Copperplate Presses

Cylinder presses for printing engraved copper plates are recorded from the sixteenth century, and the style of printing press has not changed in principle to this day. Copper engraving is an intaglio process, which means that the image in incised into the plate and the printing ink held in the incised grooves. This demands a different system of printing than for relief forms such as type. In the copperplate press, pressure is supplied between a rolling cylinder and a flatbed carrying the copper plate. The cylinder provides a line of great pressure travelling across the plate, sufficient to force paper down into the plate to reach ink lying in the engraved lines. Copperplate presses were mechanized during the nineteenth century. Later in the century photogravure was introduced—the photomechanical version of the engraving process—and then rotogravure, which is photogravure printed on high-speed rotary presses. On the rotary press the plate is wrapped around a second cylinder, instead of lying on the flat bed.

Intaglio printing is represented in this collection by hand presses. Some larger machines are represented in the museum's patent model collection.