:''Often appears mis-spelt as "Augustus Applegarth"'' Augustus Applegath (17 June 1788 – 9 February 1871) was an English printer and inventor known for the development of the first workable vertical-drum

rotary printing press A rotary printing press is a printing press in which the images to be printed are curved around a cylinder. Printing can be done on various substrates, including paper, cardboard, and plastic. Substrates can be sheet feed or unwound on a continuo ...

Early life

Applegath was born in the

Stepney Stepney is a district in the East End of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The district is no longer officially defined, and is usually used to refer to a relatively small area. However, for much of its history the place name appli ...

district of London, the second child of Augustus Joseph Applegath, a captain in the East India Company and his wife, Ann, née Lepard. He went to school at Alfred House Academy in London and apprenticed with Benjamin Lepard, a wholesale stationer, at Covent Garden. In collaboration with his brother-in-law Edward Cowper (1790–1852), he carried out most of his work in the Dartford and Crayford areas of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

Career

Applegath was a skilled printer who notably made a number of improvements to the steam-powered flat-bed press of Friedrich Konig (1813). Other inventions included processes for printing on silk and, in 1816, improvements to banknote printing. By 1819, Applegath's banknote machine was installed at the Bank of England. In 1828, Applegath and Cowper built a flatbed printing machine for

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

in London. This press had the capacity of 4,200 prints per hour. William Nicholson had patented a rotary printing press in 1790, but attempts to build a working prototype had been unsuccessful. It was not until 1848 that Applegath developed a working version. In that same year, it replaced the flatbed printer that had been in use at The Times for almost twenty years. The design consisted of a large vertical cylinder, 200 inches in circumference. Ordinary type was used in columns to produce a polygonal printing surface. It had eight impression cylinders and needed eight people to feed the paper. It could produce 8,000 impressions per hour (on one side of the paper) and eventually up to 10,000 depending on the skill of those feeding it. A four-cylinder version of Applegath's press as used by the

Illustrated London News ''The Illustrated London News'' appeared first on Saturday 14 May 1842, as the world's first illustrated weekly news magazine. Founded by Herbert Ingram, it appeared weekly until 1971, then less frequently thereafter, and ceased publication i ...

was featured at

The Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition which took p ...

of 1851 in London. At the same time, Richard Hoe of New York was developing a more efficient horizontal rotary press which as available with two, four, six or ten impression cylinders. The first one of this type was imported by

Edward Lloyd Edward Lloyd may refer to: Politicians *Edward Lloyd (MP for Montgomery), Welsh lawyer and politician * Edward Lloyd (16th-century MP) (died 1547) for Buckingham *Edward Lloyd, 1st Baron Mostyn (1768–1854), British politician *Edward Lloyd (Colon ...

in 1856 and was soon adopted by many newspapers including

. Applegarth had a joint patent, with engineer and inventor Joseph Gibbs, awarded on 29 March, 1833, for "certain improvements in steam-carriages."

References

External links

Dartford Archive biography of Applegath
English inventors 1788 births 1871 deaths People from Crayford {{UK-engineer-stub