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Edward Thomas William Galpin, OBE (4th July 1914 - 3rd September 1996) was General Manager and a Director of Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers Ltd from 1962 to 1976 (a Director until 1979 ).

He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1977 for his services to the newspaper industry. As General Manager and Director (South) of the Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers Ltd., Galpin was responsible for introducing web offset printing to the Portsmouth Evening News and masterminding the newspaper’s move to its Hilsea location. This made the newspaper the first in the world with a circulation of over 100,000 to use computerised printing technology and colour photocomposition, marking an important change in the way newspapers were printed.

Military Career
During the Second World War, Galpin was a member of the Royal Artillery regiment where he served in Portsmouth during the Battle of Britain, then overseas in North Africa, most notably in the Battle of El-Alamein. Following his service in North Africa and the Middle East, he was transferred to the infantry and fought in Italy. Here, he was wounded in action before returning to the front line.

After Officer Cadet training, he was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant of the Royal Regiment of Artillery on 19th September 1943. He was awarded a variety of medals for his military service including the Efficiency Medal.

Portsmouth and Sunderland Newspapers Ltd.
Galpin’s career in the newspaper group began in 1933 when he started work as a junior clerk in the London office. He resumed his newspaper career after the war in 1946 and, after attending night school, qualified as a chartered secretary in 1948. In the following years he was Company Secretary at the London office. In 1962 he was promoted to General Manager and a Director (South) in Portsmouth.

It was in this latter role that he masterminded the move to web offset printing and computerised photocomposition. As part of this, the newspaper moved to a new production plant at Hilsea, where The News is still printed today. The Evening News was consequently at the forefront of technological advancements in the newspaper industry, with the technology eventually adopted by most leading newspapers in the UK.

The move from so-called ‘hot-type’ to ‘cold-type’ typesetting (photocomposition) has been cited as the most important of technological changes in the newspaper industry, streamlining the production process and allowing newspapers to be printed much more quickly than in the past. It was local newspapers rather than the nationals which were ‘leading the computer revolution’ in the industry.

By managing this process in Portsmouth, Galpin ‘guided the destinies of both daily and weekly newspapers into an era of clarity of print which was inconceivable at the threshold of his career’. Between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s, production of the group’s Portsmouth newspapers increased by 20 per cent.

He retired as General Manager in 1976 and was awarded his OBE in the 1977, the year of the centenary of the Portsmouth Evening News. He accepted his OBE as ‘recognition of the work of all staff who had maintained uninterrupted publication of the newspapers’.