designs, his judici-
eus friends were of opinion that if he had lived to put them iu
practice he might have overset the whole fabric of his pros-
perity