How A Printing Press Works
A printing press, in its classical form, is a standing mechanism, ranging from 5 to 7 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 7 feet tall. Type arranged into pages is placed in a frame to make a forme, which itself is placed onto a flat stone or 'bed'. The type is inked, and the paper is held between a frisket and tympan (two frames covered with paper or parchment). These are folded down, so that the paper lies on the surface of the inked type. The bed is rolled under the platen, using a windlass mechanism, and the impression is made with a screw that transmits pressure through the platen. Then the screw is reversed, the windlass turned again to move the bed back to its original position, the tympan and frisket raised and opened, and the printed sheet removed. Such presses were always worked by hand. After around 1800, iron presses were developed, some of which could be operated by steam power.
Read more about this topic: Printing Press
Famous quotes containing the words printing, press and/or works:
“The printing press was at first mistaken for an engine of immortality by everybody except Shakespeare.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“I would have these good people to recollect, that the laws of this country hold out to foreigners an offer of all that liberty of the press which Americans enjoy, and that, if this liberty be abridged, by whatever means it may be done, the laws and the constitution, and all together, is a mere cheat; a snare to catch the credulous and enthusiastic of every other nation; a downright imposition on the world.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new nature and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately, we had no business in this country.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)