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The rise of periodical
literature and the newspaper press in Scotland was contemporary with the
development of the publishing, bookselling, and printing trades. In the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries publishing was combined with the
retailing and sometimes the printing of books. The most notable of the
Edinburgh booksellers and publishers in the second half of the former
century were Elliot, Creech, Bell & Bradfute, Hamilton & Balfour, and James
Donaldson. During the first half of the nineteenth the advent of Scott gave
scope to the energies of James and John Ballantyne, Archibald Constable, and
William Blackwood in the same field. Scott was, in fact, a partner in the
printing and publishing business of the Ballan-tynes. In James Ballantyne's
printing house (Paul's Work in the North Back of the Canongate, from which
it was removed in 1870 to the Newington district), the Waverley novels were
set up and printed by the hundred thousand, in addition to an ever
increasing volume of miscellaneous literature. "In 1822 no fewer than
145,000 volumes issued from the Ballantyne Press, all from the pen of
Scott—an extraordinary number of volumes in those days of hand presses; and
this leaves out of reckoning work done for other authors and publishers."
Constable and Blaekwood also enjoyed the distinction of publishing some of
the anonymous works which were taking the world by storm, though their
author quarrelled with both of them. The disaster which befell James
Ballantyne and Archibald Constable in 1820 and involved Scott in the tragic,
but heroic task of the closing years of his life of toiling to pay off
Ballantyne's creditors, who, in virtue of his partnership, were also his,
left the house of Blackwood supreme among the Edinburgh publishers for the
time being. About the same time the brothers Chambers founded the publishing
business which has done so much for the diffusion of knowledge among the
people. Another of the same type was founded about the same time by Mr
Nelson, who had started as a bookseller in 1798. Other prominent firms
maintained the earlier reputation of the Scottish capital as a publishing
centre, notably those of A. & C. Black, who in 1827 acquired from
Constable's Trustees the copyright of the Encyclopaedia Britannica—the first
edition of which had been published by William Smellie in 1771—and that of
Scott's works in 1851; T. & T. Clark, who started the famous series of
translations of German theological works; Edmonston & Douglas, the latter
editing, as well as publishing, Scott's Journal; Oliver & Boyd, Oliphant &
Co. More recently the Edinburgh publishing trade has tended to migrate to
London, and while some of the leading publishers, like the Messrs Black,
have removed their business thither, others, like the Blackwoods, have
established branches in the British metropolis.
The abolition of the
newspaper stamp duty in 1855, the duty on advertisements in 1854, and the
duty on paper in 1801, by cheapening the price and increasing the
circulation of books and journals, had a quickening effect on the printing
as well as the publishing trade. In this industry Edinburgh took the lead,
not only in Scotland, but in Britain. "For many years," says Mr Strachan in
The Scottish Bankers Magazine (October 1911), "Edinburgh has been looked
upon as the seat of production of the finest book printing in the world;
and, in support of this statement, it may be mentioned that a considerable
portion of Edinburgh's costly book-work comes from England. The greatest
London publishers have nearly all their best work printed in the Northern
capital; and it is no exaggeration to say that to a large majority of the
reading public the fact that a book bears the hallmark of a leading
Edinburgh firm lends additional value to its possession. Cheapness cannot
explain the partiality of London publishers to Scottish workmanship,
although it might be admitted that by employing female labour the Scottish
firms gain an advantage over their southern competitors. But the cost of
carriage and other items would certainly swallow up any saving made on the
printing expenses. Again in the case of many publications it is impossible
to estimate, even approximately, what will be their ultimate cost. These
things considered, it may safely be assumed that the secret of our printers'
renown lies in the artistic beauty and accuracy of their productions."
