Old Printing Press For University

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29770, 13 March 1962, Page 17

Old Printing Press For University

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON. March 12. Victoria University of Wellington can claim to have the newest, and oldest, printing house in the country.

Because of the generosity of the Cambridge University Press, Victoria's English department owns, and will soon operate, one of the oldest iron printing presses in the world, and almost certainly the oldest working press in Australia and New Zealand. To be known as “the Wai-te-Ata Press”—it is housed in Wai-te-Ata road, near the university—the press was brought to New Zealand last year for Victoria by Dr, D. F. McKenzie, originally from Palmerston North, a Cambridge graduate and now senior lecturer in English at Victoria.

While at Cambridge, Dr. McKenzie did a history of that university’s press operations in the early eighteenth century and worked for some time with the press. When he was ready to leave for New Zealand it was suggested he might care to take an old press back with him for teaching purposes at Victoria. The press, which was crated to New Zealand in pieces, was built by Robert Walker in 1813 for its inventor, Lord

Stanhope, and sold in that year to Cambridge for £BB.

Number 108 Although originally invented in 1800, this model was only the one hundred and eighth to be built as is shown by the number 108 prominently stamped into its superstructure. A similar press, but numbered 113. stands in the vestibule of the Cambridge Uni versity Press. When Stanhope invented the machine it represented a major structural change because it was made of iron and incorporated a toggle device giving a greater leverage that only iron could sustain.

In all other respects it is not greatly different from the one Caxton used to print the first books in England. Dr. McKenzie, with help from colleagues and students, has reassembled the “Stanhope” in a converted garage which is now decorated with samples of early printing and is nearly fully equipped for printing with gear that he and the university have bought or acquired The press will be used not so much to teach students how to print but how old books were printed, an essential part of any work involving textual criticism and the authority of old printed matter.

A link with Cambridge will be maintained by the use of Van Dijk type faces, a face that was used when the Cambridge University Press was founded in 1696 and in those days brought from Holland.