Word: letterpress
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...today's web offset presses rely on this technique. In both letterpress and gravure, the impression is taken directly from the printing plate (see diagrams...
Take a Picture. With this development, the possibilities of web offset became readily visible to commercial printers. The rubber offset cylinder was able to reproduce, on rough grades of paper such as newsprint, impressions of far greater fidelity than letterpress. And since anything can be photographed, offset printing plates can be prepared without the use of metallic type. "You can make up a page," said one Midwest printer, "simply by cutting anything out of a magazine and taking a picture of it." Web offset also adapts more readily than either letterpress or gravure to many of the new experimental techniques...
...offset ink is heavier and more expensive than letterpress ink. and because it does not as readily absorb into the paper, the ink must either be artificially dried or the presses must be slowed to give the ink time to dry. For years, the fastest web offset presses ran at about one-third the speed of the fastest letter-presses. The tackier offset ink. together with the rubber cylinder, collects paper dust, which can botch a printing job. The web offset process is more wasteful of paper than letterpress. And on long offset-press runs, the ink tends to emulsify...
...savings that web offset offers in labor costs and makeup time have made it attractive to newspapers and periodicals of small circulation, where speed is not as essential as it is to metropolitan dailies. The time may come when offset speed will compete on near-equal terms with letterpress. In The Bronx. N.Y.. R. Hoe & Co., which makes both offset and letterpress equipment, is currently testing a web offset press, incorporating many improvements conceived by a Copenhagen printing firm, that is designed to print a 72-page newspaper, in four colors, at speeds in excess of 50,000 copies...
...even the most rabid disciples of web offset, the Lithographic Technical Foundation in Manhattan, envision the day when such presses will replace the letterpress giants that now spew out the nation's metropolitan dailies and the large-audience magazines. Printing presses have a long life-25 years or more-and their proprietors are not anxious to scrap an investment of billions of dollars overnight. And since offset eliminates some of the mechanical departments, any wholesale conversion to offset would be asking for serious labor trouble. Nor has letterpress technology stood still. Among recent developments: a new plastic plate, called...