Previously I covered the Army Press, a simple manual press that could handle newspaper-size stock. The Army Press helped country weeklies to survive until they could afford more automatic presses.
Reviewing the Army Press:
It looked like a proof press. On the proof press, the paper is clamped to the roller, which rolls and slides over the stationary chase:
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On the Army press, the crank turned the roller, causing the chase to slide under the stationary roller. Paper was sandwiched between a frisket and a tympan or blanket. The frisket was a frame carrying a matte of parchment or card stock, cut out in the middle to prevent the paper from touching the blocks and quoins and furniture outside the actual type form. The tympan, true to its name, was a canvas or leather sheet stretched across a frame. The sandwich then folded down on top of the chase. When the chase slid back and forth, the roller pushed down on the tympan, forcing the paper against the lead type.
The Army Press would have required at least two helpers for efficient operation. One to roll the ink on the form, the other to insert and remove the paper.
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Ansel Kellogg ran a country weekly in Baraboo around 1860. He invented a slightly more automatic press, called the Kellogg Country Jobber. The ink rollers and paper removal were automatic, but the paper insertion was still manual.
As in the Army Press, the form with type lays horizontal, and the frisket which carries the paper is over the form. The ink rollers are at the left of the form when open, and quickly zip over the form, inking it, before skedaddling out of the way onto the ink plate. The crucial part is the Guide, a three-sided frame that the pressman would adjust to fit outside the paper, with the custom-made hole in the frisket letting only the type touch the paper.
Here Polistra is operating the press. Note how the rollers get in, ink the form, and scram out before the platen drops down to make the impression.
Here’s a closeup of the Guide action, which is somewhat mysterious and not well documented in the patents. The Guide sticks with the frisket on the way down. The pressman can quickly slap the paper into the Guide, and then the Guide keeps the paper in the same place until the platen slams down. After the platen starts to rise, a trigger lever flips the Guide up, allowing the paper to slide down into the bin by gravity.
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Kellogg then patented and commercialized a system-level idea, which became known as Patent Insides. His company wrote and typeset a wide variety of non-time-sensitive articles and features. The product was shipped in various ways at various times. Some newspapers bought sheets preprinted on one side and then added their own material to the opposite side. Some bought papier-mache molds for stereotype plates, or the completed metal plates.
Stereotype plates could be tacked onto a wooden block for a horizontal press, or curved into a half-cylinder for a cylindrical press. In the latter form they resembled the curved plates that were riveted together to make boilers, so they were known as boilerplate.
On the other end of the trade, Kellogg published annual “Lists of Weeklies of the Better Class”, showing national advertisers how to appeal to various localities and occupations, and charged advertisers to place ads in the Insides. Kellogg was based in Chicago and had branch plants in St Louis, KC, and other cities. Looking closely at the List for Kansas, it’s clear that all the papers were smalltown weeklies. Manhattan and Wichita and Topeka were absent from the list.
After Kellogg died in 1889 the company was taken over by a competitor and became Western Newspaper Union. The new owner continued the same purpose, still aiming to strengthen and multiply small newspapers by providing a mix of higher-quality material and research that the papers couldn’t afford on their own.
On that point the statements of some of Kellogg’s clients in 1878 are illuminating. According to W. D. Hughes of the Mt. Carroll Mirror, if he had printed all of his papers in his own shop it would have meant hiring extra compositors at $12 to $15 a week and an editor at $20 a week. With the extra press work this would have increased his operating cost $50 or $60 a week and he estimated his total saving at between $1,200 and $1,500 a year. In the face of such facts not even the prejudice against a new idea nor the scornful statement, “It’s a patent insides paper,” could prevent an increasing adoption of the new plan and by 1880 more than 2,500 country weeklies in the United States were users of ready-print.
The editors applied the Fairness Doctrine, and also showed a fine regard for the sensitivities of advertisers:
After the articles are selected, they are edited with great care, as nothing savoring of politics or religion is allowed to find its way into the neutral Patents. Articles carelessly written are corrected, grammatical errors are rectified, and profane exclamations or suggestive phrases are modified. Everything must, like the old spinster’s bureau drawer, be “just so”, or one or the other of the thousands of patrons of the house would be sure to file an emphatic protest.
Google’s Adsense is equally sensitive to modern spinsters aka Karens, but modern spinsters have a rather less balanced idea of political and religious Fairness.
Patent insides were paralleled in radio through transcription discs, again enabling small stations to present a variety of entertainment without hiring all the editors and researchers and musicians. These syndicated segments were like Kellogg’s one-sided preprints, with pauses where the local station could add its own messages.
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Here’s the Kellogg building in KC, built in 1900. It still exists, thanks to historical preservers. I’ve simplified it somewhat, eliminating some transoms and the later back wing. I’ve always wanted to do a building with a cast-iron facade.
Both newspapers and radio lost their modularity after 1960, when monopolistic consolidation took over everything. In effect a local paper or station is only a printing plant or transmitter or web node. All the writing and editing and layout is done in NYC or LA.
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One big idea emerges: Mass produced parts make smaller manufacturers possible, IF the mass producer isn’t predatory. This was also seen in the early automobile industry when mass-produced engines and transmissions were available to all buyers. Smalltown carriage-makers were able to expand into automobiles without setting up their own complex forges and gearmaking tools. They were already making bodies and frames.
Patent pools are another “tool” that can cut both ways. Selden held crucial patents for engines, and implemented its power AGAINST Ford, not to centralize all production IN Ford.
We’re seeing the same distinction now with AI. Creative purity is irrelevant. What matters is whether a new tech is implemented by monopolists or not. If implemented by financiers and monopolists, it will destroy variety and modularity to maximize tax evasion. Kellogg and his successors were interested in maximizing variety because their PROFIT came from flourishing small papers.
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Later: I was looking again at the Inland Type Foundry catalog that pulled me into this topic with its Starter Kit for a weekly paper. The kits for somewhat larger papers have an alternate price list when the paper “intends to use auxiliary insides.” The press and tools are the same, but the quantities of common fonts are smaller by about 1/4. The total price is less by about 1/5.
Polistra's Mill 