Canada's 150th Anniversary And Canadian Stamp Achievements

Canada's 150th Anniversary is a good time to celebrate some Canadian stamp achievements starting with the following:

Experiments with intaglio dry printing were done in 1905 and in 1907 with the Edward VII issue. Printing plate and printing press wear from the greater printing pressure needed to print on pregummed paper was a problem.

Before the end of 1922, Canadian postage stamps were sheet-fed rotary press (or flat plate) intaglio wet printed in that they were gummed after printing. Sheet-fed rotary press intaglio dry printing first started to be used at the end of 1922 so that by the beginning of 1926 it was being successfully used on the Canada Admiral stamp issue. By 1928 with the use of printing plates being chromed to reduce wear, dry printing was used for all Canadian Bank Note Company (CBN) intaglio printed postage stamps.

Web-fed rotary press intaglio dry printing was first used sometime between late 1932 and early 1935 by the British American Bank Note Company (BABN) on some of their Stickney rotary press printed Medallion sheet stamps since most of these Stickney rotary press printed sheet stamps were originally wet printed. (All BABN flat plate printed stamps were sheet-fed dry printed.)

After the Canadian Bank Note Company got the contract to print postage stamps in 1935 back, it used web-fed rotary press intaglio dry printing to print its coil stamps while it still continued to use sheet-fed rotary press intaglio dry printing for its sheet and booklet stamps.

Jogil, it would be useful to neophyte like me to show what are the different printing presses look like and how they operate. I remember seing some good sketches/images on this forum, but your post on Achievements may be a good lead to "show" them, or point to a link where we can educate ourselves more..

Gilles le timbre: Here is a link https://goscf.com/t/48481

jogil, do you know who manufactured the printing presses CBNC
used from the fifties up to the present?

lithograving: It appears that they put together their own presses. There is a picture of an intaglio rotary press that they used on page 102 in the book "The National Postal Museum" by the Canada Post Office, 1974.

Thanks jogil, so CBNC staff manufactured the parts and assembled
all in-house ?
The link doesn't work.

lithograving: It appears to be the case given that there have been many different printing press patents that can be seen online for the American Bank Note Company whose subsidiary the Canadian Bank Note Company was.

In U.S. Scott Specialized, it makes the point of saying for the WWII Overrun Countries Issue (1943-1944) that were printed by the ABNC that "Due to the failure of the printers to divulge detailed information as to printing processes used, the editors omit listings of irregularities, flaws, blemishes and errors which are numerous in this issue."

Thus, any specialist on the Overrun Countries Issue should be looking into the different ABNC U.S. patents on their presses to find out more about the printing of these stamps in order deal with the above comment.

I am making it my mission to have Canada Scott/Unitrade 195d recognized as a special achievement web-fed (Stickney) rotary press dry printed stamp rather than just another ordinary sheet-fed (Hoe) flat plate press dry printed stamp.

Good luck Jogil. I hope it happens.

See: Innovations by Canadian Stamp Printing Companies CBNCo and BABNCo Revolutionise the Stamp Printing Press.
Maple Leaves, Vol 35, #3, Whole #345 (Jul 2017), p. 147(16).