Staley Thomas McBrayer, a former newspaper publisher credited with revolutionizing the industry by inventing the newspaper offset press, has died. He was 92.
Mr. McBrayer died April 14 in Ft. Worth. No cause of death was given.
“He pioneered suburban newspaper publishing,” said Otha Spencer, professor emeritus at Texas A&M University-Commerce and author of “Staley McBrayer and the Offset Newspaper Revolution.”
In the 1940s, Mr. McBrayer and his wife operated several small newspapers in Ft. Worth area.
For five years, Mr. McBrayer tinkered with the offset press process used to print books. Many people believed it could not be modified to print a newspaper. Finally, in 1954, he introduced the Vanguard web offset press.
With the new press, Mr. McBrayer moved the newspaper industry from “hot type” printing to a “cold type” process. Newspapers began to print from photographic images instead of hand-set metal type, cutting down on printing time and costs.
“It saved the small newspaper,” Spencer said.
The importance of Mr. McBrayer’s contribution to the newspaper business was recognized by the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1989.
ANPA Vice President William Rinehart said that without the offset press, “There absolutely wouldn’t be newspapers, as we know them, today. It’s that simple. The press around the world owes Staley McBrayer much gratitude,” Rinehart said.
A native of Saltillo, Mr. McBrayer earned a bachelor’s degree in 1933 from East Texas State Teachers College, now Texas A&M-Commerce.
After finishing his studies, he became the advertising and business manager of The Commerce Journal. He later bought several small newspapers in the Ft. Worth area, including The North Side News, The West Side Post and The River Oaks News.
After buying an unwanted, German-made offset press for $10,000, Mr. McBrayer sought to blend the cold-type, single-sheet printing technology with the newspaper press. At the time, major press manufacturers did not think the offset process could be made to work with fast-running rotary newspaper presses.
He formed a team that experimented with various metals, plastics, papers and inks to design a workable two-step process. The image of a newspaper page was transferred first to a metal plate, which was inked, and then to a rubber blanket that picks up the ink and impresses the image onto newsprint.
When the design was finished, a young engineer in Ft. Worth, Grant Ghormley, agreed to make the presses, refining as he went. For the first few years, the makers of letterpress machines scorned the new press, calling it a glorified mimeograph machine good only for smearing words onto a page.
The original market for the machines, small newspapers, expanded as the presses were refined and made faster, enabling them to meet the needs of larger dailies.
Mr. McBrayer is survived by two sisters.
