Talk:Koenig & Bauer

Production per day vs production per hour
The production figures given for the Gutenberg and Stanhope versions of presses should not be represented as "per hour". Their production figures are actually of per day of approximately 9 working hours.

I do not have reference books (i.e., Wolf or Bolza) in front of me to confirm this, but I did read this about 50 years ago in Moxon's history of printing and other books written contemporaneously to the "old style" press. At that time, press production was so slow that it was reckoned by days, not hours.

Anyone who has used either old style press would confirm that these numbers of impressions with a crew of 2 would be per day with a well skilled crew.

Operation of the old style presses was extremely laborious. Expecting that a crew of 2 people could hand-ink a forme with ink beaters, lay a sheet on the tympan, roll the forme under the platen, pull the impression, roll the forme from under the platen, remove the sheet and place another sheet on the tympan in the course of either 15 seconds or especially 7.5 seconds is totally unrealistic.

The Koenig and Bauer press design was revolutionary in using an impression cylinder and inking rollers, with a double feed table, freeing the 3 person crew to print more than 800 impressions in an hour as opposed to the 2 to 4 days required depending on the old style press we're speaking of, a phenomenal increase in machine production of well over 1,800%. 98.175.1.118 (talk) 19:39, 29 February 2024 (UTC)98.175.1.118 (talk) 20:11, 29 February 2024 (UTC)98.175.1.118 (talk) 20:12, 29 February 2024 (UTC)DW Cowell