It’s these press­es that you’ll see in many mod­ern print­ing works.  They have a ver­sa­tile auto­mat­ic feed but the machines are more often used for cut­ting, creas­ing and num­ber­ing than for print­ing.  Sec­ond-hand machine often have had their ink­ing equip­ment removed.

The machine uses air suc­tion to pick up paper — con­trast this with the Arab which had no auto­mat­ic feed even for the last machines pro­duced in 1959.  The suc­tion sys­tem uses two arms — one lift­ing paper from the stock while anoth­er draws paper that’s just been print­ed away from the plat­en.  This mech­a­nism gives the press the nick­name the ​‘wind­mill’.  While the small print­er will use lay gauges to posi­tion paper on the plat­en, dif­fer­ent Hei­del­berg mod­els used dif­fer­ent approach­es — the paper was held by the wind­mill while print­ed; or was dropped on to lays on the plat­en; or was shift­ed in to posi­tion by reg­is­ter guides.

Ink­ing is through two forme rollers with an option­al rid­er roller.  Ink reach­es the forme rollers from the duct, via. a duct roller; four rollers and then to the ink­ing drum which rec­i­p­ro­cates.

There was a gap in sales dur­ing World War 2, but new British machines fol­low­ing the war were sold as ​‘Orig­i­nal Hei­del­bergs’.  In 1957 the machine cost £1000 and was sup­plied with instal­la­tion and a week’s worth of guid­ance from the man­u­fac­tur­er.

In 1958, two mod­els of press were avail­able badged as ​“Orig­i­nal Hei­del­berg” platens.  Their spec­i­fi­ca­tions; along with the 1958 pub­lic­i­ty are shown below.

Heidelberg Platen Specifications

Original Heidelberg 10″ x 15″

Original Heidelberg 13″ x 18″