#MeetaPressMonday - an 8,600 lb Pony!

John Major Jenkins

When John Major Jenkins passed away in 2017, he left the Depot his Campbell Century Pony press, which he spent a year industriously and lovingly restoring after he got it in 2011. In its heyday, it had seen action in Leadville and Arvada - as late as the 1970-80’s, it was printing posters for Lakeview Amusement Park. John said at the time it was the only operational press of this model that he knew of in the U.S.

How the Campbell looked when John found it

Before he passed away, John wrote blogs about the Campbell. His research showed that “the Campbell Printing & Manufacturing Company produced presses as far back as the 1880s. Its “Century Pony” press came in three sizes. The one I found is the smallest, with a printing area of 22” x 34”. Advertised as a “book press” capable of consistent registration over long runs, it could also be used to print the standard newspaper sheet. “

He also discovered that the Campbell Printing Press and Manufacturing Company originally built its own presses in Brooklyn but in 1879 the patent owners contracted with Mason Machine Works in Taunton, Massachusetts, to build the presses. It was a windfall for that company, and they expanded their operations. By 1893 some 950 people were employed.

Despite the press saying New York, John believes it was made in Taunton because of when it was manufactured

The press now is at home in the Depot, waiting for new hands to put it to use. It is part of our Adopt-a-Press project. If you’re interested in helping repair or using this or any other press, email englewooddepot@gmail.com.

Campbell Pony, now stabled at the Depot

FROM 1906 SF EARTHQUAKE TO THE DEPOT

#MeetapressMonday Letterpress Depot is grateful to have two fully operational Washington-style hand iron hand presses in its collection, each with its own history.

The story goes…

that the hand press press above fell from the fourth floor when the earthquake hit San Francisco. Yet somehow, with welds and care, it survived and ended up in Denver printer Jim Grisenti’s amazing collection.  His widow Claudia generously donated it to the Depot.

Bryan Dahlberg on the New A Reliance press

The hand press works…

by hand! The type chase is laid face up in the bed, and inked with a hand roller. A sheet of paper is attached to the underside of the tympan which then is lowered onto the type. This combination then is cranked until it is under the overhead platen. With a final pull of the handle pressure is applied and the image is transferred to the paper.

The first iron hand press…

was designed around 1800. Before that time presses were made almost entirely of wood, with a wooden screw to deliver the pressure. Inking was done with hand-held ink balls. With use of more sturdy iron framing and metal for the bed and platen, a toggle mechanism provided a new efficient means of operation and intense competition ensued among inventors and manufacturers. And from that day, everyone was trying to improve it. 

Samuel Rust came up with some of the best ideas. This New York printer and grocer (interesting combo) received patents in 1821 and 1829 for what he called a Washington hand press, with changes that are reflected in the versions owned by the Depot. His chief competitor, R. Hoe & company, saw the superiority of the new model and tried to buy the patent. But Rust hated his rival and refused to sell. So Hoe had one of their employees visit Rust and say he also hated the company and was setting up his own manufacturing plant. Rust gladly then sold everything – the patent and all his equipment – for $3,000 and agreed to not compete for eight years. Soon after, of course, the charade was revealed when Hoe took it all over and produced thousands of the model. (Rust went on to patent and sell lamps.)  When the press patents expired, several other companies started turning out Washington presses. By 1895, commercial printing had moved on from the hand press. But there was a new market – proofing photo engravings.

Quake surviving press showing open tympan

Two of those companies are represented at the Depot – F. Wesel Manufacturing of New York which made our quake survivor and Shniedewend & Co of Chicago, which made the Reliance press.

New A Reliance at the Depot - photo by Bryan Dahlberg

The “New A” model Reliance was advertised in 1898 as weighing in at 975 pounds. Shniedewend went on to manufacture a wide variety of Reliance presses from the 10x8 baby Reliance to the 5,000 pound Mastodon.

The Depot’s model came from the shuttered Art Institute of Colorado where it had  been beautifully restored by Rob Barnes. The Depot’s Tom Parson and Bryan Dahlberg and others dismantled it for the move, then got it back in working shape. In a marriage of digital photography, photo polymer plates and letterpress, designer/photographer/artist Bryan has since used it to pull limited edition prints that he then marries with photography and also to print broadsides.

Want more?

For a list of all the presses at the Depot, see  http://www.letterpressdepot.com/blogs-on-type-presses-history/2022/2/27/before-i-tell-you-all-the-presses-we-have . If you are interested in “adopting a press,” helping repair, maintain or use any of them, please call/text 720-480-5358 or email englewooddepot@gmail.com.

More details and further research resources are available from the Letterpress Depot library. All of the above was pulled from a treasure trove of books that the Depot has available for research. The books consulted for this blog:

American Iron Hand Presses, Stephen O Saxe, 1991

Works of Ralph Green 1981 reprint. The iron hand press in America, 1948

A Field Guide to North American Hand Presses and Their Manufacturers, Robert Oldham, Ad Lib Press, 2006

The North American Hand Press Database, www.adlibpress.us/hand-press-database

Printing presses, James Moran, 1978

Nineteenth-Century Printing Practices and the Iron Handpress (2 volumes), Richard-Gabriel Rummonds. 1994

Printing on the Iron Handpress, Richard-Gabriel Rummonds, 1998

Printing with the Handpress, Lewis M. Allen, 1969

Printing Presses in the Graphic Arts Collection , National Museum of American History, 1996

The Ernest Lindner Collection of Antique Printing Machinery, 1971 

A Catalogue of Nineteenth Century Printing Presses, Harold Sterne, 2001

BEFORE I tell you all the presses we have...

