Hoc

HOE, RICHARD MARCH (Sept. 12, 1812-
June 7,1886), inventor, manufacturer, was born
in New York City, the eldest son of Robert Hoe
\_q.v:] and Rachel (Smith) Hoe. After obtain-
ing a common school education, he entered his
father's press-building establishment at the age
of fifteen, about the time that his father was ex-
perimenting with cylinder presses. On the re-
tirement of the elder Hoe in 1830, Richard and
his cousin Matthew Smith were given the full
responsibility of the establishment. The former
became intensely interested in the experimental
and manufacturing phases of the business and
developed the same mechanical ingenuity which
had distinguished his father. About the time
that young Hoe assumed the management, the
single small cylinder press embodying improve-
ments on Napier's inventions made by the elder
Hoe and Sereno Newton, was being made and
sold by the Hoe Company. While the capacity
of this press was 2,000 impressions an hour, the
demand for greater speed of output prompted
Hoe to concentrate on improvements to meet this
demand, and in 1837 the double small cylinder
press was perfected and introduced. During this
same decade, too, he designed and put into pro-
duction the single large cylinder press, the first
flat bed and cylinder press ever used in the
United States. Hundreds of these machines were
made in subsequent years and used for book, job,
and woodcut printing. In 1845 and 1846 Hoe
was busily engaged in designing and inventing
presses to meet the increased requirements of the
newspaper publishers. The result was the con-
struction of the Hoe type-revolving machine
based on Hoe's patents. The basis of these in-
ventions was an apparatus for securely fastening
the forms of type on a central cylinder placed in
a horizontal position. Around this central cyl-
inder from four to ten impression cylinders, ac-
cording to output required, were grouped. The
first of these machines was installed in 1847 in
the office of the Public Ledger, Philadelphia. It
had four impression cylinders, and, with one boy
assigned to each of the cylinders to feed blank
paper, printed 8,000 papers an hour. A revolu-
tion in newspaper printing took place almost im-
mediately, and for twenty-five years thereafter
Hoe's rotary press continued supreme through-
out the world. In 1853 Hoe introduced the stop
cylinder press, patented in France by Dutartre,
and improved it in subsequent years for use in
lithographic and letter-press work. The perfec-
tion in 1861 of the curved stereotype plate and
the construction by William Bullock [g.z/.] in
1865 of the first printing machine to print from a
continuous web or roll of paper, indicated the

Hoe

direction for further improvements in newspaper
presses. In 1871, therefore, Hoe with Stephen
D. Tucker, one of his partners, began experi-
menting and designed and built a web press.
The first of these machines used in the United
States was installed in the office of the New York
Tribune. At its maximum speed this press print-
ed on both sides of a sheet and produced 18,000
perfect papers an hour. Four years later Tucker
patented a rotating folding cylinder which fold-
ed papers as fast as they came from the press,
and in 1881 the Hoe Company devised the trian-
gular former folder, which, when incorporated
in a press together with twenty-odd additional
improvements, brought into existence the mod-
ern newspaper press. With its introduction, of
course, the type-revolving press of 1847 was en-
tirely superseded. Under Hoe's masterful man-
agement the company grew at a rapid rate. In
1859 it purchased the Isaac Adams Press Works
in Boston, and shortly after the Civil War a new
and larger plant covering an entire block was
erected on Grand Street, New York, and the
original establishment on Gold Street was aban-
doned. The company's foreign business had kept
pace, too, with that in America, and between
1865 and 1870 a large manufacturing branch was
established in London. This plant in operation
employed six hundred people. Throughout his
life Hoe continued to be the dominating influence
in the company. He was considered the most
charitable of employers, devoting much time,
thought, and money to the welfare of his em-
ployees. Early in his career he established an
evening school for his factory apprentices where
free instruction was given in those branches
likely to be of the most practical use. He was for
years addressed by the title of "Colonel," which
he had won from an early service in the Na-
tional Guard. His home, "Brightside," in West-
Chester County, N. Y., above Harlem, contained
a large collection of art treasures and books. He
died suddenly in Florence, Italy, while on a com-
bined health and pleasure trip with his wife and
a daughter. Hoe was twice married: first, to
Lucy Gilbert of Salem, N. Y., and second, to
Mary Gay Corbin of Philadelphia, who, with
their three daughters and two by his first mar-
riage, survived him. He was succeeded as head
of the Hoe company by his nephew Robert Hoe

[Robert Hoe, A Short Hist, of the Printing Press
(1902) ; W. W. Pasko, Aw. Diet, of Printing and Book-
making (1894) ; J. L. Bishop, A Hist, of Am. Manu-
factures (2 vols., 1864) ; S. D. Tucker, "Hist, of R.
Hoe & Company, N. Y," (MS. in Lib. of Cong.) j N. Y.
Tribune, and N. Y. Times, June 9, 1886.]

104