Wooden Press Gives Way to the Iron Press

By the end of the eighteenth century the time was ripe for a major step forward in printing press construction. The reason this was possible in England was the advances which had been made in the techniques of casting metal. That the man who grasped these facts and used them to produce the first all-metal press was not a tradesman but a peer of the realm is not surprising. Earl Stanhope (1753-1816) was devoted to scientific enquiry, was free from the conservatism of the average printer and had greater resources at his disposal.

When Charles, the third Earl Stanhope, invented the press which bears his name about 1800, he retained the conventional screw but separated it from the spindle and bar, inserting a system of compound levers between them. The effect of several levers acting upon each other was to increase considerably the power applied resulting in sharper impressions.

The Stanhope press consists of a massive cast-iron frame formed in one piece, in the upper part of which a nut is fixed for the reception of the screw, the point of which operates on the upper end of a slider. This has a heavy platen attached to its lower end which is counterbalanced by a heavy weight behind the press, suspended on a lever. The iron carriage is moved in the same way as the wooden press which it gradually replaced.