T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[G1911]

Originally Posted by steve B

as far as I know, print shops that do general work have a variety of press sizes.
The tiny place I was at had three, a small one that did regular 10 1/2x11 or smaller paper, one that did 24inch paper and two that did 35 inch. Later a 35inch two color press was added.

What press was used was a matter of what was being done and how many.

A couple thousand business cards went on the little press, a thousand book covers showing a fighter jet in full color for a recruiting place went on the 24, and a huge order for multi part bank deposit slips went on the 35.

The larger presses aren't and as far as I know weren't limited to large paper sizes. So the 35" presses could easily run the 24" stuff, or the business cards.
I'm sure there was a formula but the area they never had me help in was the business end. (There were formulas I learned for machining in tech school, and it seems like very similar ones would work well for printing. )

But...

With the quantities of cards in general we've learned were printed, I can't imagine them being done on a small press.

Do you know anything about the speed of presses in 1910? From what I can find, it was notable when a new press was installed at one of these lithographers, and sometimes we can see claimed speed rates from the press makers or lithographers. In 1916, Brett purchased one that could do over 2,500 sheets an hour at 45x65 inches. I can't find yet a record closer to late 1910. Sounds like it would have been less than this per press per hour.

A press that could spit out 2,500 sheets an hour would produce ~25,000 sheets a day. With 200 silver border cards a day, that's 5,000,000 cards in one day, from one press.

If it was, in late 1910, say, 1,000 sheets an hour, that would still be 10,000 sheets of 200 cards each - 2,000,000 cards in one day from one press. And this is for T220, one of the physically largest of the T sets. T206 size sets would fit far more cards if they were on sheets near this size.

Well less than 2,000,000 silver border cards were probably produced. I doubt more than ~5,000 exist today, and that would be a very high estimate.

I had thought they wouldn't be nearly this efficient. We've talked a lot about the huge scale of the T card production and how all evidence is that it greatly exceeds what people think, and that the survival rate is much lower than people generally think.