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One of the last of the Wharfedale range of letterpress machines, this press was considered in 1956 by management as having 'a big future'. However, this was a rather optimistic prediction as offset was then dominating the thinking of even the most ardent letterpress printers. During the last decade of production of these 'B' series stop-cylinders (1965), dominated by the 'B19' Jobber, was seen the end of flatbed production. They were superceded by much faster sheet fed rotary letterpress and offset machines.
The Jobber, when compared with similar sized machines had some drawbacks. Maximum speed was 'modest' at 2,850 i.p.h. and the delivery pile descended only 3 inches, necessitating great care when having to unload 'wet' matter from the rather awkwardly placed delivery stack.
Paul Wood, in his booklet Otley & The Wharfedale Printing Machine (1985) stated: 'The company in the mid 1960's could claim, with complete justification, that the Wharfedale was still used throughout the world, even though their own spirit was now slowly drifting out of the [Wharfe] valley. Merger with the Leeds firm of Crabtree-Mann meant that Otley would become a tiny cog in the huge machinery of the Vickers group. During 1966 and 1967 the Otley production facilities of D.P.&E. and Waite & Saville were combined. In commercial terms the Wharfedale story had come to an end; it was industrial archaeology - a part of the fossil record of printing history.'
(A hand-fed version was installed in The Melbourne School of Printing and Graphic Arts for the training of apprentices.)
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