Adana Printing Machines

Unusually for the time, his parents separated, and his father Herbert left the seven-year-old Donald and his brothers, John and Cecil, in the sole care of their mother, Lilian.

Aspinall served in the 10th Battalion of the Essex Regiment in World War I, joining the army one week after his eighteenth birthday.

In 1939 Aspinall suffered the first of several strokes and the economic pressures of World War II left the Adana Agency in meltdown.

Aspinall's engineering achievements are sometimes dismissed as he borrowed so heavily from American designs, but his business acumen and talent for re-working existing ideas (such as creating a revolving ink-disk for his flat-bed presses) are widely acknowledged.

Like many others, the company was effectively on hold during World War II, with a skeleton staff supplying only parts and sundries.

They were asked to supply small flat-bed presses for the Resistance movement in Europe but little else happened until 1945 when production began again on a very limited basis.

Ongoing rationing meant raw materials were in short supply and it wasn't until around 1950 that the company was able to trade at full capacity again.

And in 2012 the printshop, under new ownership was renamed ADANA GRAPHIC SUPPLIES LIMITED (Company number 07988276) and eventually relocated to 18 City Road, London in 2015.

The basic design has been modified to produce a thicker body shell, capable of achieving the deeper letterpress impression now fashionable.

In his book on Adanas, printing historian Bob Richardson notes that Aspinall's army unit never saw action in Turkey and relates another theory: Donald's son Robert suggested recently that his father had simply used his initials, together with an extra letter from his first and last names (A and N), and juggled them to create the word ADANA.

[2] Even if he had served in Turkey, it seems unlikely that Aspinall would choose a name that recalled the military service that so traumatised[citation needed] him as a young man.