150th anniversary: Matchless record

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A picture of The Fiji Times printing room back in the 1960s at the Butt St, Suva. Picture: FILE

DID you know that pictures of old Fiji were once recorded on glass?

These relics were described to have “a matchless photographic record of old Fiji”.

“It was a library of full plate glass negatives assembled by Mr Frederick William Caine, who arrived in Fiji in 1902. He bought the Le Faivre photographic studio in 1904, established the firm of Caine’s Studios, now known as Caines Jannif,” described an article by The Fiji Times in 1969.

“With his purchase he acquired all the Le Faivre negatives, which included the collection of at least one earlier photographer, Jack Waters, and went back to the middle of the 19th century. Later, Mr Caine bought the collections, largely of portrait negatives, of Mr J.B. Stinson.”

However in 1952, a massive hurricane destroyed most of these records held by Caine’s Studios and all the portrait negatives were so badly damaged by the water that six truckloads had to be dumped at Lami.

Most of the Waters, Le Faivre and Caine negatives, which were stored in indexed wooden boxes, survived and they were stored on shelves in temporary premises in the Dahia Building, opposite the Carnegie Library.

In the 1953 earthquake the shelves collapsed and about 2500 irreplaceable glass negatives were destroyed.

Mr Jannif, who later acquired Caine Photography presented the surviving 280 negatives to the Central Archives of Fiji, and it was from some of these prints that The Fiji Times was able to use the images for records sake in its newspaper throughout the years.

Fiji’s commercial printing department

On another note, The Fiji Times newspaper company has for the past century, enjoyed an efficient commercial printing department.

Today the company enjoys a state-of-the-art printing machine which enables our readers to enjoy a full coloured newspaper.

This stemmed from the foundation laid by our founder George Griffiths, who once advertised in 1877, that The Fiji Times General Printing Office in Beach St, Levuka was “replete with everything necessary for the execution of job work of all description” and that all printing would be “executed with neatness, accuracy and despatch”.

This printing office was later moved to Butt St, Suva where The Fiji Times is now located. The extension of our office was completed in 1967.

Back then the newspaper company had a range of machine presses – “from a single hand-fed platen for the printing of business cards and the like to automatic machines making up to 800 impressions an hour, and producing printed sheets up to 25 by 38 inches in size”.

The commercial printing department was able to produce single multicolour work, by either the letterpress of offset processes, ranging from small business cards or leaflets to finely bound books.

The production of rubber stamps and printing stereos, cast or engraved, was another function of the department.

However, the commercial arm of this work was later discontinued and the company focuses solely on printing the newspaper today.

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