Does it press?

Help needed: found this beast in local classifields for 70€ described as “manual printing press”. Is it?

image: image.jpg

image.jpg

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Research Spirit based Manual Duplicators, like used in schools in the 1970’s

To answer the question, no, if a printing press prints an ink image from raised plates or type this is not a printing press. This is a spirit duplicator, in which the “master” is a sheet of paper with a thick image of pigment that is slightly soluble with a solvent. The solvent soaks through the paper and each sheet of blank paper than passes through the machine takes off a little of the pigment, which was usually blue. In order to use it you would have to be able to create the masters, and I suspect the materials for that are either no longer available or very hard to find, as this is a 20 to 50 year old process.

Bob