KBA: 200 years of cylinder presses

A milestone in graphics history – on 29 November 1814 the London Times was printed using the steam driven (double) cylinder press for the first time. They had been using the manual Gutenberg press in the previous 360 years. Printers/inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer  who founded the famous press manufacturer KBA, were responsible for the technical breakthrough of rotating cylinders. De ´new´ press was able to print 1,100 sheet per hour, nearly 5 times as many as the manual Gutenberg press. This resulted in faster and cheaper production and as such made printing accessible to a larger audience. Printing was no longer just for newspapers, also books and magazines were produced like this. The concept of the rotating cylinders is still being used in 2014, both in sheet and in rotation presses. The blanket cylinder as used in offset is also based on the invention. Modern digital (ink jet) presses also use cylinders to feed through paper. Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer built their first factory in Würzburg in 1817, close to where the current KBA plants are now.