IMPROVEMENTS IN AND CONNECTED WITH ROTARY WEB PRINTING MACHINES
Year: 1871

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by George Duncan and William
Ashley Wilson at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with
their Petition, on the 11th November 1871.
We, GEORGE DUNCAN, of Liverpool, in the County of Lancaster,
Engineer, and WILLIAM ASHLEY WILSON, of the same Place, Engineer,
do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS
IN AND CONNECTED WITH ROTARY WEB PRINTING MACHINES," to be as
follows:-
Rotary Machines for printing a succession of impressions on webs or
long lengths of paper, although immensely superior to other machines
in respect of the rapidity with which they make impressions, the finish
of the work they do, the small number of attendants required, and their
inexpensive first cost, are inferior in one respect to some other machines.
That inferiority consists in this, that from a quarter to half an hour
elapses after all the matter is set up before printing can be commenced,

page_text: it being necessary as is well known to employ stereotype plates. The
short time lost in preparing the stereotype plates sometimes prevents the
insertion of the latest items of news in newspapers and serial publi-
cations.
Now the object of our Invention is to provide machines which, having
all the advantages and the general features of the rotary web printing
machines hitherto employed, shall yet admit of the use of ordinary
moveable type and hence of the insertion of paragraphs or news up
almost to the minute of going to press.
For this purpose we employ a cylinder much larger in diameter than
the cylinders now used for stereotype plates. The said cylinder is
supported on a suitable frame and caused to rotate; on its periphery
type of the ordinary kind is affixed, but in no case must the length of
the type matter cover more than one continuous third of the circum-
ference.
In practice we prefer to cover not more than one-fourth, and when
that length is so covered we prefer to use four impression cylinders,
when one-fifth is covered, five impression cylinders, and so onwards.
When the type covers say one-fourth of the circumference of the type
cylinder it will be obvious that should the web of paper be carried
through the machine at the same speed as the surface of the cylinder
there would be alternately an impression and three blank spaces. To
ensure that the three blank spaces receive impressions at the required
distance apart we use rollers, called by us adjustable registering rollers,
whose axes are paralel to the axes of the type cylinders but at a distance
therefrom. These adjustable registering rollers serve to carry the web
between each pair of impression cylinders, and by being moveable they
hold more or less of the web between away from the type cylinder, and
so ensure that the web is conducted to the successive impression
cylinders at the proper time.
In the printing of newspapers and serials we prefer to pass the web
through the machine above described combined with ordinary rotary
stereotype cylinders. By such combination the web is passed through
the machine once, one side being printed from stereotype plates and the
other from moveable type.

page_text: In some cases such as in the production weekly newspapers the
web may be passed through twice, both sides being printed of course at
different times from type affixed to the same cylinder, or one side may
be printed from stereotype plates attached to the same cylinder.
Further, two machines similar to the one first above described may
be used with moveable type, one to print each side of the web.