seems altogether too small when contrasted with the great screw, the heavy frame, and the two-handed pull of the pressman. The smallness of this platen was not an error of the designer. Moxon, who has minutely described the press of his time, says that the platen of an ordinary press should be of the size 9 by 14 inches, and that the coffin, or trough in which the bed was placed, should be 28 inches long and 22 inches wide. In other words, the platen was purposely made so that it could impress less than half the surface of the bed; it could print only one-half of one side of the sheet.[1] Small as this platen may seem, it was large enough for the frame-work of wood. It gave great resistance under pull, and severely taxed the strength of the pressman. A platen of double size would have defied the pressman; it would have sprung under pressure and have broken the bed of stone.
The types were inked by balls, an appliance which is not more than fifty years out of fashion. These balls were made of untanned sheepskin, stuffed hard with wool, and mounted with handles. The gluey ink was evenly distributed by forcibly rocking their curved surfaces against each other. This done, the balls were then beaten upon the types in the form.
When we learn that the early presses were made almost entirely of wood, and put together by ordinary joiners, we may infer that many were unscientifically built,[2] shackly.
- ↑ Mechanick Exercises, vol. i, pp. 52, 69. To the printer who has seen only the press in which the platen covers the bed this may seem an absurd method, but it was a method in general use even as late as the beginning of this century. Men are yet living who have printed books by the method shown in the cut—pulling down the bar when one-half of the form was under the platen—releasing the pressure—running the other half of the bed under the platen—and finishing the presswork of the other half of the sheet by a second pull.
- ↑ There should have been a gradual improvement in the construction of the press, as there was in the making of the types, but there was no decided change for two centuries. Moxon, in 1683, commending the "new fashion" presses of Blaew, denounced the "old fashion presses as make-shift, slovenly contrivances practised in the minority of this art." Nor was Blaew's press perfect. To insure proper register, Jackson (who undertook, at Venice in 1745, to print wood-cuts in colors) was obliged to reconstruct the press of Blaew.
