Augustus Applegath

Often appears mis-spelt as "Augustus Applegarth"

Augustus Applegath (17 June 1788 - 9 February 1871) was an English printer and inventor known for the development of the first workable vertical-drum rotary printing press.

Applegath was born in the Stepney district of London, the second child of Augustus Joseph Applegath, a captain in the East India Company and his wife, Ann, née Lepard. He went to school at Alfred House Academy in London and apprenticed with Benjamin Lepard, a wholesale stationer, at Covent Garden. In collaboration with his brother-in-law Edward Cowper (1790-1852), he carried out most of his work in the Dartford and Crayford areas of Kent.

Applegath was a skilled printer who notably made a number of improvements to the steam-powered flat-bed press of Friedrich Konig (1813). Other inventions included processes for printing on silk and, in 1816, improvements to banknote printing. By 1819, Applegath’s banknote machine was installed at the Bank of England.

In 1828, Applegath and Cowper built a flatbed printing machine for The Times in London. This press had the capacity of 4,200 prints per hour.

William Nicholson had patented a rotary printing press in 1790, but attempts to build a working prototype had been unsuccessful. It was not until 1848 that Applegath developed a working version. In that same year, it replaced the flatbed printer that had been in use at The Times for almost twenty years. The design employed stereotypes bent to fit around a cylinder and included four large impression rollers that required eight people to feed the paper. Two rotations were required to print a single sheet. This rotary technique improved the Times’s ability to print, from 5000 copies of the paper per hour in 1847, to 8000 copies per hour in 1848.

Applegath’s press was featured at The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. However, shortly thereafter, it was overshadowed by a more advanced horizontal rotary press developed in the USA by Richard Hoe.