THE “TIMES” NEW PRINTING MACHINE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 414, 25 March 1870, Page 3

THE “TIMES” NEW PRINTING MACHINE.

As the construction of the first steam newspaper machine was due to the enterprise of the late Mr. Walter, so the construction of this last and most improved machine is due in like manner to the enterprise of his son. The new “Walter Machine ” is not like Cowper and Applegarth’s and Hoe’s, the improvement of an existing arrangemant, but an almost entirely original invention. Its principle nierits •are its simplicity, its accurate workmanship, its compactness, its speed, and its ec nomy. While each of the tenfeeder Hoe machines occupies a large ana lofty room, and requires eighteen men to feed ami work it, the new Walter machine occupies a space of only fourteen feet by five, or loss than any newspaper machine yet introduced, and requires only three lads to take away, with half the attention of an overseer, who easily superintends two of the machines while at work. The Hoe machine turns out seven thousand impressions printed on hot-h si ’es in the hour, but the Walter machine turns out eleven thousand impressions completed in tlie same time. The new invention docs not in the least resemble any existing printing-machine, unless it bo the calendering machine, which has possibly furnished the type of it. At the printing end, it looks like a collection of small cylinders or rollers. The paper, mounted on a huge reel as it comes from the paper-mill, goes in at one end in an endless web, three thousand three hundred yards in length, seems to fly through amongst' the cylinders, and issues forth at the other in two descending torrents of sheets, accurately cut into lengths, and printed on both sides. The rapidity with which it works may be inferred trom the fact that the printing cylinders (round which the stereotype 1 plates are fixed), while making their impressions on the paper, travel at the surprising speed of two hundred revolutions a minute. A s the sheet passes inwards, it is first damped on one side by being carried rapidly over a cylinder wbieb revolves in a trough of cold water, it then passes on to the first pair of printing and impression cylinders, where it is printed on one side ; it is next reversed and sent through the second pair, where it is printed on the other side ; then it passes on to the cutting cylinders, which divide the web of now printed paper into the proper lengths. The sheets are rapidly conducted by tapes into a siring frame, which, as it vibrates, delivers then alternately on either side, in two continuous streams of sheets, which arc rapidly thrown forward from the frame by a rocker, and deposited on tables at which the lads sit to receive them. The machine is almost entirely' self-acting, from the pumping up of the ink out of the ink-box of the cistern below stairs, to the registering of the numbers as they are printed, in the manager’s room above. Such, in a few words, is the last great invention made in connexion with newspaper printing—which reflects no little credit on the enterprise of Mr. Walter, and the inventive skill of the “Times" staff—for it has been entirely designed and manufactured ) n the premises—to whom he has entrusted its execution.