:''Often appears mis-spelt as "Augustus Applegarth"'' Augustus Applegath (17 June 1788 – 9 February 1871) was an English printer and inventor known for the development of the first workable vertical-drum

rotary printing press A rotary printing press is a printing press in which the images to be printed are curved around a cylinder. Printing can be done on various substrates, including paper, cardboard, and plastic. Substrates can be sheet feed or unwound on a contin ...

Early life

Applegath was born in the

Stepney Stepney is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the East End of London. Stepney is no longer officially defined, and is usually used to refer to a relatively small area. However, for much of its history the place name was applied to ...

district of London, the second child of Augustus Joseph Applegath, a captain in the East India Company and his wife, Ann, née Lepard. He went to school at Alfred House Academy in London and apprenticed with Benjamin Lepard, a wholesale stationer, at Covent Garden. In collaboration with his brother-in-law Edward Cowper (1790–1852), he carried out most of his work in the

Dartford Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located south-east of Central London and is situated adjacent to the London Borough of Bexley to its west. To its north, across the Thames Estuary, is Thurrock in ...

and

Crayford Crayford is a town and Wards of the United Kingdom, electoral ward in South London, South East London, England, within the London Borough of Bexley. It lies east of Bexleyheath and north west of Dartford. Crayford was in the Historic countie ...

areas of

Kent Kent is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Essex across the Thames Estuary to the north, the Strait of Dover to the south-east, East Sussex to the south-west, Surrey to the west, and Gr ...

Career

Applegath was a skilled printer who notably made a number of improvements to the steam-powered flat-bed press of Friedrich Konig (1813). Other inventions included processes for printing on silk and, in 1816, improvements to banknote printing. By 1819, Applegath's banknote machine was installed at the

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the Kingdom of England, English Government's banker and debt manager, and still one ...

. In 1828, Applegath and Cowper built a flatbed printing machine for

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

in London. This press had the capacity of 4,200 prints per hour. William Nicholson had patented a rotary printing press in 1790, but attempts to build a working prototype had been unsuccessful. It was not until 1848 that Applegath developed a working version. In that same year, it replaced the flatbed printer that had been in use at The Times for almost twenty years. The design consisted of a large vertical cylinder, 200 inches in circumference. Ordinary type was used in columns to produce a polygonal printing surface. It had eight impression cylinders and needed eight people to feed the paper. It could produce 8,000 impressions per hour (on one side of the paper) and eventually up to 10,000 depending on the skill of those feeding it. A four-cylinder version of Applegath's press as used by the

Illustrated London News ''The Illustrated London News'', founded by Herbert Ingram and first published on Saturday 14 May 1842, was the world's first illustrated weekly news magazine. The magazine was published weekly for most of its existence, switched to a less freq ...

was featured at

The Great Exhibition The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, also known as the Great Exhibition or the Crystal Palace Exhibition (in reference to the temporary structure in which it was held), was an international exhibition that took ...

of 1851 in London. At the same time,

Richard Hoe Richard March Hoe (middle name spelled in some 1920s records as "Marsh"; September 12, 1812 – June 7, 1886) was an American inventor from New York City who designed a rotary printing press identical to Josiah Warren's original invention, and re ...

of New York was developing a more efficient horizontal rotary press which as available with two, four, six or ten impression cylinders. The first one of this type was imported by Edward Lloyd in 1856 and was soon adopted by many newspapers including

. Applegarth had a joint patent, with engineer and inventor Joseph Gibbs, awarded on 29 March, 1833, for "certain improvements in steam-carriages."

References

External links

Dartford Archive biography of Applegath
English inventors 1788 births 1871 deaths People from Crayford {{UK-engineer-stub