Lisenby Mfg. Co Multi Color Press 1925 M-24?

had the exact same press back in the early 1960’s. i think its like the Verner press (not sure). i wrote to the company and got a nice letter back saying that there was no info available because the company went out of business in the early 1930’s. an old timer told me these were used to print mostly envelopes. there are two ink discs, one at each end of the bed, two sets of rollers mounted on the frame, when the bed goes back and forth the chase will move half under one set of rollers then the other way gets inked the other half by the other set of rollers. you could ink each end with a different color and print 2 colors at the same time. my press was missing one set of rollers so i could only print half the chase.the darn think ran rather fast, it was hand fed and delivered automatically. the impression cylinder was like a typewriter roller, on my press the impression roller did not lift to allow the type to return, so it always printed on the cylinder. after months of playing with it i gave it away. i know i still have the letter, will post it if i can find it.

Thanks for the information Dick. I was told that this press was taken from a print shop that closed down in the early 80’s and it was used for mostly advertising at the time. Since then it has been sitting in a basement unused. Hopefully someone out there might be interested in fixing this up or using it as parts as it’s a neat looking machine and I’m sure it would be fun to see it work again.

right after graduating high school in 1966 i went to work for a linotype co, the machinist that serviced the linos knew i was looking for a paper cutter, he called me and said he had a deal for me, a nice 19” paper cutter and a 10x15 c&p and an offset press a multi, they wanted $100 for the 2 presses and the cutter and they would deliver them to my driveway for $15.00. i took them sight unseen. the mulit was the press you have, the c&p was a 9x13 (i think) pearless, it had been dropped at some point and there were many steel plates bolted to it to hold the frame together., in the chase was a line of type locked up, it was someone’s name, there were so many different fonts in the line that you couldn’t tell what was the right one. i was going to junk it but threw some ink on the pitted rollers, to my surprise the darn thing printed fine, dragged it into the cellar and used it for 3 or 4 years.

The Lisenbys invented the Multicolor press, in California. The company was sold, moved East, and the press became the Verner Multipress. For years Jack Popkin sold parts for them, but no longer.
Fred Williams wrote an article about them in Type & Press, but unfortunately, the APA has not put that online:

http://www.apa-letterpress.com/T%20&%20P%20ARTICLES/indexp.html

Verner made some improvements over the years, and added a stack bottom feeder and side delivery. These presses were used by many companies for envelope production.

I also had one, although the Verner version, and it ran like “a bat out of hell”. The company I got it from used it for imprinting “prayer cards” for the funeral industry.

J Henry