Plat­en press­es here include press­es pow­ered by foot, steam or elec­tric­i­ty. Their main char­ac­ter­is­tic is that paper is fed into a ​‘jaw’ with the type on one side and paper on the oth­er. Some have auto­mat­ic feeds, so that paper does­n’t have to be sup­plied by hand for each impres­sion.

These machines formed the main­stay of job­bing print­ers let­tr­press work up to the 1980s, and are used today by print­ers for cut­ting, creas­ing and num­ber­ing.