PrintAction - March 2009

ARCHIVE
March 1974

Five months after launch, NASA’s Mariner 10 becomes the first space

probe to fly by Mercury. Walt Disney releases Herbie Rides Again. Playing

for the first time as a trio, The Ramones debut at the Performance Studio

in New York City. John Denver gets his first #1 Billboard song, Sunshine

on My Shoulders. Japanese WWII soldier Hiroo Onoda surrenders to

authorities in the Philippines.

Batten Graphics gets 4-colour proof press In March 1974, Batten Graphics installed Toronto’s first RO4-29 4-colour offset Vandercook proof press into its downtown Richmond Street location. After its founding in 1971, Batten had grown from 16 employees, all formerly of Rapid Grip & Batten Ltd., to a staff of over 80 in three short years. The Vandercook made Batten – described as a lithographic and letterpress plate preparatory company – the only plant in Toronto with the ability to produce authentic 4-colour proofs, under similar trapping conditions to those met by the printer in 4-colour wet printing. President Howard Batten said, “Now the actual proofing film can be released to 4-colour printers without it necessarily being sharpened to adjust for wet printing. Futhermore, the RO4-29 allows for a faster proof and has the capacity to make a colour etch correction within a few hours.”

Unique RO4-29 Rotary Test Press

Vandercook built its reputation around letterpress machines before management in the 1960s realized a need to enter the litho-proofing market to compete against companies like Mailander and Dufa (Steinmesse and Stollberg). Vandercook also built a cold fusion proofing system in collaboration with Kodak, which operated like a proof press but could also produce colour keys similar to a DuPont system.

The RO4-29 press, first released in 1968, was designed to duplicate the ink-trapping time of production presses, using the papers, inks and fountain solutions. It included one common – and noticeably small – impression cylinder surrounded by four printing units. Each plate segment had its own dampening and inking system, which would drop and lift without touching other segments to keep near-perfect register. It could print progressive proofs in whatever order the operator desired, reaching up to 1,500 sheets per hour. The sheet size of the 15,850-pound press measured 23 x 29 inches. Vandercook sold less than 100 of these presses, with one service person stationed in New York.

Vandercook & Sons Robert Vandercook in the late 19th century owned and operated a weekly Chicago newspaper, Evanston Press, and he envisioned better proofing output than what was provided by crude hand presses or the galley-roller presses that depended on gravity to make an impression. And so, in 1909, Vandercook became the first person to develop a flatbed cylinder-driven press to produce high-quality proofs from metal types and photo engravings. Vandercook would dominate the world in the arena for

A Vandercook flyer from 1909.

decades, developing over 60 different models and selling around 38,000. The name of Vandercook &

Sons was used until 1968 when E.O. Vandercook sold the company to one of their suppliers, Illinois Tool Works, for $3.6 million. In 1975, Vandercook’s chief engineer, David Vandercook, passed away and the company stopped making presses by 1976. According to Vanderblog, there are 1,319 registered, surviving Vandercook presses with 62 of those being located in Canada – primarily with fine-press printers and book artists.