The vatman's arms

Apr 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Frank Romano

In the 1600s, the Dutch invented the two-unit mold for making paper to match the stretch of an average vatman's arms — about 44 inches. The length of the two molds was around 17 inches front to back, because the laid lines and watermarks ran from left to right. Thus, paper was made in sheet sizes of 44 inches and 22 inches to maximize the efficiency of papermaking.

Later, when papermaking machines entered the trade, the traditional sheet sizes continued to be used, but not always. In 1921, the Bureau of the Budget established an interagency advisory group, which established 8 × 10.5 inches as the general U.S. government letterhead standard. This extended an earlier ruling by Herbert Hoover, who was Secretary of Commerce at the time. A committee consisting of printing industry representatives worked with the Bureau of Standards as part of Hoover's program for the “Elimination of Waste in Industry.” This group established basic sizes for all types of printing and writing papers. The size for “letter” was based on a 17 × 22-inch sheet, and the “legal” size was based on a 17 × 28-inch sheet. The term “20-lb. bond” comes from the weight of 500 sheets of 17 × 22-inch bond paper — not from the weight of a ream of 500 8.5 × 11-inch sheets.

In the 1980s, President Reagan proclaimed that 8.5 × 11 inches was the official standard-sized paper. The only objective: to reduce inventory requirements for paper into sizes that would cut from a minimum trimming waste.

As copying machines and, later, printers entered the business office, the home and the printing factory, they standardized on 8.5 × 11-inch and its two-up format of 11 × 17 inches. The 12 × 18-inch size allowed an 11 × 17-inch to bleed (after cutting). Today, 13 × 19 inches is the new 12 × 18 inches and some digital printers have a sheet size of about 14 × 20 inches, a size established by the Heidelberg GTO press in 1992. The Xerox iGen3 has a “stretch” option that gets it to 14.1 × 22.3 inches.

In Europe, the metric system standardized paper sizes, but North America never followed suit. A3 paper equals 297 × 420 millimeters (11.69 × 16.54 inches) and A4 paper equals 210 × 297 millimeters (8.27 × 11.69 inches).

Printing presses follow sheet sizes — one-up, two-up, four-up, eight-up, etc. Copiers and printers more or less follow the press sheet sizes, but end at two-up. Web presses (roll-fed or continuous-fed) derive their sheet size from the width of the paper and the length of the cutoff. The knife cuts the printed roll into units that are folded into signatures of four, six, eight, 16 or more pages. Printers have long known the advantage of printing signatures, and their bindery systems have followed suit.

Presses are not logical, either. Different manufacturers have different plate and blanket sizes, this affects sheet sizes, and sheet sizes usually are based on paper grade.

All of this brings us to the fact that 13 years into the digital color printing revolution, we still do not see a trend to true signature-based printing. At Drupa 2000, Indigo introduced the XB2 digital color press, the first of Indigo's Series-4 presses. Capable of printing up to seven colors, the XB2 was shown with a maximum sheet size of 19.7 × 27.5 inches (not quite B2 size) and could print up to 8,000 letter-sized pages per hour, or 136 pages per minute (ppm). Print resolution on the XB2 was 800 dpi. It was shown at Drupa 2000 and Indigo expected the XB2 to be commercially available in 2002. That did not happen. HP acquired Indigo and said the technical hurdles were substantial.

In the meantime, Xeikon introduced the 50D 20-inch version — to this day, it is the only digital production printer capable of producing a four-up flat or eight-up signature.

But, there are signs that bigger sheets might be the next big thing in digital printing. At a printing show in Shanghai, China, a Chinese company called Jadason Technology showed a B2-sized (20.5 × 29.1-inch or 520 × 740 mm), 100-ppm, 1,200-dpi, cut-sheet, simplex, five-color digital press. Called the Q-Press, the speed is derived from four-up A4 (the metric “almost” 8.5 × 11 inches) at 20 sheets per minute. How it came to be 100 ppm, I do not know. I get 80 ppm, by those numbers.

Note that we have not been talking about wide-format inkjet printing. Inkjet printers might get to four-up signatures before toner printers do. Because they are roll-fed, a turn bar would allow duplexing.

The world is not limited to 8.5 × 11 inches, and it all might have turned out differently if those Dutchmen had longer arms.

Contact Romano at fxrppr@rit.edu.