Fol­low­ing World War II, the spec­tre of nuclear attack faced the UK and civ­il defence organ­i­sa­tions were estab­lished with a changed focus of the after­math of such an attack. It seems fair to assume the The Times’ devel­op­ment of a mobile print­ing unit was dri­ven in part by the need to main­tain con­ti­nu­ity of even a small part of their work, just as the BBC and oth­ers were devel­op­ing wartime broad­cast­ing ser­vices.

From a print­ers point of view, the way they approached the chal­lenge, the equip­ment select­ed and the way it was test­ed is fas­ci­nat­ing.

It appears that the plan for a mobile works was cre­at­ed in 1951¹, and was shown off to the pub­lic at the British Indus­tries Fair at Olympia in 1953².

“The Times” Is the only dai­ly news­pa­per in the Eng­lish lan­guage with an unbro­ken con­ti­nu­ity for the past 168 years, and the unit is built to ensure pro­duc­tion and pub­li­ca­tion even if the main print­ing house should be destroyed, for instance by ene­my action.

Der­ry Jour­nal, 20 Novem­ber 1953

Transport and Accommodation

The full com­ple­ment of trans­port and accom­mo­da­tion was made up of —

• 2 x Ley­land Beaver trac­tors each haul­ing a ​‘semi-trail­er’. This car­ried the main pro­duc­tion parts of the news­pa­per.
• A Den­nis Lor­ry hold­ing stores of paper and ink, with a trail­er con­tain­ing a diesel engine and gen­er­a­tor to pow­er the print­ing works.
• 4 x Lan­drovers, for edi­to­r­i­al staff, and to dis­trib­ute the print­ed paper. Once Lan­drover was equipped with radio equip­ment to link with the print­ing works.

The whole oper­a­tion could be assem­bled by a crew of six to be ready in two hours.

The process of get­ting ready was to align the two trail­ers, flip down the size walls so they con­nect­ed with each oth­er (pro­vid­ing an open space between the two trail­ers held on jacks), and open­ing the oth­er side of each trail­er. The main void between the two trail­ers was cov­ered with an alu­mini­um frame, heavy can­vas cov­er­ing and strip light­ing installed. In terms of being ​‘bat­tle-ready’, the British Print­er not­ed that ‘…con­struc­tion is such that an effi­cient ​‘black-out’ is obtained.’

Printing Equipment

The main press was a Timp­son Rotary press, spe­cial­ly designed and built by them with an out­put at max­i­mum speed of 12,500 copies per hour. Type­set­ting was through two Lino­type machines (although the Read­ing Stan­dard sug­gest­ed Mono­type machines were used). One Lino­type was equipped with tele­type­set­ting equip­ment to be used in con­junc­tion with the radio equip­ment on one of the Lan­drovers.

Of course, to get from the Lino­type slugs to the rotary press required that a flong be cre­at­ed which was then used to cast a 5/16th of an inch curved met­al plate for use on the rotary press.

The Emergency Newspaper and Typography

The edi­tion of The Times was to be a 16″ × 10″ news­pa­per of eight pages, each being four 13em columns wide sep­a­rat­ed by brass col­umn rules. The Lino­type machines includ­ed 7pt and 9pt Times Roman and the asso­ci­at­ed Ital­ic. Head­lines were set in 10pt or 12pt Times Heavy Titling. Since so much extra equip­ment would be need­ed to repro­duce pho­tos, no pro­vi­sion was made for halftones or oth­er illus­tra­tions.

Testing or Exercising

The set-up pro­duced news­pa­pers as sou­venirs of the British Indus­tries Fair in 1953, but more curi­ous is the local news­pa­per report from Read­ing in 1955.

The Read­ing Stan­dard report­ed that in the tiny vil­lage of Sul­ham­stead the whole col­umn of vehi­cles made their way to a farm­yard to set up overnight dur­ing a news­pa­per strike. At the week­end, ​‘boys from Pang­bourne Nau­ti­cal Col­lege and Brad­field Col­lege’ were invit­ed to see the Mobile Print­ing Works in action and they too were pre­sent­ed with news­pa­pers as sou­venirs of their vis­it.

Final Reflections

The Times took seri­ous­ly its role as a news­pa­per of record for the UK, and Lon­don’s sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to the Blitz and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of nuclear war meant the paper had to look at ways to ensure con­ti­nu­ity of pro­duc­tion.

While I’ve list­ed the loca­tion as Print­ing House Square, the then-home of The Times, it would have been fool­ish to keep this reserve print­ing plant in such a vul­ner­a­ble loca­tion. It’s intrigu­ing as to where this works was kept and how long for. By 1968 the Indus­tri­al Civ­il Defence Soci­ety had been dis­band­ed and the BBC was well under way with prepa­ra­tions to inform in the case of war. Espe­cial­ly odd is the absence of a nation­al ref­er­ence to the test­ing of the plant in a farm­yard in Berk­shire in 1955.

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References

1. A News­pa­per on Wheels — Times Mobile Print­ing Unit in Berks Farm­yard (20 May 1955), The Read­ing Stan­dard.
2. A News­pa­per Office on Wheels — The Times Mobile Print­ing Unit (July 1953), Print In Britain.

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Location

Print­ing House Square, Lon­don

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Head­er Image: The Der­ry Jour­nal, 30 Novem­ber 1953