I confess to a failing as a reader—I skim over lists, even though I know the author is making a point, being creative, piling on with a purpose. The only lists I loved were in Wolf Story, a book daughter Amy and I read over and over again. That all being said, I have a list that might prove very useful – take it whole hog or a bite at a time – a list of all the presses currently at Letterpress Depot. The ones marked with * need work. If you’d like to come get up close and personal with any of them, if you want to get inky or put your repair skills to work,  email us at englewooddepot@gmail.com. 

Board member Bryan Dahlberg printing on our Reliance hand press

Washington-style hand presses  (will be featured in a post next weekend)

• F Wesel iron handpress

• Reliance iron handpress, Paul Schneidewend & Co, model New A

3x5 Kelsey, used here to print a small—very small—book

Small presses:

• Curtis & Mitchell Columbian No.1 tabletop platen

• Vandercook Office Proof press

•   C&P Pilot

• Poco Proof press

•   Vandercook Truss press

• Sigwalt Non-Pareil (~Golding Official

• Etching press

• Kelsey 3x5

• Kelsey 5x8, model P*

Executive Director Tom Parson trying out the Jones Gordon platen press

Larger platen presses:

• Chandler & Price 10x15

• C&P 8x12

• Old Reliable platen press 8x12

• Schneidewend & Lee Old Style platen*

• Franklin Gordon platen, new style 10x15

• Damon-Peets platen, new style 9x12 (on loan from Doug Sorenson)

• Colts Armory platen (on loan from Doug Sorenson)

• C&P 7x11, old style*

• Jones Gordon

Campbell Century Pony

Even larger presses:

• Heidelberg Windmill 10x12*

• Campbell Century Pony newspaper press*

Our Challenge proof press has a broken gear

Cylinder Presses:

• Challenge proof press, 1528KA*

• Vandercook SP-15 (in truck storage)

• C&P Cylinder Press with paper feeder 10x15*

•  Vandercook 219 (Ian Van Mater’s)*

Intertype (not HOT…yet!)

Line casting equipment:

• Intertype C-4*

• Ludlow*

Info on our extensive collections of wood/metal type and other print shop necessaries is available on request - englewooddepot@gmail.com

Jones Gordon Press

One of the Letterpress Depot’s most recent acquisitions – a Jones Gordon press, generously donated (along with other goodies) by Stacey Steers, David Brunel and Nena Restrepo-Gil of Boulder. THANK YOU!

After cleaning and oiling the press, Tom Parson got it rolling

A label on it says it was from “Chicago Newspaper Union. ” The donors got it a few decades ago from the weekly Dongola, Illinois, Tri-County Record, Its rollers were still wrapped in a six page issue dated June 15, 2000, which has an ad for “Does-the-Job Printing.”  A functional and historic addition to our printing museum collection! 

The press was manufactured between 1890-1903 in Palmyra, New York by John M. Jones. Jones made presses for George Phineas Gordon, who is celebrated as having developed the basic design of the most common printing press ever, the Gordon Letterpress. As Gordon’s patents expired, others such as Jones produced their own versions of his innovative machines.

The press has a treadle and several creative and practical additions to the original Gordon platen press. It has an easier new way to remove the chase, roller lifters so when you’re inking the press the ink doesn’t get on the form, and hand dial that adjusts the pressure—even while in the midst of printing - so you don’t have to open the packing to make small adjustments to improve the impression. And much more. The press is missing the sophisticated upper disk ink roller system noted in the ad, but has a detached small New Century inker.

Interestingly, Jones also invented one of the first typewriters or, as he called it, “Domestic Printing Machines”. His was only the third to reach manufacture—but the factory burned down after 130 had been fully or partially assembled.

When John Jenkins met the Campbell...

This is the second of a series of blogs by John Major Jenkins about the finding and restoration of disappearing presses.  We are reprinting them in his memory and in honor of all the work he did keeping presses alive.  He generously left this Campbell Press to the Depot. See a short obituary on news and notes.

I have returned to the long journey of restoring, or resurrecting, a beautiful piece of antique printing machinery, the Campbell “Century Pony” flatbed cylinder press. It is a two-revolution press which, unlike the larger “drum cylinder” presses, uses a smaller cylinder that makes two revolutions for each impression on the horizontal bed that moves back and forth underneath. On the bed’s return under the cylinder, impression is avoided by a slight upward movement of the cylinder. 

