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Our History On the Tuesday after Labor Day in 1901, Victor S. Hillis founded Hillis Printing Company. A trained printer, he had migrated to San Jose from Cleveland with his mother and sister. $150 in capital and a burning desire to own his own business, Hillis Printing started upstairs in the Smoot Building at 80 West Santa Clara Street. In 1904 Hillis formed a partnership with Howell Melvin, creating Melvin-Hillis, and a year or two later they were joined by advertising man Will Black, forming Melvin, Hillis & Black. Advertising flyers appeared to be a common project, but the only surviving products are blotters printed with the firm's own name. The 1906 earthquake brought a rush of business, for most of the printing companies in San Francisco were destroyed. Melvin made regular train trips to San Francisco to pick up orders and deliver work. Among the jobs he got was printing the San Francisco Argonaut newspaper. Melvin and Black soon moved on, and Hillis ran the business alone until 1918, when he was joined by Henry Murgotten. Hillis & Murgotten operated at 34 South Second Street for the next 10 years and moved to 154 South Second in 1928. Although the business was to stay there for 29 years, Murgotten left after only two. Victor Hillis' twin sons, George and Charles, started working for their dad at age nine, sweeping floors and making bicycle deliveries, and they formed a partnership with him in the early 1930s. Victor Hillis died in 1941, and the Hillis brothers incorporated as Hillis Printing Company in 1957. Charles Hillis' son, Jim, started working at the company when he was 12, and his brother, Chuck, when he was 15. George Hillis retired in 1970, but Charles Hillis continued in equal partnership with his sons until 1994. He died in 1995. In Hillis Printing's first application of electricity to printing, the printers ran belts from floor-mounted placement on a platen press run by foot pedal. It ended the century taking creative work over the Internet for computer-controlled printing and binding. The equipment used in the interim tracked the evolution of printing. In Hillis Printing's first application of electricity to printing, the printers ran belts from floor-mounted motors to the shafts of various presses. The next generation of presses had individual motors. Folding also evolved from handwork, to hand-fed power folders to fully automatic folders. At one time Hillis employed up to 50 people in its bindery, a process highly automated today. During the 1950's it employed seven women printers operating seven small offset presses, much of their work being for the new Lockhead Missiles & Space Company in Sunnyvale. In 1996, Hillis initiated four-color and six-color printing. While the digital age may have removed some of the romance from the printing industry, Hillis Printing can provide products and services inconceivable in an earlier age as well as its continuing guarantee of perfect colors always in register. |