High Speed Printing Machine Manufacturer R. Hoe & Co. Also Manufactures and Sells Many Hand Presses

On October 19, 1855 the New York Daily Times, ancestor of The New York Times, ran in the three left columns of its front page MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY. R. HOE & CO.'S ESTABLISHMENT. A DAY AMONG MACHINERY. In retrospect it was notable that a newspaper would devote half of its front page to what essentially amounted to a long feature article on a New York manufacturer. 

We learn from this article that Richard March Hoe bean producing high speed presses around 1842, and that by 1855 twenty-three fast R. Hoe & Co. presses were in operation in the offices of the following U.S. newspapers:

Two 8-cylinder presses - Philadelphia Ledger

One 8-cylinder press - New York Sun

One 4-cylinder press - New York Sun

Two 4-cylinder presses - New York Herald

One 6-cylinder press - New York Herald

One 6-cylinder press - New York Daily Times

One 4-cylinder press - New York Daily Times

One 6-cylinder press -  New York Tribune

One 4-cylinder press - New York Tribune

Two 4-cylinder presses - Baltimore Sun

One 4-cylinder press - N.Y. Sunday Dispatch

One 4-cylinder press - N.Y. Com. Advertiser

One 4-cylinder press - N.Y. Evening Post

One 4-cylinder press - N.Y. Staats Zeitung

One 4-cylinder Press - La Patrie, Paris

One 4-cylinder press - Boston Times

One 4-cylinder press - Boston Traveller

One 4-cylinder press - Boston Journal

One 4-cylinder press - Phila. Eve. Bulletin

One 4-cylinder press - Cinccinnati Commercial.

Notably the article devotes about as much space to Hoe's "Saw Department" and its "Hand Press Shop" as it does to Hoe's mechanized printing machines--what it calls Hoe's "Printing Press Department."  We learn that the "Hand Press Shop" at this time sold four hand presses per week, chiefly of the Peter Smith and Washington designs, and that the company offered numerous other devices to supplement hand press work.