The Campbell Century Pony presses were a great success and were made between 1895 and 1906, being developed out of Campbell’s earlier “Economic” model. My Campbell came with a counter that was dated 1897. This could be a good clue as to its production year. Moreover, during the life-span of a press’s production the number produced is usually weighted toward the beginning. (Yearly production numbers usually tailed off sharply in the final years.) The “Century” was marketed to the approaching new century, and most of the advertisements are seen in the mid-to-late 90s. For example, a picture in an article of 1896 depicts my press very accurately (From Printer’s Ink, Vol. 18):

The article states that the press weighs over 8600 pounds and is valued at $1600 – a pretty penny back then! One online source states that the average wage earner in 1890 made $1.53 a day and worked 279 days a year, thus making about $480 for the year. The Campbell was thus 3.33 years of wages for the average worker of the time. A low wage today ($10 / hr), at 5 days a week for 52 weeks gets you about $20,800 for the year. We might say that the Campbell would be valued at $70,000 in today’s dollars.  It’s a high-end “19th century flatbed cylinder press” in design and spirit, which was a major purchase for any upstart printer that took decades of hard work to pay off.  One question lingered for me: where was it born? 

Where the Campbell Was Built

A little research reveals that the Campbell Printing Press and Manufacturing Company originally built its own presses in Brooklyn but in 1879 the patent owners contracted with Mason Machine Works in Taunton, Massachusetts, to build the presses. It was a windfall for that company, and they expanded their operations. By 1893 some 950 people were employed.

A 1904 article in the Iron Age, Vol. 74, proves that Mason Machine works was still building the presses in 1904. Consequently, it’s almost completely certain that my Campbell was forged and built in this facility in Taunton, Massachusetts:

This is from an 1899 publication of the company. Shipping of presses west probably routed through Illinois. More research in Leadville might uncover its arrival and presence there. I wonder how and when my Campbell press made it to Colorado. There are several scenarios. It may have shipped new to the printing operation in Leadville, sometime between 1895 and 1906. It may have begun its work in some other town, and was purchased used at some later date. It went from Leadville to Arvada in the 1970s, where Mr Stoddardt used it to print posters for Lakeside Amusement Park. It supposedly hadn’t been run for 20 years by the time I heard of it in 2010. It was moved to my shop in Fort Collins in March, 2011.  Two weeks ago I inked up the press and flawlessly hand fed 100 newsprint sheets for a letterpress poster through the press. It took one minute, running at 1200 impressions per hour.

Again, thanks to John for all his support and friendship. We miss him.

Heavy metal met its match in John Jenkins

The following is the first of a series of blogs by John Major Jenkins about the finding and restoration of disappearing presses. We are reprinting them in his memory and in honor of all the work he did keeping presses alive. See a short obituary at News & Notes.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, these big cylinder printing presses cranked out newspapers in towns and cities across the country. They weighed several tons and once in place, they were bound to stay there until it was time to haul them away to the scrap yard. Today, there are only a few of these presses surviving. Even if the desire to save a big old press exists among letterpress enthusiasts, the expense and difficulty of moving it all too often ends up with the same result — off to the scrap yard it goes. This was sadly the case just recently, when two flatbed Miehle presses from Globe Printing in Baltimore could not be saved.

The legacy of printing in America — which paralleled the rise of industry and steel manufacturing, followed by the Detroit car-making boom — is fast becoming a fading echo, a legend of when America produced lasting things of quality. It’s a testimony to solid engineering, design, and attention to quality, that many of the old Chandler & Price platen presses are still around today. They’re lighter than the big cylinder machines, and because of that many of those are still to be found in hobby shops. But a big four-ton beast like the Campbell newspaper press? What are the chances of one of these 19th-century Goliaths making it into the 21st century? Well, not very good. When I heard of one in a garage near Denver, I had to investigate…

Before restoration

The Campbell Printing & Manufacturing Company produced presses as far back as the 1880s. Its “Century Pony” press came in three sizes. The one I found is the smallest, with a printing area of 22” x 34”. Advertised as a “book press” capable of consistent registration over long runs, it could also be used to print the standard newspaper sheet. The Century Pony presses were made between 1894 and 1905, with the bulk of production on the front end of that timeline. The design is related to the Campbell Country Cylinder press of the 1880s, which was hand cranked. No serial numbers can be found on the press for precise dating, but I estimate that it could date to around 1897-1900, because I found an old counter in a box with a patent date of 1897. Production always trailed off toward the end of a model’s lifespan, so very few presses were probably made after 1900. After all, it was promoted as the “Century” press, a turn-of-the-century wonder. In any case, the model was designed in the 19th century.

And so it came to pass. With the help of my friend Don Hildred, we moved the press from Arvada to my shop in Fort Collins in March of 2011. It was a tight squeeze getting it situated in my shop, Oak Root Press. Working on various issues, such as finding a new motor, it took over a year to get it running and do some test prints. I was told that, in the 1980s, it was used to print posters for the Lakeside Amusement Park in Denver. It is the highlight of any visit to my shop, and was featured in a “Forgotten Fort Collins” article in 2013. I know of only two other Campbell Century Pony presses in the United States, and both of those are non-operating, and one of them is soon to be scrapped. I have printed large format posters and news-sheet tests, and plan on producing a one-sheet newspaper called The Poudre Valley Letterpress Times.

Want to know more? Go to http://alignment2012.com/OakRootPress.html