PART I
On the very first day of a Christmas vacation about forty years ago Jimmie Granger broke his leg coasting. That meant six weeks in bed and no more of the wonderful coasting of that winter. Jimmie was only twelve years old, and he found it hard to lie still and be cheerful while the other fellows were having so much fun. Every day seemed a week long until he was allowed to sit up; even then each seemed three times as long as usual.
Jimmie's Uncle Francis was so sorry for his unlucky little nephew that he always brought something "to kill time" when he came to spend Sunday at Jimmie's home just outside the big city. Two weeks after the accident Jimmie received from his Uncle Francis the present he liked best of all. It was a small printing press, something entirely new to Jimmie, who had never seen one before, and never had thought very much about how books and newspapers are actually made.
"If you'll print me every week until you can walk again the Home Record, a newspaper page four columns wide and ten inches long, giving the news of the house, and of the neighborhood, too, if you like, I'll give you another double runner, a better sled than the old broken one."
"Oh, not another double runner! You don't want him to break the other leg!" cried Jimmie's mother.
"Of course not; but you don't want him to stop coasting, do you?" Uncle Francis asked his sister.
"N-o-o," replied Jimmie's mother.
"And we both think he has learned never to take the risk he took before, don't we?"
"Yes," answered Jimmie's mother.
Jimmie wanted a new double runner more than anything else, and so he went right to work on his little newspaper. The printing press was not large enough to print the paper all at once, and so it was printed in parts and these were pasted on a large sheet of paper of the size ordered.
Uncle Francis was specially interested in newspapers, because he was editor of a big city daily called the Record. Jimmie felt that of course his uncle would be very critical and that the little Home Record must be just right. The morning after he started the paper he had a bright idea: he would ask his mother to be head proof reader—Jimmie felt pretty shaky about spelling and punctuation; and he would ask Tom Frazer, when he came over to see him, if he would not be head reporter and tell him what was happening outside—Tom always knew what the fellows were doing. He could give Tom the rear sled of his old double runner, which was not broken in the accident. Tom had said he should have to have a new sled, and that was really a very good one.
A Monk Copying Manuscript Books
Both assistants seemed glad to serve and the work began merrily. When Jimmie's father came home that night he said he would be the "printer's devil."
"What's that?" asked Jimmie.
"Don't believe they have them now," said his mother.
The First Printing Looked Like This
"They don't need so many of them in these days of steam perfecting presses as they used to, but surely the printer has to have assistants even to-day," said his father. "Perhaps now that machinery does so much of the work the men do not get black and inky enough to be called 'devils.' While Jimmie has to lie with that leg fixed as it is now, he will want some one to run that press when he gets everything ready for the printing. Don't you think so, son?"
Jimmie agreed with his father, as he looked at the leg so straight and stiff.
"I shall be glad to have your help as a—what is it they call it—a pressman? I think that I shall have something ready to print to-morrow night," said Jimmie—and he did.
As Jimmie was the whole newspaper force except the head proof reader, the head reporter, and the head pressman, he had both to set the type and to write the newspaper himself. Writing compositions Jimmie detested, but writing a newspaper he found was not half bad.
A Type Enlarged
"Don't see what you can write about," his father said jokingly. "There's nothing doing in this house when you have to keep still."
Jimmie did not, however, suffer from any lack of news. In fact, his friends brought him so much that the second day he started a baseball column and the third day a society column.
The type setting was interesting to Jimmie because it was all new to him. His type was just like the type in a printing office. Each piece was a thin bar of metal with a raised letter on the end, unless it had a punctuation mark instead of the letter, or was blank in order to make proper spaces between the words. Each letter of a word had to be picked up by itself out of the case of type and put in place before the next letter of the word could be placed where it belonged.
It was slow work and it was a little hard at first to be spelling a line of words with every letter upside down, but Jimmie found out the very first thing that it had to be so if the words were to be right side up on the printed page. It made Widow look like this:
but it did not take long to learn to read the words that way to make sure they were right.
When the type for the first column of the paper was in order and securely locked into the form which held it, there were two things more to be done—inking the type and pressing the paper on it. Jimmie did the inking and his father put on the paper and took off the impression. The first printing showed that Jimmie had been too lavish with his ink, but the second was so good they put it away for his Uncle Francis.
"Our history says that Benjamin Franklin learned the printer's trade. Did he set the type and print this way?" Jimmie asked his uncle the first time he came out after Jimmie became a printer.
"Yes, just that way," answered his uncle. "In Benjamin Franklin's time and most of the time ever since, each letter has had to be picked up by hand and put in place. There is a little type-setting machine now which is quite a help, but we need something better."
"I don't see how you ever get a daily paper ready," exclaimed Jimmie. "It must take millions of letters."
"Not so many, I think," replied his uncle, "but enough so that it does take a good many girls to set the type. There is going to be a great change soon, however, because in a short time there is going to be an entirely new type-setting machine. Mr. Ottman Mergenthaler of Baltimore has been working on one for ten years and it is almost ready for us. When that is perfected it will be as wonderful as the big presses though it is not a large machine. He will call it the linotype (line-of-type). It will work somewhat like a typewriter. When the operator strikes a letter on the keyboard that same letter in the type will be freed from its place in the type case and come sliding down a path, or channel, to take its place in the word and line that is being set. When this machine is perfected one person will be able to do as much as four now can."
Franklin's Printing Press
"If Benjamin Franklin could visit our newspaper office at the present time," continued his uncle, "what would astonish him most are the big steam cylinder presses. He never saw anything but a hand press of the simplest kind."
"Mine is a hand press, isn't it?" asked Jimmie. "Yes, a very small hand press. Many of the old hand presses were taller than a man. One that Benjamin Franklin actually used is in the patent office in Washington. You'll see it some day probably. I think I can describe it so that you can get a picture of it. Did you ever see your Grandmother Manter's cheese press? No? Do you remember the linen press that your Great-aunt Caroline has for decoration now in her dining room? I don't suppose you do. Well, the old hand presses were made on the same principle as the cheese and the linen presses and the cider press. They stood high like the cheese press, and were made of two upright beams with two cross beams between them, like a capital H, only there were two cross pieces instead of one. The lower cross beam served as a support, or table, on which to place the type in the page 'form' when ready for printing.
"Over the type, after it was inked, was laid the paper, slightly dampened; over this was laid a blanket. Then a heavy weight had to be put on top the blanket and pressed down hard on the inked type in order to make a good print. This weight was a large wooden block fastened to the lower end of a great wooden screw which extended up through the upper cross piece. To turn this screw so that the block was pressed hard enough on the blanket and the paper to get a good clear print, and then to loosen the screw so that the printed sheet could be taken out and dried was no easy matter. The printer must use a long iron bar to turn the screw. This he would fit into a hole, or socket, in the screw and then, using this handle, turn the screw as far as he could."
"I know," said Jimmie. "There's a picture of that in my history. The poor fellow is just breaking his back to get more of a turn on that screw."
"Yes, that's it. There were several sockets around the head of the screw. The printer would turn the screw as far as he could with the bar in one socket, and then fit the bar into the next to get more of a turn. How I should like to see Franklin or Gutenberg or any other famous old-time printer examining the new press that will be ready for use in the Record office in a month or so. I think he would be speechless."