Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era / A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress

by James P. Boyd

I. THE PRINTING PRESS.

When Benjamin Franklin edited the “Gazette,” in Philadelphia, a century and a half ago, he set up the type, worked off the paper on a wooden hand-press of primitive construction, made wooden types for use in his office, and engraved the cuts with which to illustrate the articles. In those days printing was an art which figured among the mysteries of science, and was practiced by men of high social standing and advanced education. The sixty years which passed between Franklin’s purchase of the “Gazette” and his death saw the discovery of many scientific wonders, but the art of printing moved so slowly as to leave it at the close of the eighteenth century practically in the condition in which Franklin found it when he began his career as proprietor of his Philadelphia printing establishment.

And this condition of affairs applied to England as well as to the United States.

With all the rare ability possessed by the printer philosopher, he was able to do but little for the advancement of the profession which was instrumental in making for him an international reputation.

In all that pertains to the printing business there is nothing with which the name of Franklin is connected as inventor; yet he is referred to invariably as in the highest degree representative of the “art preservative of all arts.”

EARLY PRINTING PRESS AS USED BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Were the distinguished scientist, statesman, diplomat, printer, and philosopher to come forth from his grave in the cemetery of Christ Church, at Fifth and Arch Streets, Philadelphia, and go into one of the great printing houses of the country, how astounding to him would be the revelation! No more the wooden types or the unsymmetrical metal pieces; no more the wooden hand-press, the wood engravings, the ink balls, and the process of printing a few hundred sheets an hour. The terrific rapidity with which the newspapers are turned out to-day, printed, cut, pasted, and folded; the fineness of the work done on books and magazines; the wonder of one press putting on different colors at the same time; the setting of type by machines seemingly possessed of human intelligence; the rapidity and the simplicity of making stereotype plates; the dexterity of forming ordinary metal types into all kinds of forms; the millions of books,—secular and religious,—papers, and general literary productions turned out daily, would so puzzle the gigantic brain and cloud the understanding of the philosopher as to cause him to exclaim: “Take me back, O spirit of death, and let me forever rest from this seething, surging, whirling sphere of inventive progression.”

When the genius of invention was turned toward the printing art, it is worthy of note that the press which attracted the greatest attention was the production of a Philadelphian who once had been an associate of Benjamin Franklin. It was known as the Columbian press, the invention of George Clymer, and was regarded as of sufficient consequence to meet the approval of the printing fraternity of Great Britain as well as of this country.

In the National Museum in Washington, D. C., is the hand press which Benjamin Franklin used to print his Philadelphia paper, the “Gazette.” It had been built for him in London, where he had used it about five years prior to its being brought to Philadelphia.

What a curious-looking affair it is! Yet it was little less in the way of primitiveness compared with that used prior to 1817, when Clymer’s Columbian came into use. When these productions are contrasted with the magnificent contrivances of to-day, from which can be thrown sixteen hundred papers per minute,—papers of ten, twelve, and fourteen pages, printed on both sides, pasted and folded,—the comparison is like putting the steamboat of Fulton by the side of the monster ships which cross the Atlantic ocean from New York to Southampton in less than five days.

The Columbian press was looked upon, when presented to the printers, as an advance worthy of note in the art. It is easy to imagine how much prominence was given Clymer’s invention when it was placed beside the old common press. To-day, this supposed-to-be great piece of mechanism would not even be dignified by a place in the most un-modern backwoods printing establishment. And yet from this were printed the literary productions of Great Britain, as well as of the United States, in the early part of the nineteenth century.

The Columbian mechanical advancement consisted of the use of rollers for inking the type,—very much like the process now employed in inking the type when a rough proof is desired,—thus dispensing with the balls, which were managed by boys; the use of screws under the bed of the press to hold in position the form, into which had been securely adjusted the type; and the application of a long bar to obtain pressure sufficient to make the impression on the paper. The picture of this press shows the flat carriage upon which was placed the type, the platen or pressing surface, the bar which forced the platen upon the type, the spring which carried the platen back to position when the impression had been taken, and the track upon which the carriage was moved forward and backward,—primitive enough, and sufficiently simple in construction to show the limited capacity of the inventive genius of our great-grandfathers.

It was about 1829 when the Columbian gave way to the Washington press, and this was used for some time for fine book-work. The feature of it was an automatic inking roller attachment.

While the Washington press had the capacity for producing fine work, it was deficient in the speed required for meeting the demand then growing for books and newspapers. Then the printers turned to a cylinder press which had appeared in the last decade of the eighteenth century. The London “Times” had taken hold of it, and brought it to such a condition that its speed was raised to something like a thousand impressions an hour. König, a native of Saxony, in 1815, produced a press for printing both sides of the sheet. It resembled two single presses placed with their cylinders toward each other, the sheet being carried by tapes from the first to the second cylinder. Its capacity was 750 sheets, both sides, an hour.

THE COLUMBIAN PRESS.

Cambridge University about this time was furnished with a press in which the types were placed on the four sides of a prism, the paper being applied by another prism. It proved unsuccessful. In this press, however, were first introduced the inking rollers formed of a combination of glue and molasses. Rollers are made of these two materials to this day.

Cowper, an Englishman, in 1815, introduced curved stereotyped plates and fixed them to a cylinder. Two place cylinders and two impression cylinders were soon afterward worked together on one press by Cowper, printing both sides of the sheet at the rate of one thousand copies an hour.

