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.

[steve B]

I think the figure I saw for the 1910 era flatbed presses was around 800 sheets and hour.
There's a reason the rotaries killed off the flatbed presses so quickly.

The ones we had I think could run about 4000 sheets/hour.

The new ones.... 15000/hour up to 21,000/hr!

And remember, they were doing around 8 colors plus the backs, and there had to be some drying time in between, so figure about a week and a half from blank to finished cards IF they used multiple presses because I can't imagine changing the stone on a flatbed that size was a quick task.

ALC and Hoe were pretty close, Hoe had some rotary typeset presses that were multi color and fed from a roll of material. I have to really organize my thoughts and write them up, but there's a bit of evidence that a 2 color press was used. Which is really interesting because supposedly the first rotary offset litho press was invented in 1910.

Hoe wrote a book mostly self serving in 1902 covering the history of presses, mostly the ones made for typography and newspapers. Those were much faster.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6354...-h/63545-h.htm

[Pat R]

I think the majority of the T206's were printed on large sheets just like the one you have assembled with your T220 panels. I say majority because I think it's possible that some smaller sheets were printed at other facility's with ties to ALC.

We have pretty solid evidence of the minimum width of the sheets with one of the plate scratch sheets that has 24 cards in a horizontal row.

I think they changed the layouts but kept the sheet size when that got to the the last two smaller print groups (3 and 4).

The backs these test print scraps show a minimum of 17 cards in a horizontal row and it could easily also be 24 if the "exclusive 12" were double printed horizontally to fit the sheet and that would explain why the two different Pfeffer's have different subjects on the backs.

Test Print Scrap - Copy.jpg

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Pat R

I think the majority of the T206's were printed on large sheets just like the one you have assembled with your T220 panels. I say majority because I think it's possible that some smaller sheets were printed at other facility's with ties to ALC.

We have pretty solid evidence of the minimum width of the sheets with one of the plate scratch sheets that has 24 cards in a horizontal row.

I think they changed the layouts but kept the sheet size when that got to the the last two smaller print groups (3 and 4).

The backs these test print scraps show a minimum of 17 cards in a horizontal row and it could easily also be 24 if the "exclusive 12" were double printed horizontally to fit the sheet and that would explain why the two different Pfeffer's have different subjects on the backs.

Attachment 561764

Looking at the non-sport ATC sets of the T205/T206 physical dimensions, 25 would across would make perfect sense. 50 card sets and 25 card waves are indicated as a standard size. Unlike T206, I have not come across one of these non-sport cards in that size that has a different subject showing above or below on a miscut card. What I expect to find and what we do find are often very different, but demonstrating 24 across at least makes perfect sense.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by steve B

I think the figure I saw for the 1910 era flatbed presses was around 800 sheets and hour.
There's a reason the rotaries killed off the flatbed presses so quickly.

The ones we had I think could run about 4000 sheets/hour.

The new ones.... 15000/hour up to 21,000/hr!

And remember, they were doing around 8 colors plus the backs, and there had to be some drying time in between, so figure about a week and a half from blank to finished cards IF they used multiple presses because I can't imagine changing the stone on a flatbed that size was a quick task.

ALC and Hoe were pretty close, Hoe had some rotary typeset presses that were multi color and fed from a roll of material. I have to really organize my thoughts and write them up, but there's a bit of evidence that a 2 color press was used. Which is really interesting because supposedly the first rotary offset litho press was invented in 1910.

Hoe wrote a book mostly self serving in 1902 covering the history of presses, mostly the ones made for typography and newspapers. Those were much faster.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6354...-h/63545-h.htm

Thank you for this.

The scale of the operation outside the direct orienting seems like it would be the larger pain. The need (and massive space) to dry all these sheets, to process through the cutting machine, and then to pack the single cards (I'd be fairly surprised if there was much collation work - people buying packs to get the cards must have been awfully frustrated with getting the same ~25 subjects all the time over and over) and to ship them out must have taken a lot of people in 1910.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by steve B

I think the figure I saw for the 1910 era flatbed presses was around 800 sheets and hour.
There's a reason the rotaries killed off the flatbed presses so quickly.

The ones we had I think could run about 4000 sheets/hour.

The new ones.... 15000/hour up to 21,000/hr!

And remember, they were doing around 8 colors plus the backs, and there had to be some drying time in between, so figure about a week and a half from blank to finished cards IF they used multiple presses because I can't imagine changing the stone on a flatbed that size was a quick task.

