When The Mercury printing press roars into life in the early hours of the morning,seven days a week, it's one of the final stages of the newspaper's production. In its long history The Mercury and its presses have undergone considerable changes.
The
first copies of the Hobart Mercury were turned out on a primitive Columbian
press driven by an operator turning a handle at an output of between 80
and 100 small newspapers an hour.Within months this had been replaced
by a two-cylinder perfecting machine, and its ability to print four pages
at one time was regarded as a scientific miracle. The
Columbian Press
A Wharfedale press was in use by 1862, and this hand-driven unit was later converted to steam power.Forty years later, in June 1902, Davies Brothers installed its first American-built Goss press.The Goss had been custom-built in Chicago and shipped to Hobart in 29 packing cases, weighing nearly 25 tonnes.The press could produce a six, eight, or 10-page newspaper at a rate of 20,000 copies an hour - for the princely sum of one penny.Increased circulation brought about the installation of another Goss press in 1906.
By February 1923 the company had graduated to a Hoe sextuplet double-decker, and in April 1924 a London-built Hoe quadruple press was installed. Davies Brothers' relationship with Goss and Hoe presses continued - as it does today with the installation of another Goss rotary press in the late 1920s which saw the introduction of two-spot colour. This press served The Mercury through the 30s and wartime 40s, to be replaced in May 1946 by a Scott four-in-one press. Powered by 14 push-button 80-horsepower electric motors, the Scott press poured out 30,000 folded newspapers an hour.
The giant press stood on foundations strong enough to support a large building. It arrived from Sydney in 168 boxes, each weighing two tonnes. It took six months to install, with the job done entirely by Davies Brothers staff. The machine's biggest challenge was the printing on July 5, 1954, of the special magazine to mark the centenary of The Mercury. The first edition of the Saturday Evening Mercury, later popularly known as SEM, waspublished two days earlier on July 3. The last copy of The Mercury produced on this press was published on Saturday, February 1, 1958 and a new Hoe press, built in London, was used the following Monday.
The
ultra-modern Hoe had been built for Melbourne's Argus
newspaper and was bought by Davies Brothers when The Argus closed in the mid-1950s.
The shipment of the huge plant was made in 350 packages, with the heaviest
weighing nearly five tonnes.About 650 tonnes of complicated machinery
was dismantled in Melbourne and rebuilt from a jigsaw puzzle of parts
in Hobart. Thirty-five years later the Hoe press ended its service in
February 1993. Its replacement, a reconditioned Goss Urbanite press commissioned that month, produced tabloid editions of the Mercury, Saturday Mercury and Sunday Tasmanian and a string of sister publications including Tasmanian Country and the Derwent Valley Gazette, until May 2009. Printing in full colour on the front, back and selected inside pages became a daily feature in December 1993, used extensively by advertisers and in news, sport and feature sections of these newspapers.
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In May 2009, a $31 print centre was established by the Mercury at the Tasmanian Technopark, Dowsing Point. The centrepiece of this new facility is a six-tower KBA Comet printing press which at the time was the most advanced in Australia. In addition to meeting all of the company's needs for the publishing of the Mercury and associated publications, the centre also prints several mainland newspapers for distribution in Tasmania, in both tabloid and broadsheet formats. |
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The KBA Comet installed in 2009 |
The Mercury Print Centre |
