Many UK print­ers still swear by their ​‘Wind­mills’: Hei­del­berg machines that auto­mat­i­cal­ly pick up paper from a stack and take an impres­sion from the plat­en. Most shops use them today for num­ber­ing, creas­ing and per­fo­rat­ing.

Before this machine was ubiq­ui­tous, there was a British con­tender — The Thomp­son-British Auto Plat­en. Hav­ing spo­ken to a few users and own­ers of these machines, they always have a pref­er­ence for the Thomp­son. Let’s have a look at this under-appre­ci­at­ed press and dig a lit­tle deep­er in to what made it unique.

Thomp­son’s were a long-stand­ing print­ers engi­neer in Man­ches­ter. The pho­to below shows their works on Bux­ton Street, just south of what is now Pic­cadil­ly sta­tion, but ear­li­er papers sug­gest a works at Oxford Works, Bridge­wa­ter Street.

Thomp­son’s must have been painful­ly aware of the advances com­ing from Ger­many with the Hei­del­berg debut in 1913, and pro­duc­tion ramp­ing after World War I. That advance was enor­mous. For the first time small­er print­ers doing ​‘job­bing work’ no longer had to hand-feed their press­es — the task of pick­ing up, lay­ing in the press, and pick­ing out the print­ed sheets.

An Early Model of the Thompson Platen?

There’s some cloudi­ness over the begin­nings of the Thomp­son press. The British Print­er for Octo­ber and Novem­ber 1931 includes an advert for the auto­mat­ic press and I’ve been con­tact­ed by a then-appren­tice, Bernard Ben­nett, to say he used a very ear­ly Thomp­son in the 1940s. These were essen­tial­ly a fac­sim­i­le of the Hei­del­berg plat­en and an appar­ent patent bat­tle led to these orig­i­nal Thomp­sons being recalled and destroyed.

The Sevenoaks Chron­i­cle and Ken­tish Adver­tis­er for 28 Octo­ber 1932 includes a descrip­tion of their new press installed fol­low­ing a fire at their works –

One of the small­er new machines Installed after the fire which destroyed the ​“Couri­er” last June is work­ing at Stand 8: it is a ​“Thomp­son-British” auto plat­en with auto­mat­ic feed, which can deliv­er print­ed sheets at the rate of 3,500 an hour. Although but a unit of the up-to-date machin­ery in the tem­po­rary works, it illus­trates the per­fec­tion achieved by modem print­ing plant, and gives an idea of what the equip­ment of the Couri­er mod­el new works will be like.

Sevenoaks Chron­i­cle and Ken­tish Adver­tis­er

So it would seem that by the ear­ly 1930s Thomp­son was offer­ing a capa­ble, auto­mat­ic plat­en under their name.

The Post-War Thompson

Thomp­son secured a num­ber of patents in the 1930s, with one in 1931 cov­er­ing the ​‘tog­gle mech­a­nism’ which trans­fers pres­sure to the plat­en; one in 1935 relat­ing to the grip­pers that grab the paper; a 1937 patent to do with ​‘sheet deliv­ery’; two in 1938 and one on ink­ing in 1939.

It appears that these improve­ments, plus the impact of ear­li­er legal action, gave us the famil­iar mod­el of Thomp­son seen today, like­ly ready to man­u­fac­ture at the start of World War II but inter­rupt­ed by war. Mark and Gra­ham Press­man relay that a fam­i­ly mem­ber of Thomp­sons report­ed that the Bux­ton Street fac­to­ry was used for war pur­pos­es, rather than print­ing machines, dur­ing World War II.

Pro­duc­tion appears to have been shared between Bux­ton Street in Man­ches­ter and Alvis in Coven­try. A deal bro­kered by the Min­istry of Sup­ply meant that the demand for these press­es could be met by using these two fac­to­ries. The Coven­try Evening Tele­graph report­ed that on 01 June 1948 the first machine to roll off the Alvis pro­duc­tion line had been demon­strat­ed. 2,500 spe­cial jigs, gauges and spe­cial tools had been craft­ed to be able to make the press in Coven­try with a planned out­put of 1,500 press­es each year.

Features of the Thompson-British Auto Platen

There are two key things that sup­port­ers say mean the Thomp­son beats the Hei­del­berg. First, the way in which paper is han­dled — not being spun around like the ​‘wind­mill’ — means that han­dling of paper stock is unpar­al­leled. Pub­lic­i­ty showed that 0·04mm (bank) to 0·94mm (board) paper could be auto­mat­i­cal­ly fed.

Sec­ond­ly, the rollers had no chance to skid as they moved across the plat­en because the Thomp­son employed cogs at the end of each roller that meshed with a sta­t­ic chain down one side of the plat­en.

Tes­ti­mo­ni­als from Hol­land stat­ed “…The sat­is­fac­tion exceed­ed our expec­ta­tions; par­tic­u­lar­ly the feed and deliv­ery. We con­sid­er this a great improve­ment on the…(German machine).”

	Thomp­son-British Auto Plat­en
Inside Chase	15¼″ x 10½″
Max­i­mum Run­ning Speed	3,500iph, with the 1941 mod­el offer­ing 4,000iph

A qui­et week­end is what was need­ed to sort out the nag­ging feed prob­lems with the 1956 #Thomp­son. Made in #Man­ches­ter, Eng­land, this pop­u­lar plat­en start­ed out using the #Hei­del­berg #Wind­mill tech­nol­o­gy, but a law­suit forced Thomp­son to redesign it. #print­inghis­to­ry pic.twitter.com/yFW3MiCIMj

— Howard Iron Works (@HowardIronWorks) August 1, 2022

The End of Thompson

It’s not clear at all when the link with Alvis in Coven­try end­ed, but Thomp­son’s still con­tin­ued in to the 1980s. Indeed in 1972 they secured a fur­ther patent for paper feed­ing for print­ing machines.

Christo­pher Lee con­tact­ed me in Jan­u­ary 2009 to say he was one of the last peo­ple to leave the Bux­ton Street works in 1986. By that point the press­es were being assem­bled by Albert and Roy in batch­es of two. Once the batch was com­plete the pair of machines would be inspect­ed by Jack before being shipped. The build­ing was sold short­ly after with the spare press­es and parts being sold to a firm in Birm­ing­ham.

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Location

Bux­ton Street, Man­ches­ter

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