Two high-speed Harris web offset presses were installed in 1978, and willing volunteers quickly learned to operate them. The result was the production that year of the colorful My Book of Bible Stories. In less than three years this highly popular book has been translated into over 35 languages and printed in some 15 million copies!

Printing on two webs at the same time, the new presses are able to produce well over twice as many impressions per hour as Watchtower’s letterpresses. One of the new offset presses is already equipped to print in four colors, and the second press will be given four-color capacity “as soon as we can shut it down to make the necessary addition,” according to one factory overseer. Magazine printing as well as the demand for My Book of Bible Stories, which is currently printed with three colors, is keeping the press very busy for the moment.

Since 1977 the Watchtower Society has scrapped 13 old letterpresses, ranging in age from 21 to 55 years, to make way for the new offset presses.

A third web offset press (with four-color capacity) started to operate at the Brooklyn factory in November 1980. These three offset presses can do the work of about nine of the letterpresses they replace. Not only do the offset presses have higher production when running, but much time is saved in preparing the offset presses for new runs. Why? The tedious makeready process needed for letterpresses, sometimes taking one or two days, is reduced to a matter of minutes in offset printing. Hours that were spent cutting pieces of paper can be spent in production.

A fourth web offset press, currently being installed and tested in Brooklyn, “is very special,” according to a plant overseer. How so? “This is a Bible press. It’s going to print the Bible on four webs of paper at once, while our other offset presses print on only two webs.” Each impression of the new press will print 128 pages of the Bible, instead of 64 pages as done currently. Since the number of Bibles printed in Brooklyn doubled last year, the need for this new, high-production offset Bible press is obvious. Indeed, since 1970 over 24 million Bibles have been printed in this Brooklyn plant, in 13 languages. This is more Bibles than were produced by Watchtower in the previous 40 years! It is hoped that the new press will achieve the production of six of the current Bible presses. The new press should speed things up in the bindery as well, since it will print the Bible in fewer, but larger, sections to be collated and sewn there.