BRYAN IN BRIEF

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 June 1940, Page 6

BRYAN IN BRIEF

MAKER OF FIRST PAPER MACHINE. Though he was not the inventor of the first paper making machine, he made the first machine of that kind which was of really practical use. By 1851 he had made 191 machines on similar lines, and at the Great Exhibition he received a medal for his improvements. He introduced important improvements into printing machines. He invented and first used the composition. printing roller which overcame most of the difficulties in mach-ine-printing in his day. His polygonal printing machine would run off 800 to 100 impressions in an hour, an astonishing number for the middle of the 19th century. He contrived beautiful machines for printing stamps. He was the first to devise a method of preserving moat and vegetables in air-tight cases, and established a factory for these at Bermondsey. He invented an instrument for measuring the velocity of machines in action. He improved the screw-cutting machines of his day. For 40 years he was a civil engineer; and was also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society, having a telescope in his garden in London. Who was this versatile man? You will perhaps be little wiser if you know he was Bryan Donkin who came into the world in 1768, and went out in 1855, dying one winter day fours years after the Great Exhibition which had interested lurn immensely.