[1] With the influence of Wilfred Harvey, who was originally the firm's accountant, Purnell & Sons grew from the 1920s onwards, with letterpress printing being added as well as a lithography department in the late 1930s.
The latest issues in these series would offered for sale every week or fortnight in newsagents across the world and were sold in large numbers (for example, 400,000 copies of Knowledge were printed).
[3] With the profits made by the letterpress and lithography parts of the firm, a purpose built gravure factory was added in the early 1960s, equipped with Cerutti presses with pre-press and printing cylinder production manufactured in-house by Bristol Photo Engraving (BPE).
The final 2.4m Cerutti press was installed in 2001, which replaced an older machine, it could produce 72 A4 pages per impression, had a run speed of 50,000iph with inline stitching, with a crew of three printers and two assistants.
With some of the staff relocating to help set of the new plant, the print works in Paulton finally closed in December 2005 with the loss of 400 jobs.