Printing Revolution Sweeps into the Eighties
FEW inventions have influenced history like the printing press of Johannes Gutenberg, who developed printing from movable type about 1450 C.E.
The printed page helped transform Martin Luther from a lone critic of the Catholic Church to the leader of the Reformation. It also contributed to the development of the modern languages of Europe, which helped inspire national movements in the following centuries.
Is Gutenberg’s revolution over? By no means! As one authority puts it: “In the decades after World War II more changes were introduced in printing than in the 500 years following Gutenberg’s invention.”—Encyclopedia Americana, 1977, Vol. 22, p. 604.
Would you like to know more about these changes?
Limitations of Letterpress
Gutenberg’s original press, likely a converted cheese or wine press, was based on the principle that raised letters could be inked and pressed against paper to print. This type of printing, called letterpress, dominated the world for 500 years.
Of course, Gutenberg’s press was greatly improved. Instead of printing a single sheet at a time, modern web letterpresses use curved plates mounted on rotating cylinders. As the cylinders rotate, they print on a long sheet of paper called a web that is pulled by them. (See illustration.) While Gutenberg could print only 300 to 500 sheets a day, modern web letterpresses may turn out 60,000 impressions per hour, with many pages produced from each impression!
But letterpress has its limitations. The curved plates used are usually cast from molten lead and are very heavy. There is a limit to the amount of fine detail these lead plates can carry. Making the plates is a complicated task, requiring expensive casting equipment and highly trained labor. When the plates are finally put on the press much time must be spent in painstaking work called makeready before production begins.
Nevertheless, until recently letterpress was the best way to print large quantities of quality material cheaply. As recently as 1960 almost all newspapers were printed on letterpress. Then something dramatic happened.
The Offset Revolution
What happened was the explosive growth of printing based on an idea different from Gutenberg’s—offset lithography. As the industry journal Graphic Arts Monthly put it: “Way back in 1929 . . . lithography was that ‘quick and dirty’ process that you used if you didn’t need high-quality letterpress printing.” But after World War II offset printing benefited from a steady flow of technological breakthroughs, while letterpress printing changed little. The result? Offset became respectable and competitive.
Today it is hard to find a popular magazine printed wholly on letterpress, and 70 percent of America’s daily newspapers are printed by offset lithography. Why did offset suddenly become so desirable?
Cameras and Computers
Most letterpress plates are thick, heavy, and cast in molds. Offset plates, on the other hand, are thin, light, and made by a photographic process. Both cameras and offset plates have improved in recent years.
By the 1950’s some printers were looking into offset. One big advantage they saw involved photographs. Most letterpress printers must have their pictures specially engraved on metal plates by photoengravers. With offset plates, however, even the small printer could process his own photos along with the rest of his printing plate. He saved time and money and controlled his own quality. This was important, because competition from television was making pictures more important to printers.
Since it was easier for a beginning newspaper to install cameras than heavy lead casting equipment and linotype machines, it was not surprising when small newspapers began moving to offset in the 1960’s. These papers began to “steal” readers and local advertising from the big urban dailies. The quality of offset was steadily improving, and the offset plates could be made quickly without using highly skilled labor.
It was harder for the big papers to change. Many people would have to be retrained to operate new machines. Besides, the big papers already had their linotype machines, lead platemaking equipment and expensive presses. Since lead plates can be melted down and used over and over, for a time letterpress appeared to be more economical for printing runs with lots of plate changes.
Still, the big papers had to do something. Their costs were rising fast. By the 1970’s most readers in the United States were in the suburbs, and distribution costs were increasing. The big papers needed to cut labor expenses, to get into print faster, and to regionalize their editions, so their advertising would be more effective. What was the solution? Computers!
The 1970’s saw large urban newspapers move to computers—for circulation, accounting and typesetting—so fast that, as media expert Anthony Smith put it: “The newspaper industry is, in a sense, the dove sent from the ark of mechanical society to test the waters of computerization. It is the first of the traditional, major industries to start the process of complete transformation to computerized methods.”
“Lead Is Dead”
To combine computerized typesetting with letterpress printing is not easily done. Computerized “cold type” works on photographic principles ideally suited for offset platemaking and printing. That means that most of those printers who have already moved to cold type are replacing their letterpresses with offset presses as quickly as they can do so practically and economically.
All of this affects various suppliers to the printing industry. By the 1970’s the cry arose that “lead is dead,” and it became harder to obtain spare parts and other needed items for hot-metal typesetting and letterpress printing. Brass matrices for linotype machines and asbestos paper mats for platemaking became scarce, as suppliers quit making them.
“Owning a letterpress operation is sort of like owning a vacuum tube radio,” said a purchasing agent for a large printing firm. “The radio still works fine, but it’s harder to find those tubes today. Our letterpresses still work, but it is harder to find the parts we need.” No printer is immune from these pressures, “squeezing at the lifeline of letterpress printing,” as one expert put it.
