Old-time Presses In A Modern World

Those printers of yesteryear would have salivated at the thought of printing 15,000 sheets an hour on one of today's offset presses. In colonial times, one page every 20 seconds, or 180 sheets an hour, was a good rate—and that was with two men on a press.

"With some things, they could push it to 240 impressions an hour," adds Willie Parker, a printer at Colonial Williamsburg, in Virginia. His shop operates two reproduction wooden presses patterned after mid-18th-century equipment. But unlike its predecessors, his shop outputs just 100 sheets a day.