c.1960: Harrow Press (2 of 2)

Alan Lynch writes:

(Above left)  Two apprentices at the stone, locking-up pages to be printed on probably one of the Miehle flat-bed letterpress machines.

Machine Printing
(Above right and below left)  Letterpress machines. A vast range of letterpress machines were housed at HMSO Harrow and these two (a platen and the rotary) hardly do justice. Not only were there presses in the main machine department but the Confidential department and the Security departments also housed a selection. The latter specialized machines for postal orders, car tax discs, etc. The variety of letterpress machines was truly amazing. The rotary printed simultaneously from two reels of paper with 16-pages on each cylinder. This enabled the delivery of a folded 64-page section.

Print Finishing
(Above middle and right)  The Sheridan Binder. Mass production arrived at Harrow with this system which automatically gathered, glued, covered and trimmed the telephone directories. It cost over £100,000 when the average price or an ordinary house in Harrow would have been only about £6 000. The women can be seen placing the sections on top of one another on a travelling belt. The book was automatically wire-stitched at the end of the machine.

Alas there are no foundry pictures. The Foundry included a curved casting box for making, very dramatically by centrifugal methods, the curved stereo plates. Also facilities for making ordinary stereos with a nickel-depositing section. Half-tone plates were also produced. Nevertheless, the pictures shown here are all prints taken from halftone blocks made in this department.

Regards, Alan Lynch

(Photo from AL)

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