Walter Timmis was a consulting engineer at a Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographing & Publishing Company oin Brooklyn, New York.

But this publishing company had a problem

Timmis turned to the Manhattan office of the Buffalo Forge Company, a company that designed and manufactured steam engines and pumps.

He explained this problem to J. Irvine Lyle, the head of Buffalo Forge’s sales activities in New York.

His printing paper was soaking up moisture because of the high temperatures and high levels of humidity in the printing press building. As a result, his paper expanded and contracted in size.

At the time, printing was a tedious process that involved running the printing press over a single piece of paper…applying one color of ink to the paper at a time.

By the time four different colors of ink were applied, the colors would be misaligned.

The company was turning out low-quality work.

The company was also wasting its resources and losing production days.

The problem was so bad that several of his most important clients threatened to take their work elsewhere.

Timms needed the Buffalo Forge to figure out how he could control humidity at the printing press.

Industrial Revolution

This was the middle of the Industrial Revolution.

Factories were being built by the dozen.

Yet nobody had yet figured out how to use “modern” technology to create a comfortable microclimate indoors. Previous attempts had not been efficient enough or had been too cumbersome for commercial use.

He recognized the importance of being able to control the humidity levels in a manufacturing environment.

He also thought he knew someone who could easily solve this dilemma.

So he accepted the proposal.