Current Exhibit
The Story of Multigraph Technology
One hundred years ago the Addressograph Compay of Clevland, Ohio had installed two kinds of machines in Masonic halls, town halls and other civic organizations across the country. These machines were a Graphotype and addressing machine using metal plates. The Addressograph Company had captured the lion’s share of the addressing of mail. The company decided to manufacture a machine to print the various news bulletins that these organizations were mailing.
The most fashionable method of communicating one hundred years ago was by typewriter. Accordingly, the Addressograph Company designed a simple printing machine that initially was designed to use typewriter fonts and even printed using a wide ribbon so that the eventual product appeared to have been typed out on a typewriter. The Multigraph used small type elements that were selected from a font master using what was referred to as a composing fork. The Multigraph machines became wide spread and inking rollers were added to the machines so that they could alternatively be used as small relief presses. There were so many of these machines out in the market that other companies began to manufacture both type and illustrations for Multigraph technology.
Eventually the Multigraph machines made the transition to offset technology and while the Multigraph name was retained on the early offset presses, the machines were subsequently named Multiliths. The offset machines then went on to form the platform from which the copy shop industry was built.
