Record drawings of the new printing press, one dated May 1810 (2)

Explore Collections

You are here: CollectionsOnline / Record drawings of the new printing press, one dated May 1810 (2)

Browse

Sir John Soane office drawings: the drawings of Sir John Soane and the office of Sir John Soane
- Bank of England
  - Bank of England, City of London for the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, 1788-1834 (1352)
    - 1799-1810 Expansions north-west and rebuilding of existing offices (487)
      - Second phase of the north-west extension: Printing Offices and offices south of the Waiting Room Court, 1803-1810 (21)

Use of images and copyright
Enlarge this Image

Print this image in A4 view

Reference number

SM (20) 10/8/19 (21) 10/8/20

Purpose

Record drawings of the new printing press, one dated May 1810 (2)

Aspect

20 Sections and plan 21 Elevation, two sections and a plan

Scale

(20-21) bar scale

Inscribed

21 The Bank of England, Description of one of the new printing presses, Elevation, Section on the line DE, Plan at A, Section on the line BC, A, B, C, D, E

Signed and dated

(21) John Soane Arch / 14 May 1810

Hand

Soane office

Watermark

(20) Smith & Allnutt 181- (sheet trimmed) (21) J Whatman 18-- (sheet trimmed)

Notes

Drawings 20 and 21 show the new printing presses. In February 1808 the Bank bought 30 of Joseph Bramah's patented machines for 240 guineas each (W.M. Acres, p. 330-31). They were installed in July 1808. Each machine required one operator and could print the serial numbers and the dates on about 2,000 notes in a day. Previously, the clerks had to sign, date and number the notes by hand and each clerk could only complete about 400 such notes in a day (W.M. Acres, pp. 330-331).

Literature

W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from within, Oxford, 1931, pp. 322-23, 330-31.

Level

Drawing

Digitisation of the Drawings Collection has been made possible through the generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation

If you have any further information about this object, please contact us: drawings@soane.org.uk

Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

Browse (via the vertical menu to the left) and search results for Drawings include a mixture of Concise catalogue records – drawn from an outline list of the collection – and fuller records where drawings have been catalogued in more detail (an ongoing process).