Vintage press restored on display at PG's new facility

Visitors to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's 21st century printing facility also will get a glimpse into the newspaper's past.

Post-Gazette Publisher and editor-in-chief John Robinson Block has found and acquired a Washington hand press similar to the type used to print the Pittsburgh Gazette between 1829 and 1845.

The Washington Press will have a temporary home in the lobby of the Post-Gazette's printing plant in the Clinton Commerce Park.

The eventual place of honor for the restored artifact will be the lobby of the renovated Post-Gazette offices at 34 Blvd. of the Allies. That location in the Golden Triangle is only about two blocks from where partners John Scull and Joseph Hall published the first edition of the Pittsburgh Gazette in 1786.

The Post-Gazette's publisher bought the press from Ed Regan, 64, a collector and restorer of antique presses. Mr. Regan, a former printer and longtime printing press installer, has a collection of about 200 presses. He lives in Parr, Ind., about 45 miles south of Gary and 470 miles west of Pittsburgh.

The iron and cast-iron Washington Press weighs about 4,000 pounds. The 19th century classic stands about 6 feet tall and is about 4 feet wide and a little more than 6 feet long. The machine's platen, the heavy metal plate that evenly presses paper against inked type, measures 22 1/4 inches by 32 5/8 inches wide. That size made it suitable for publishing newspapers as well as many other kinds of job printing.

Its cast-iron frame bears the serial number 2929 and is decorated with bas-relief medallions of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, one of the nation's first newspaper publishers. A chart of production dates provided by the manufacturer in 1965 indicates that No. 2929 was made in 1850, although Mr. Regan said that exact date is not definitive.

"That device is the only invention to be enshrined in the Constitution," Mr. Block said of the Washington Press. "The reason we live in a mostly free country is because of that machine and others like it."

This press was the early 19th-century version of mass media, but it also required massive outputs of human strength--so much so that two workers generally produced four impressions a minute, impressions that later had to be turned over and printed on the other side. Printing the Gazette this way was arduous, requiring eight hours' hard and sweaty labor. By contrast, the Post-Gazette's new presses can produce 90,000 copies an hour.

Mr. Regan delivered the restored press to the Post-Gazette's production facility last week. It has been set up in the building's lobby.

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Vintage press restored on display at PG's new facility