Watchtower Society Adapts
A major printer of Bibles and Christian literature is the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc. Last year alone Watchtower’s Brooklyn factory produced over 27 million hardbound books, and another 2.5 million Bibles, in a number of languages. The Brooklyn factory, along with its associate plant at Wallkill, New York, printed over 201 million magazines like this one you are reading. Magazines and books are also printed by the Watchtower in a number of countries around the world besides the United States.
For years the Watchtower factory’s web pressroom operated only letterpress equipment, although sheetfed offset presses had been used since 1959. By the late 1970’s the need was seen to move to web offset printing and phototypesetting. Two high-speed Harris web offset presses were installed in 1978, and willing volunteers quickly learned to operate them. The result was the production that year of the colorful My Book of Bible Stories. In less than three years this highly popular book has been translated into over 35 languages and printed in some 15 million copies!
Printing on two webs at the same time, the new presses are able to produce well over twice as many impressions per hour as Watchtower’s letterpresses. One of the new offset presses is already equipped to print in four colors, and the second press will be given four-color capacity “as soon as we can shut it down to make the necessary addition,” according to one factory overseer. Magazine printing as well as the demand for My Book of Bible Stories, which is currently printed with three colors, is keeping the press very busy for the moment.
Since 1977 the Watchtower Society has scrapped 13 old letterpresses, ranging in age from 21 to 55 years, to make way for the new offset presses. There are no buyers for these outdated presses, but they have served the Society well. The remaining letterpresses cannot be replaced immediately, as new offset presses are expensive and the Watchtower Society is a nonprofit organization, financed by voluntary contributions.
Watchtower’s Future in Offset
Gradual offset expansion is under way, however. Branches of the Watchtower Society in Canada, England, Finland, Germany and Japan are installing new four-color presses. Already, the press in Japan has printed more than one million bound books. South Africa has a two-color offset press that prints magazines in local languages. A third web offset press (with four-color capacity) started to operate at the Brooklyn factory in November 1980. These three offset presses can do the work of about nine of the letterpresses they replace. Not only do the offset presses have higher production when running, but much time is saved in preparing the offset presses for new runs. Why? The tedious makeready process needed for letterpresses, sometimes taking one or two days, is reduced to a matter of minutes in offset printing. Hours that were spent cutting pieces of paper can be spent in production.
A fourth web offset press, currently being installed and tested in Brooklyn, “is very special,” according to a plant overseer. How so? “This is a Bible press. It’s going to print the Bible on four webs of paper at once, while our other offset presses print on only two webs.” Each impression of the new press will print 128 pages of the Bible, instead of 64 pages as done currently. Since the number of Bibles printed in Brooklyn doubled last year, the need for this new, high-production offset Bible press is obvious. Indeed, since 1970 over 24 million Bibles have been printed in this Brooklyn plant, in 13 languages. This is more Bibles than were produced by Watchtower in the previous 40 years! It is hoped that the new press will achieve the production of six of the current Bible presses. The new press should speed things up in the bindery as well, since it will print the Bible in fewer, but larger, sections to be collated and sewn there.
Willing Workers
One of the most remarkable aspects of printing at the Watchtower factory is the work force. While those supervising the work have been in the printing business for decades, the workers are mostly young men who volunteer their services, staying, in many cases, but a few years.
“It takes five years really to learn to operate an offset press,” pointed out one factory overseer. “When you consider our lack of experience on the presses it is surprising what we are able to do. Still, we would like to improve the quality of our printing. To do this, there is a tremendous need for workers who would be willing to learn this job and stick with it.”
The Watchtower factory, like other major printeries, has seen the need to shift to computerized photocomposition. This creates special challenges due to the unusual printing requirements for a multilanguage Bible education society. The way these challenges are being met is a fascinating story in itself, which will appear in a later issue of Awake!
[Diagram on page 12]
(For fully formatted text, see publication)
Letterpress
Unprinted Paper
Ink
1 Ink rollers apply ink to top of raised letters
Plate Cylinder
2 Printing occurs one side at time when ink from top of raised letters is pressed against the paper (similar to a typewriter)
Impression Cylinder
3 Thus the term “letterpress” printing, because the raised inked surface is pressed directly against the paper
Printed Paper
[Diagram on page 13]
(For fully formatted text, see publication)
Offset
Water
1 Water rollers wet plate. Image area remains dry
Ink
2 Ink rollers apply ink. Ink sticks to dry image
Plate Cylinder
3 Ink transferred from plate to rubber blanket
Rubber Blanket Cylinder
Unprinted Paper
4 Printing occurs when ink is pressed against paper
Printed Paper
Rubber Blanket Cylinder
Plate Cylinder
5 Same process happens on bottom side of paper so that both sides are printed at the same time
6 Thus the term “offset” printing, because the inked image from the plate is first made on the rubber blanket cylinder and then transferred (or offset) to the paper