Omaha daily bee., 1911-06-18

The story of the advance of The Bee is in a great
measure the story of the advance of methods in print
ing Since this paper first put upon a basis of
permanency 1t has been the steady endeavor of its
management to keep it in the front rank far as IT'S
mechanical equipment is concerned, we'll as in all
other directions.
So the progress of The Bee has also marked the
progress of invention and discovery in the of
printer While 1t has been marked by the same con-
servasm that is expressed in the old coupet BE not
the frst by whom the is tried nor yet the last
TO cast the old asde the of The Bee has been
that OF enterprise and the comparatively insignificant
plant that suced for its earlier needs has grown until
Is now one of the largest and most complete for its
purpose in the world. No successful invention or
process for facilitating the production of a perfect
newspaper yet remains to be added to the equipment
of the present plant.
The adoption Of improved machinery and newer
methods has been the means of enabling The Bee to
keep its position at the head and the policy has been
found to pay. In its earlier days The Bee was the
hrs to bring to the west the improvements that were
fevolutionzng the of printing The three-revolu
ton Hoe the two-revolution Cottrell Babcock the
double cylinder Hoe, the Chambers folding machine
all progenors Of the great printing machines of the
present time, were brought to Omaha by The Bee
ahead Of their adoption by any Of it's contemporaries
Finally the Web perfectng press with the accompany
Ing stereotyping outfit, adopted by this paper
ahead of its rivals.
When the Merganthaler linotype machine was
Drought to that stage at which its practcability
newspaper uses demonstrated The Bee installed
D~ttery of machines, the first in the west Later
when the electric had been developed to point
where its use was feasible, The Bee abandoned belt
driven machinery and installed individual motors SO
that for years not machine in the great plant with
wheel to turn has been without it's individual motor.
This has been the policy from the very beginning
Many devices have been experimental with and found
of no avail An effort was made to install an auto
matte mailer, but 1t had to be discarded because It
would not handle the papers properly. This is but
one Of numerous experimental undertakings all in
the line of progress and development.
The latest of undertakings this line is the install
laton OF an eectrotyping plant to be connec
ton with a specially built magazine press OF which
The Twentieth Century Farmer will be printed the
purpose being to achieve the results in printing
n as at present confined to the higher
priced magazines With this plant the great farm
paper published by The Bee will have the same excel
lent finish and appearance the highest priced pub
locations that come from the press anywhere. These
results can be obtained only by the of specially
designed machinery. built for the purpose of turning
out work of the very highest grade.
The Bee first printed on a Cincinnati cylin-
der that would produce $50 impressions an hour
Only one side at time was run, so the paper had to
go through the twice produce complete sheet
OF four pages At the rate of printing then 1t would
keep that old grinding steadily day and night
Tor three weeks, four days and hve hours produce
the paper that is for a single days issue of
The Bee OF today II Sunday issue were to be I'M
dertaken on that old press would it ten weeks
one day and three hours of continuous turning The
news would be pretty stale by the time the last sub
scriber got his paper at that rate At that time
Archie Richmond, former slave, furnished the motor
power and did lot Of other work about the estab-
ishmept He was later supplanted by a steam engine
which worked more rapidly, but not more reliably
than did old Archie, who remained with The Bee until
his death, shortly before the paper celebrated its
twenty-nfth anniversary. The old Cincinnati was
supplanted little later by three-revolution Hoe
which had a speed Of 5000 hour and was looked
upon marvel.
This In turn gave way to a Cottrell & Babcock
press OF still greater capacity. which in its turn was
followed by Hoe double-cynder which gave an out
put of about 5000 an hour and in time a second of
these presses was installed, that press room
capacity of The Bee at the far greater than
any of it's contemporaries.
The Hoe double-cylinders went out OF commission
when two Potter web presses set up to take care