ALC and Hoe were pretty close, Hoe had some rotary typeset presses that were multi color and fed from a roll of material. I have to really organize my thoughts and write them up, but there's a bit of evidence that a 2 color press was used. Which is really interesting because supposedly the first rotary offset litho press was invented in 1910.

Hoe wrote a book mostly self serving in 1902 covering the history of presses, mostly the ones made for typography and newspapers. Those were much faster.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6354...-h/63545-h.htm

Edward Hett invented a multi color rotary sheet press in 1899 and he sold his invention to American Lithograph.

01b.jpg


Here's the thread I posted about his invention and sale to ALC.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ighlight=Press

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Pat R

Edward Hett invented a multi color rotary sheet press in 1899 and he sold his invention to American Lithograph.

Attachment 562118


Here's the thread I posted about his invention and sale to ALC.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...ighlight=Press

Damn, I must be getting old and forgetting stuff.

What's interesting is that most online histories of printing and lithography still don't mention Hett at all, but attribute the first rotary press with plates to someone else in (assuming I'm remembering it right) 1910.

I do wonder if Hetts press was built, or how and if it worked. I can see some potential problems, but there were rotary presses in newspaper work well before that. Just not lithographic presses.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by steve B

Damn, I must be getting old and forgetting stuff.

What's interesting is that most online histories of printing and lithography still don't mention Hett at all, but attribute the first rotary press with plates to someone else in (assuming I'm remembering it right) 1910.

I do wonder if Hetts press was built, or how and if it worked. I can see some potential problems, but there were rotary presses in newspaper work well before that. Just not lithographic presses.

That's surprising because it's mentioned in 100's of newspapers from 1899 until his death in 1915 and although he is credited with other inventions the multi-color press is the one thing mentioned in his obituaries. The $300,000 that he received from American Lithograph in 1900 is equivalent to more than 10.5 million dollars today.

Multi color pressThe_Rushville_Recorder_Fri__Dec_8__1899_.jpg

Multi-color press inventor Salt_Lake_Telegram_Mon__Aug_16__1915_.jpg

[steve B]

I think it may be just the searches I've been doing.
Hetts press apparently prints directly from the cylinders, and I've been looking at offset presses, which are credited to Rubel just after 1900. Invented 1901, and in production by 1905.
https://www.si.edu/es/object/nmah_882246

Multi color offset presses are basically just two or more of those strung together with a common feed and output. And in some ways hadn't changed much into the 1980's.

I've been reading some of his patents, and they're very interesting. The printing cylinders were a copper tube with a cast zinc surface that could be used for several other types of printing. The patent I read didn't specifically mention lithography, but an article about it did. That use may be in a different patent, and the surface may have been something other than zinc, as I can't picture that being a good material for water retention. But who knows? I may have to experiment, zinc plates are used for etching and zinc plated plates for corrosion resistance, and they're not expensive.

More interesting to me but not at all applicable to cards, is that it looks like different types of printing may have been possible on the same machine.

[G1911]

Hyland's contract that never mentions tobacco at all seems to indicate rights were secured for more than just the primary purpose. It is certainly no accident that the verbiage gives permission for any and all use of his picture to the lithographers, not to the tobacco concern.

That the E229 sheets were found with the T220 Silver sheets strongly suggests that there is a printing relationship and these are probably a Brett production; it would be difficult to argue it is more likely that the unique production material just happened to come together into the same spot from what appears to be the items of a non-collector. The checklist is studded with athletes known to have given their rights to the tobacco cards. It is, as far as I am aware, impossible to know if these panels were for E229 or D353, but the cards are the same and probably produced at about the same time. One would deduce, from the discovery, that this is a late 1910 or early 1911 set, and the checklist strongly suggests a 1908-1912 timeframe.

First, here's some of their material from the period of the cards and the product.

In late 1910, National Licorice seems to have significantly upped their marketing, as I can't find much on the Y&S product line from the card backs. Here's a pair of ads, from December 1910. One shows their Y&S licorice gum; this ad with nothing but a picture of the box was run throughout 1910. The packages look to me smaller than would comfortably fit the cards, but there's no scale here. Some of these ads also ran in German language US publications, like "apotheker-zeitung", which looks like a catalogue of apothecaries.

This 1911 ad from the Spatula has some more detail into their marketing verbiage and medicinal focus.

A 1913 ad from the Pacific Pharmacist from Wm. DuVal & Co. was their west coast distributor, and their product had a wide range of geographic sale. West coast distributors, marketing to minority group publications, seems to have been sizable operation. There are numerous other ads from the 1910's easily found for their Y&S product line.