The oldest of the existing
firms is that of Neill & Co., which dates back to 1749, and was at first
known under the name of Hamilton & Balfour. Those of Oliver & Boyd, and
Pillans & Wilson have also survived from the eighteenth century. Among the
more important of those established in the nineteenth are, besides the
Blackwoods, Ballantyne & Co., and T. & A. Constable, R. & R. Clark, and
Morrison & Gibb. The growth of the industry has also been greatly
accelerated by the remarkable improvement in the machinery for printing
newspapers and books. The progress of newspaper printing is strikingly
represented in the case of the leading British newspaper, The Times. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century the hand press in use was of cumbrous
construction, and printing was a slow and laborious process. Up to 1814
twelve hand presses, working at the highest pressure, were required to print
an edition of 10,000 copies of The Times between 12 at midnight and 0 a.m.
The application of steam to the press greatly increased the output, and two
steam driven machines, contrived by Koenig in this year for Mr Walter,
proprietor of The Times, produced 1,100 impressions per hour. The
improvement is thus described in an article of the issue of 28th November,
1814. " After the letters are placed by the compositors and enclosed in what
is called the " forme," little more remains for man to do than to attend
upon and watch the unconscious agent in its operations. The machine is then
merely supplied with paper, itself places the forme, inks etc, adjusts the
paper to the form newly inked, stamps the sheet, and gives it forth to the
hands of the attendant, at the same time withdrawing the form for a fresh
coat of ink, which itself again distributes, to meet the ensuing sheet now
advancing for impression, and the whole of these complicated acts is
performed with such a velocity and simultaneousness of movement that no less
than 1,100 sheets are impressed in one hour." The Koenig machine was
modified and improved by Messrs Applegarth & Cowper in 1827 so as to print
from 4,000 to 5,000 copies per hour. The next improvement was the
substitution for the flat or plane "forme," containing the type to be
printed, of a curved or rotary form by attaching the type to a cylindrical
surface. The idea had occurred to William Nicholson in 1790, but it was
first successfully applied by Applegarth in 1848, who by this contrivance
increased the output of The Times to from 10,000 to 12,000 per hour. Further
improvements, including the curved stereotype plate of the type to be
printed (stereotyping having been invented by William Ged, a goldsmith of
Edinburgh, in the eighteenth century and perfected by Tilloch and Foulis of
Glasgow), and the printing of both sides of the sheet simultaneously, were
made in 1808 for the Walter Press by Messrs MacDonald & Calverley. Another
improvement was the substitution for the hand setting of type of the
Kastenhein and the Wicks composing machines, with their later developments,
the Linotype, the Monotype, and the Singertype. The Walter Press gave place
in 1895 to the Hoe machine, and later the Goss machine, which are capable of
turning out 150,000 folded copies of The Times per hour.
The large Scottish newspapers
have not lagged behind The Times in the adoption of modern machinery. In the
composing room of The Scotsman, for instance, thirty-two Linotype machines
produce seventeen columns of type per hour. The stereotype plate is made and
printed within ten minutes after leaving the composing room. In the
machinery hall five Hoe presses of varying capacity, driven by electricity,
are capable of printing, cutting, folding, and counting 174,000 copies of a
twelve page paper in an hour. The proprietors of the Glasgow Herald, who
first adopted the Hoe machine in 1870, introduced in 1911 a double sextuple
Hoe press, capable of printing, cutting, folding, and counting 120,000
copies of a twelve page paper, and 00,000 copies of one of twenty-four
pages, per hour.
