The paper-based busi­ness process­es of ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry com­merce required mas­sive amounts of print­ed arti­cles. It was­n’t always pos­si­ble to get these pro­fes­sion­al­ly print­ed and just as the Gestet­ner and Roneo dupli­ca­tors had allowed type­writ­ten mate­r­i­al to be dupli­cat­ed in an office, there was a gap for some­thing between Gestet­ner and pro­fes­sion­al­ly print­ed items.

In to this space steps the Multi­graph, an Amer­i­can ear­ly 1900s inven­tion. The first ref­er­ence I can see in the UK is a 1913 report of a Decem­ber 1912 adver­tis­ing con­ven­tion where Gam­me­ter-Multi­graph was an exhibitor.

Com­pos­ing was made eas­i­er as type was slid on to grooves in the cylin­der rather than com­posed in chas­es need­ing lock­ing-up. Mak­eready was elim­i­nat­ed as a large hard­er rub­ber cylin­der was under the paper mean­ing any un-eve­ness in print­ing sur­face was accom­mo­dat­ed.

This was great news for the office need­ing new forms, but less good news for print­ers that would have had been paid for that work as pro­fes­sion­als.

Principles

Press

The press looks like a Gestetner/stencil dupli­ca­tor. A pile of fresh paper one side, a large cylin­der to hold the type, an ink­ing method — this could be either print­ers’ ink trans­ferred through a roller, or a large rib­bon like a type­writer. Final­ly there’s a tray to hold the fin­ished copies that have been through the machine.

These machines were pow­ered from the start with a sug­gest­ed speed of up to 6,000iph, with the first machines being hand-fed with paper but lat­er machines hav­ing a mechan­i­cal or suc­tion feed. The lat­er machines offered up to 7,000iph. Print­ing area is lim­it­ed to around 8″ × 13″.

Type

Multi­graph sup­plied dif­fer­ent styles of type for the machine. The fact that the grooves on the cylin­der are around 12pt apart means that each print­ed line is 12pt or a mul­ti­ple of 12pt apart. For type larg­er than 24pt, these were made curved and had mul­ti­ple ​‘feet’ to slide in to the machine’s grooves. The dia­gram below from the British Print­ing Soci­ety’s Small Print­er mag­a­zine from 1986 shows the struc­ture of the type.

The same arti­cle by J. F. Coak­ley reports that Mould­type of Pre­ston had 10pt and 12pt moulds for cast­ing faces on to Multi­graph bod­ies, and also one 18pt mould.

Clips hold the type in the chan­nel while in use, and cor­rect­ing a line means slid­ing out the whole line from the groove, cor­rect­ing and replac­ing. Cru­cial­ly no oth­er part of the forme needs to be touched.

In addi­tion to the spe­cial types, a kind of typo­graph was cre­at­ed, where type was stored in grooved chan­nels, released by but­tons allow­ing users to type to release a sin­gle let­ter that could be added to the drum.

Uses

While designed to fill that gap between a sin­gle type­writ­ten page and pro­fes­sion­al­ly-print­ed mat­ter, the Multi­graph was put to use across a vari­ety of print­ed items.

This old arti­cle, through archive.org by Allen Alt­vater gives a nice account of the many uses his Multi­graph was put to includ­ing direct mail­ings for movies, church newslet­ters, and a study on fires.

The Multi­graph Users’ Ser­vice Bul­letins pro­vid­ed exam­ples of the type of work the machine and types could do, includ­ing this exam­ple newslet­ter, below.

Industry Response

Print­ers nat­u­ral­ly sought to chal­lenge the sta­tus of the machine that was draw­ing off some of their work. In 1925 a ques­tion of the Home Depart­ment in the House of Com­mons clar­i­fied that a space used for dupli­cat­ing (or Multi­graph­ing) should be con­sid­ered in the same way as a let­ter­press print­ing works under the Fac­to­ries Act.

…the increase in the num­ber of multi­graph and kin­dred machines is grad­u­al­ly tak­ing away from the ordi­nary print­er no small pro­por­tion of the small jobs many of them used to rely upon.

British Print­er, Jan­u­ary-Feb­ru­ary 1926

In 1929, the Mas­ter Print­ers’ Asso­ci­a­tion of New South Wales sup­port­ed the New South Wales Print­ing Indus­try Union in an action to force those doing this type of dupli­cat­ing to be brought under the same con­di­tions as those that gov­erned the print­ing trade.

In his 02 Octo­ber judge­ment, the Deputy Indus­tri­al Com­mis­sion­er ruled that ​“that there can be noth­ing in com­mon between these high­ly skilled trades­men, who are sole­ly employed as print­ers, and the oper­a­tors of the Roneo and Multi­graph machines, who are, com­par­a­tive­ly speak­ing, unskilled junior work­ers, so far as the oper­a­tion of the machines is con­cerned, though, no doubt, they are skilled in their cler­i­cal duties, which, on the evi­dence, con­sti­tute the major por­tion of their work.” The appli­ca­tion was dis­missed.

Addressograph-Multigraph

The snap­pi­ly-named Addres­so­graph-Multi­graph made more than just the Multi­graph machine in the UK. In the ear­ly 1950s they mar­ket­ed off­set litho machines espe­cial­ly to small­er print­ers, includ­ing those at home or in-plant works. Their most famous machine is prob­a­bly the Mul­ti­lith 1250. The firm was re-named AM Multi­graph­ics some time before 1984.

Roneotype

It looks like Roneo — more famous for their spir­it dupli­ca­tors and met­al office fur­ni­ture — cre­at­ed a machine very sim­i­lar to the Mult­graph called the Roneo­type.

---

European Update

Thomas Grave­mak­er, a print­ing friend from the Nether­lands reports that label print­ing — includ­ing the labels for VW seat­belts — still use this type of machine in Europe. Type was being cast by Rain­er Ger­sten­berg in Darm­stadt up to 72pt until last year. The Ger­man name for these types being Kurz­typen or ​‘short types’.

---

Location

Addres­so­graph-Multi­graph Lim­it­ed, Mary­lands Avenue, Hemel Hemp­stead, Hert­ford­shire

---

---

Head­er Image: ​“Multi­graph” flickr pho­to by firexbrat https://flickr.com/photos/firebrat/3942205130 shared under a Cre­ative Com­mons (BY-NC-ND) license