PRINTING TRADE OF BRITAIN

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21966, 15 December 1936, Page 18

PRINTING TRADE OF BRITAIN

* MORE THAN 300,000 WORK IN INDUSTRY exhibition opened by duke OF KENT (FBOII OUB OWK CORRESPONDENT.) LONDON, November 25. Great Britain’s printing trade represents an invested capital of approximately £100.000,000 in Pol and buildings alone, and keeps upward of 300,000 skilled workers in constant employment. These facts were mentioned by the Duke of Kent when he opened the ninth International Printing, Stationery, and Allied Trades Exhibition at Olympia this week. It would be difficult, said the Duke, to exaggerate the importance of printing in the daily life of the nation today. The demand for the printed word in all its forms had increased at a rate which, it might be hoped, reflected a demand for a higher standard of civilisation. Newspapers, books, posters, commercial printing of every kind were put before the public in greater and greater quantities. During a tour of the exhibition the Duke of Kent saw some of the latest high-speed rotary and flat-bed printing machinery, composing machines, and equipment for the small type of business which is still a feature of the printing industry. At one stand where an operator sitting at a keyboard was setting up type in Hindustani it was explained that the machine did the work of 10 compositors. Sir William Codling, controller of his Majesty’s Stationery Office, in a speech, said that printing machines had been developing rapidly in speed of production. A rotary unit of a type shown in the exhibition would print more than 63,000 newspapers an hour. Great improvements had also been made in the last few years in typecomposing machines, and the variety of work that could now be set was notably superior to that which was possible at the time of the previous exhibition.

Hansard and the official “London Gazette” are to follow the example of certain newspapers which have recently appeared in an entirely new type.