THE Gazette was born in a humble building in a yard off Hemel Hempstead High Street in 1859 - some stories say that it was 1858, but we have never been able to find copies of the very first editions.
The paper was started by a Mr F. Mason who had a 'boy' to help him and they did everything from collecting the news items to printing the paper and distributing it.
The press was operated by the boy turning a handle as Mr Mason fed sheets of paper into it.
The early papers had just four pages and the charge was half a penny - that's an old penny so in today's values that was less than quarter of a penny!
There were not many national newspapers in those days and many people could not afford them anyway, so the Gazette carried the main national news of the week - something that was to continue right through into the 20th century.
Through the old files of the Gazette - available to the public by appointment on microfilm at the Dacorum Heritage Trust - you can follow history as it happened from the murders of Jack the Ripper to the Boer War or the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria to war between America and Spain.
Like all newspapers of the time the Gazette carried no news on the front page, it was all advertisements. It was not until the late 19th century that pictures began to appear in the paper and they were mainly small prints.
It was not until the Boer War started in 1899 that the Gazette started to carry regular prints of local people. Each week it carried a picture of one of the local soldiers who had gone to South Africa to fight.
There was of course no radio or television in those days, so when a major event happened a telegraph would often be sent to the post office and stuck up to the window of the Gazette's office! This often happened with major football results, attracting a big crowd.
Later in the 19th century the paper was bought by a Mr Trotman who had amassed a small fortune in the West Indies and thought, mistakenly, that owning a local newspaper would help him win favour with the big names of the area.
It was at some point in the late 19th century that the Gazette moved its office and works to Alexandra Road.
INTO THE 20TH CENTURY
But the paper's fortunes were not good and in 1900 it was put up for sale and bought jointly by Mr E. Needham and Mr E. Lawes. Very soon afterwards Mr Needham bought out Mr Lawes and the paper was to stay in the Needham family's ownership right through until 1971.
Mr Needham's only experience of newspapers was anadvertising agent in London's Fleet Street, but he quickly set to work to revive the Gazette's fortunes.
The paper had always carried news from Berkhamsted, the Langleys and Tring and in 1902 he started a separate edition for Berkhamsted - others for the Langleys and Tring were to follow.
The press at the works in Alexandra Road was at one time a flatbed Wharfedale which was turned by a gas engine.
The printed sheets were then taken from the press and passed through a trapdoor in the floor to a basement were they were fed through a folder driven by a belt from the same gas engine.
A little later in the 20th century the Gazette moved its offices to 39 Marlowes (where it is today) and the works were moved to what is now Leighton Buzzard Road, close to the town's then police station (currently standing empty, but soonto be converted into flats.)
The Needhams were very proud that during their ownership the Gazette was never hit by a strike and never missed an edition - although on one occasion it had to be delivered by the police!
This happened when there was a national strike, but the Gazette's workers did not take part. Pickets were placed outside the printing works, the police were asked for help. As the police station was only next door a plan was quickly arranged.
The horse and cart which normally took the papers from the works to go round the shops was put out the front as usual and it appeared as if it was being loaded, but round the back the copies of the Gazette were loaded into two police cars which drove out of the police station yard unnoticed!
WAR AND CENSORSHIP Throughout the Second World war, the Gazette never missed an edition despite the shortages of newsprint.
Because of wartime censorship local war news, such as the bomb that fell on the George pub in Nash Mills could not be reported - it was believed that by giving the locations of incidents the news would be picked up by German agents and could be of use to the enemy. They did however appear in the paper usually along the lines of: "a bomb that fell in southern England." When a phrase similar to that appeared in the Gazette you knew it was something that had happened locally.
Soon after the end of the war came the news in 1947 that Hemel Hempstead was to become a new town. The big expansion in population would mean a big increase in potential readers for the Gazette, but the paper was very anti the new town in the early years.
The newspaper continued to prosper and in 1971 it was purchased by the de Fraine family who owned the Bucks Herald newspaper in Aylesbury and papers in Thame and Buckingham.
Under the de Fraine's major changes took place. The works in Leighton Buzzard road was closed and the printing of the Gazette transferred to the more modern press at the Bucks Herald's headquarters in exchange Street, Aylesbury.
The Gazette also got new offices in Marlowes on the site of its old ones. In a development deal also involving what was at the time the 16/21 youth club a large new office development was built, half becoming the Gazette's offices and the other half the European headquarters of Budget Rent A Car.
COMPUTER FIRST
The Gazette also became one of the first newspapers to become computerised, well before the national newspapers.
At the end of the 1980s the de Fraine's sold their newspapers to a major British publishing and media company, Emap in a deal worth about £17 million.
Under Emap the next stage of computerisation took place with full page make up by the journalists on computers - this was instead of sending the computer generated headlines and text down a wire to the composing room where the compositors would arrange it on sheets of card, along with the advertisements. These would then be camered into negatives which in turn would be used to make the metal plates to go on the press itself.
Emap also closed the press at Aylesbury and the Gazette was printed at one of the more modern presses that the company owned around the country.
It was not until 1990 that the Gazette printed a colour picture - that was to cover the disappearance of a young boy and the subsequent major search. The problem was that even then colour printing of newspapers was in its infancy and very expensive.
THE PAPER TODAY
In the late 1990s Emap sold all its newspapers to Johnston Press PLC, one of Britain's biggest newspaper publishers which had begun in Scotland in the 19th century.
Under Johnston Press the Gazette has flourished. Many pages of the paper are now printed in full colour every week and more new technology has, and is continuing to be, introduced.
For a long time there hasn't been a typewriter in the Gazette's offices, for more than a year now the Gazette photographers' cameras have contained no film!
The introduction of digital cameras means that pictures can be transfered to the paper much more quickly. An incident can happen within minutes of the paper going to press and we can still get a photograph in the paper down the computer lines.
Today the journalists make up all the editorial pages of the Gazette on computer screens at the Hemel Hempstead offices. The pages are then sent down a computer line to our pre-press department at Aylesbury where the advertisements are added.
The completed pages are then sent down another computer line to a press owned by the company at Portsmouth. The pages are sent from Aylesbury at around 8pm on a Tuesday night. The Gazette is then printed - the printing of the two sections takes about an hour. The printed papers are bundled and loaded onto a lorry which drives them back to Hemel Hempstead from where they are distributed to the newsagents with the morning newspapers and come through your letterbox on a Wednesday morning thanks to the efforts of the newsagents and their newspaper boys and girls.
Over the years there have been many other local newspapers in the area, but the Gazette and its sister paper, the HeraldExpress which was born in the mid 1990s have seen them all come and go.
One of the most noteable, perhaps was the Evening Echo the area's first and only local evening newspaper. It had its headquarters on Hemel Hempstead's Maylands industrial area and started in 1967, but lasted only until 1984 when it was closed down.
