Friedrich König

Born Apr. 17, 1774, in Eisleben; died Jan. 17, 1833. German inventor of the cylinder press.

König was an apprentice in a Leipzig printing house and later worked in a London printing house. He invented a printing press that was constructed on the same principle as the manually operated printing press, that is, with a linear platen apparatus. In 1810, König obtained a patent for a cylinder press equipped with a printing cylinder that held the paper against the form. The first model of the machine was installed in 1814 at the press belonging to the Times of London, and it produced as many as 800 impressions per hour (as against 150 on a manually operated press and 400 on a platen machine). König invented a double-format press in 1814 and subsequently invented two-revolution and perfecting, or duplex, presses.