T220 Silver - Uncut Edition

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by G1911

Just confirming the sheet layout. Corbett and Randall/Belasco were the most tenuous placements as I had to eyeball the cut of the edges from less than perfect photographs and guesstimate where they belonged.

The guesstimate was correct. The Randall/Belasco is indeed above Coburn, fitting in perfectly in it's cut against both him and Jackson. Randall's back is more toned than the others - I suspect it was the one stored on top, upside down. We will probably never know the full backstory of who had these and brought them to the antiques dealer who sold them for pennies (Twice! The second time after being made aware of what they had), but it seems these sat untouched for a century in the NY area.

Corbett fit's in perfectly with Frayne. It is the only top edge panel with the white cut off, but most of the left side cards have their border trimmed off (only Choyinski has the sheet's left border, confirming for us that that it is indeed 5 panels to a row, 20 cards per row). As we have 23 of the original 25 surviving and only 1 with the corner still present (Jordan), this makes sense. What I took to be small staple or pin holes in the Corbett from the picture turned out not to be holes on close examination; it was just detritus that brushed right off when touched.

In hand, almost every card has differences between it's 8 copies, so that I can match a specific copy of a final production card to which of the 8 slots it came from. Donovan is difficult to do this for, the 8 are all very very similar. McGovern and Driscoll are the easiest. There are noticeable differences in the red on the Corbett's. It would be interesting to see if the surviving Corbett's all track to the same slot or not, but I haven't saved pictures of the ones I've seen, only the Donovan's.

Ryan and McAuliffe evidently have not survived to modernity (the single McAuliffe proof card that exists is almost certainly not from this sheet and source), and must be the lower left and lower right corners, though which is which we probably will never know. Should anyone have a miscut of these cards, a picture would be greatly appreciated.

Attached are the fake news 'holes', the sheet put together as it has been reconstituted today, and then the full layout with the Choyinski's recreated as best as I can, and Ryan/McAuliffe placed one each where they would have gone.

I was on vacation when you posted this Greg and I just read it this morning. Great info on the sheet layout.

Member mkdltn posted this info in 2010 he didn't post often but his posts were informative and well researched. The T220 sheet seems to be the right size for the hoe #5 press one of the two that he suggested were used for the T cards.

Originally Posted by mkdltn

I am not sure about the 19 inch press track measurement. That might be the measurement for a proving press.

My research leads me to believe that a HOE NO.4 or HOE NO.5 flatbed stop cylinder lithographic press was likely used to produce the T cards. I found an article in an electrical engineering magazine from 1897 describing the new facility that ALC moved into after consolidation. This is approximately 12 years before production of the T206 cards. On the picture of the sixth floor layout posted below there are 30 lithographic presses. I believe the article mentions that this is one of three floors filled with presses. At the time a HOE NO.4 press would cost anywhere from 3000 to 5000 dollars. That would be a capital investment of 120,000 1897 dollars, That is very roughly about 3 and a half million dollars in todays money. (That is very much an approximation because the inflation calculator only goes back to 1914) the point being that I think that ALC would have squeezed every bit of use out those presses and to think that they would still be in functioning 12 to 15 years after installation is not beyond possibility.

The bed of the HOE presses is also posted in image 3. these dimensions lead me to believe that the sheets could have been much likely larger than you would think. The HOE No. 5 could use a 36x52 in stone or plate. Schmidt litho also used similar presses.

01ab.jpg

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Pat R

I was on vacation when you posted this Greg and I just read it this morning. Great info on the sheet layout.

Member mkdltn posted this info in 2010 he didn't post often but his posts were informative and well researched. The T220 sheet seems to be the right size for the hoe #5 press one of the two that he suggested were used for the T cards.



Attachment 561422

20 cards across = ~50 inches
10 cards vertical = ~33 inches

Adding in the white borders to the above, that is pretty much exactly what this gentleman postulates as the max size.

A T206 sheet this size would be much larger than most seem to postulate. I would think different size sheets were used for different sets depending on facility and what other printing jobs were going on at that exact time, but there's no reason the small size cards wouldn't be done on large sheets.

[G1911]

Also, got shown these on the non-sports side. These sheets were evidently destroyed and cutup, for 2 of the fragments reside in my collection now.

There is so little ATC uncut card material left to work with here to make deductions from.

Almost all the rest are tiny print color test 'sheets' that are obviously a different size from production runs.

[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.

[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 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