A large variety of these fast
printing machines have been contrived for book and general printing, as well
as for the production of newspapers, and the revolution which their
invention and application have wrought in the printing trade has been taken
advantage of by Scottish printers. In Scotland the first steam printing
machine was introduced in the establishment of Messrs Ballantyne about 1817,
and to Mr Thomas Nelson is due the credit of inventing the model of a rotary
stereo press, which was exhibited by him in the International Exhibition of
1851. An idea of the progress in the printing art in Edinburgh may be best
formed from a comparison between the daily routine in Ballan-tyne's press in
the early years of the nineteenth century and that of a modern up-to-date
Scottish printery. Entering the long case room in Paul's Work in, say, the
year of Waterloo, "one would find," to quote from The Ballantyne Press,
"about thirty or forty compositors, busily dipping their fingers into cases
of types—spelling, capitalising, and punctuating line after line from the
manuscript or 'copy' before them—amidst the joke and chaff flying among
themselves, and the noisy hammering of wooden 'mallets' at the imposing
tables or 'stones' down the centre of the room, on which the 'formes' of
type were being corrected and got 'ready for press.' A second case room,
with about twenty men, was on another, higher flat; adjoining this, in
course of time, was the stereo room.
"Beyond the long case room,
on a slightly different level, was a fairly large room, partitioned off like
so many sentry-boxes, occupied by that much maligned, but indispensable
class, the printer's readers, each with his attendant satellite or 'devil.'
"While the formes were being
prepared for the press, the damping room below was called into operation. It
was here that the paper to be printed was damped, in order that it might
take on better the impression from the type. This process is now almost
abandoned, except in the case of some special make of paper, as printing
papers are now made with a texture that does not require damping. In the
early days of Paul's Work, however, it was very necessary.
"The formes of type and the
paper being ready, the pressmen put the formes on the press-bed, and after
'making ready' the pages of type to ensure a uniform impression and colour
on the printed sheet, proceeded to work off the formes. In the early days of
last century, before the advent of the steam printing machine, the work of
the hand pressmen must have been a constant strain on their physical powers.
A 'token' of 250 sheets per hour was the ordinary output; they had to lay
the sheet of paper on the tympan and roll it under the press, pull the bar
to take the impression, roll back, and lift off the printed sheet— all this
for 250 times an hour for ten or twelve hours each day was no light task. In
those days also, prior to the invention of the hand roller, the ink had to
be put on the formes of type by o means of handballs or 'dabbers,' and this,
too, took a much longer time. The sheets of a book having been thus printed,
either by hand press or by machinery, were next sent to the drying room, and
hung over horizontal bars, one above the other, being put up or taken down
by means of long peels. When thoroughly dried the sheets were subjected to a
smoothing process between highly glazed boards under great pressure, and
were then ready for the bookbinder."
Compare with this the
marvellous daily output by means of the most up-to-date machinery in a
modern Scottish book factory, as described by Mr Strachan in The Scottish
Bankers Magazine for October 1911. "Inside we find two great floors, the
lower mainly devoted to storage and packing. The upper floor forms one long,
well-lit, and well-ventilated workroom, filled, but not crowded, with
machinery. No means of propulsion is visible, there being an absence of the
usual belts and shafting. Electricity is the motive power. Below the under
floor is a long chamber entirely occupied with the motors, starting gear,
and suetion pumps used to drive the machinery above.
"We next pass into a small
room off the great hall. Here a handful of men sit before seeming
typewriters. By depressing the keys the operators punch in rolls of paper
two holes, which, according to their position, represent the character
required. These perforated rolls then pass through the casting machines,
currents of air controlling the casting of the letters which the holes
represent. Long columns of new type are rapidly formed, which are removed to
be proved, corrected, and made up into pages. The speed of these machines,
as compared with hand setting, is enormous and, in consequence, much more
economical. The pages then go into the stereotyping department, where casts
are taken from the type, and the printing 'plates' made, which arc beat into
semi-cylindrical shape.
"At one end of the upper
floor room are ranged in line six rotary machines of the type usually used
for newspaper printing. Behind these runs an overhead railway, which carries
to each press gigantic cartridges of paper. The plates having been placed in
position on the cylinders of the machine, a touch sets the huge 'rotary' in
motion, and at one revolution of the two cylinders a sheet of 96 pages is
instantly printed on both sides. This sheet is automatically cut from the
roll, a set of blunt knives descend, and the sheet is folded into those neat
signatures the size of the book to be. A signature, it may be explained, is
a section of 16 or 32 pages. A complete book consists of so many of these
sewn together. Each machine prints three signatures, and each book consists
of three to six workings, so that as many machines are simultaneously
producing the signatures of one book. As the piles of these rapidly grow
they are placed in long troughs down which they are slowly carried on
endless chains. En route they dry, and the various signatures forming the
complete book are collected together in correct order and conveyed to the
sewing machines, which seize them and do the rest of the work automatically.
