Peerless Platen Treadle Press

Invented at the end of the 1800s, these presses were typically powered by foot, steam or electricity. They were mainly used for small printing jobs like leaflets, business cards and invitations. Due to the ease of use, a Peerless Platen PresS was often operated by young apprentices. During printing, the forme was placed onto the bed and the ink place onto the disc at the top. Once the apprentice operated the pedal, the rollers moved up to be inked and then rolled down to ink the forme. The paper was manually fed into the press.

There were two treadle platen presses on board the Titanic when it sank in 1912. There was one printer and one compositor on board to print menus, daily news and calling cards. This particular Peerless platen press was used in the Guinness factory in Dublin to print beer bottle labels.