No, Don, I didn't know about Adrian Holmberg.
Goss built newspaper presses and that is out of my line. However, all printing presses consist of flat side frames with the cylinder bearing bores in them. Many of the frames also have the major ink roller bearing bores in them also.
If anything would be speeded up by simple point to point NC, that job would be.
The Goss Community web offset newspaper press is a small press and it is one of their most successful products. The little weeklies that are in about every town are printed on these presses.
All of the prats are small, I can pick up a side frame, although my show-off days are over.
The frames are planed on one side and then off to the boring operations. A single "press" might have five printing units or more, so think of how many side frames needed to be worked. And, oh yes, each press had a folder with two side frames and each unit has it's own roll stand.
Just a simple thing like a positioning table would constitute a revolution in that shop.
The NC lathe didn't fare so well in the printing press industry. There is so much straight turning involved with cylinders and roller shafts that the NC controls couldn't justify their expense and the troubles that the early controllers caused.
For the bearing boxes and other short turned pieces, the common turret lathe was difficult to supplant.
It is the saddest irony that all the wonders of the modern CNC's couldn't save our domestic press manufacutrers. One by one they came apart due to union labor problems, corporate wrangling and their failure to keep ahead in mechanical design.
I believe that you are in possesion of "When the Machine Stopped", the story of Burgmaster. In that book, they point out that Burgmaster put the NC machining center in the ordinary jobbing machine shop. It is said that the comapany gave the machining center it's name.
As a side topic, the idea of having part programs stored on individual tapes still appeals to me. In the printing press industry, parts don't change much if at all. The semi finished castings and the tape to run the job would come to the machine at the same time. No screw ups, no genius getting into the program and messing it up.
When the job is done, just wind the tape up and put it back in the can with the part number marked on it, ready for the next time.
Jeez! Even I could run a machine like that!