"The work now begins to
resemble a book, but the edges are rough, and it has no cover. A guillotine
trims the edges, another machine rounds the back, and still another glues on
a lining of 'mull.' The coloured frontispieces are then pasted in. . . .
"Meanwhile, in another corner
of the building, the cloth cases have been prepared. Case-making machines
are marvels of ingenuity. A roll of cloth passes over a gluing roller,
strawboards fall into their places on the glued cloth, the paper that lines
the back attaches itself; the cloth is cut, and the edges dexterously folded
over the edges of the boards. Gold-leaf is laid by hand on the back of the
cases, which are then rapidly struck with their design and title. At the
casing-in machines book and cover are swiftly attached, after which they are
placed under hydraulic pressure in order that any tendency to curl may be
overcome. Released from this, they are returned to the ever-moving troughs
and conveyed to 'chutes,' down which they fall to the packing room below.
"A factory such as that
described produces two volumes in three seconds, or nearly 120,000 per week.
About 350 miles of paper, 15 miles of cloth, and 5 miles of strawboard are
consumed in the manufacture of this quantity."
Glasgow comes next to
Edinburgh as a printing and publishing centre. From the end of the
eighteenth century printing developed into a large industry. The University
Press, started by the brothers Foulis about the middle of this century, "in
the course of a few years," in the words of Dr Murray, "made Glasgow
printing famous throughout Europe." "I read Homer," said Gibbon, "with most
pleasure in the Glasgow folio." "The work so auspiciously begun by the
brothers Foulis," continues Dr Murray, "has been carried on by a succession
of excellent printers, and the Glasgow press is now no inconsiderable factor
in book production in the United Kingdom. The printing and distributing of
books in numbers was not commenced in Scotland until about 1706, but quickly
developed, especially in Glasgow, where at one time five-sixteenths of the
trade was carried on." Among the more notable of the Glasgow printers in the
nineteenth century were the Duncans, Blackie & Son (formerly Kuhll, Blackie
& Co.), Collins & Co., MacLehose & Co. (the University Press), Wardlaw &
Cunningham, McCorquodale & Co., Hodge & Co., Chapman & Duncan, Orr & Sons,
Lumsden & Son, W. & D. Mackenzie. Blackie, Collins, and MacLehose also
developed an extensive publishing business, and among other publishing firms
may be mentioned those of Fullarton & Co., Smith & Sons, Lumsden & Son. The
practice of selling books in numbers was first started in Glasgow by
Fullarton, and was developed by the Messrs Blackie, and by W. Mackenzie. It
is significant of the extent of the Glasgow printing and publishing trade
that no fewer than five of the Lord Provosts of the city during the
nineteenth century were printers and publishers, viz., James Lumsden, father
and son; Andrew Orr, John Blackie, and William Collins.
Type founding also became a
considerable branch of industry in Glasgow from about the middle of the
eighteenth century, when Alexander Wilson set up his type foundry in the
village of Camlaehie, and cast the types which made the brothers Foulis
famous. In the nineteenth century, the firms of Hutchison & Brookman
(University printers), Prentice & Co., and D. Macbrayne & Stirlixig (Macbrayne
of subsequent Clyde steamboat fame) acquired prominence as type founders.
The allied industry of engraving and lithography owed much to the fine
workmanship of Joseph Swan in the middle of the century, and the firm of
Maclure, MacDonald & Co. has long carried on an extensive business as
lithographers and lithographic printers. |