This seems to have been the period when inventive skill began to assert itself in the printing press. The educational advancement of the people in this country and in Europe, with the lack of facility for furnishing information of the campaigns of Napoleon Bonaparte, the desire for facts regarding the events transpiring in England, France, and Germany, the meagreness of the details which had been furnished of the conflict between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, convinced the publishers of newspapers in this country and abroad that the laws of supply and demand were not equally balanced. The outcome of this was a press constructed to print both sides of the sheet from type, and was soon followed by the introduction of four impression cylinders. These were applied to the reciprocating bed to carry the type for one side of the sheet, the sheets being fed from four feeding boards, the impression cylinders alternately rising and falling, so that two sheets were printed during the passage one way, the other two on the return passage. A pair of inking rollers between the impression cylinders obtained ink from the reciprocating board.

WASHINGTON HAND PRESS.

The capacity of this press was five thousand an hour, and this was regarded as a feat worthy of public mention, record of it being made in the newspapers of that period in a way which shows the general interest in the work.

The first power-press used in the United States was made by Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, in 1822. Two of them were used by the Bible and Tract societies.

The London “Times” had succeeded in applying steam to the movement of the printing press as early as 1814—a cylinder press being brought into requisition, to the use of which they had the exclusive right.

Following the Treadwell press, about 1825, came the improvements of Samuel and Isaac Adams, and the general use of the press which is still worked in the book offices of this country and Great Britain. It was on one of these Adams presses, in 1863, that was printed the book written by Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, describing his second expedition in search of Sir John Franklin, the Arctic explorer.

OLD WOODEN FRAME ADAMS BED AND PLATEN BOOK PRESS.

It was found that the Adams press could be used for newspaper as well as exceedingly fine book-work, its construction admitting of the use of plates or type, and its speed such as nearly came up to the requirements of that period. In this press a feed board holds the paper, which is fed by hand to a second board or tympan, having points to make holes in the sheet to regulate the second side. The type rests upon a bed which is raised by straightening a toggle-joint against the upper plates.

The fountain for the ink is carried at one end of the press. The inking rollers pass twice over the form. The paper is caught by grippers, carried in a frame called a frisket over the form (or type), receives the impression, and is carried by tapes to a fly frame in the rear which delivers it to the sheet board.

With the two-, three-, and four-cylinder presses, the Adams press, steam power and various improvements in the make of inks and rollers, the first half of the nineteenth century was looked upon as having made for the printing press extraordinarily rapid advancement. Great Britain held first place in the production of newspapers and books, the United States was a slow second, then came France, Germany, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Austria, in the order given. The greatest evidence of this march of improvement was the enormous increase in the production of the Bible, and the bringing of the cost to a figure which then was looked upon as placing it within the reach of all classes. Scientific and literary works were being put out in great numbers, newspapers were being started in every town in this country and England, and the editions put out in such European centres of advancement as Paris, Madrid, Berlin, Brussels, London, Liverpool, Dublin, Glasgow, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and Rome reached proportions then supposed to be enormous. The London “Times” at that period had a circulation of about 30,000,—and this was the leader in journalism. In the United States the leading newspapers did not issue daily editions greater than 20,000, while a circulation of 10,000 daily was regarded as being entirely satisfactory to the business ideas of the average publisher.

The opening of the last half of the nineteenth century may be spoken of as a quiescent period. It was the calm in the affairs of the United States which preceded the occurring of stormy events which put to the full test the strength of the young republic, the attitude of the nations of the old world toward us, and the power of the people successfully to maintain a government “of the people, for the people, and by the people.”

Millard Fillmore became the President of the United States in July of 1850, succeeding Zachary Taylor, who died. The Congress had taken a stand on the disturbing question of slavery by the passage of the fugitive slave law, and had made the first step toward freedom for the negroes by the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. It was in this year that New Mexico and Utah were admitted as Territories, the entire population of the United States being only 23,191,876; ten years later the population reached 31,443,321. The people were beginning to realize how important was the printing press in placing them in communication with the statesmen of the country. They were looking to Webster, Calhoun, Clay, Meredith, Everett, Scott, Crittenden, Collamer, Marcy,—then in the fullness of mental vigor,—and they were demanding information of their acts in the cabinet, their speeches in Congress, their views on state rights and slavery.

It was at this time that the Hoe American Printing-press Company startled the world by producing the ten-cylinder press, the speed of which was limited only by the ability of the feeders to supply the sheets. The first one of them to be used in the United States was that upon which the Philadelphia “Public Ledger” was printed. It at once came into general use in Europe and America. Its speed was 20,000 copies an hour.

In this press—still in use in many cities—the form of type is placed on the surface of a horizontal revolving cylinder of about four and a half feet in diameter. The form occupies a segment of only about one fourth of the surface of the cylinder, and the remainder is used as an ink-distributing surface. Around this main cylinder, and parallel with it, are smaller impression-cylinders. The large cylinder being put in motion, the form of types is carried successively to all the impression-cylinders, at each of which a sheet is introduced, and receives the impression of the type as the form passes. One person supplies the sheets of paper to each cylinder. After being printed they are carried out by tapes and laid upon heaps by means of self-acting flyers. The ink is contained in a fountain placed beneath the main cylinder, and is conveyed by means of distributing rollers to the distributing surface on the main cylinder. The surface being lower, or less in diameter than the form of types, passes by the impression-cylinder without touching. For each impression there are two inking rollers, which receive their supply of ink from the distributing surface of the main cylinder; they rise and ink the form as it passes under them, after which they again fall to the distributing surface. Each page of the paper is locked up on a detached segment of the larger cylinder, which constitutes its bed and chases, termed the “turtle.” The column-rules run parallel with the shaft of the cylinder, and consequently are straight, while head, advertising, and dash rules are in the form of segments of a circle. The column-rules are in the form of a wedge, with the thin part directed toward the axis of the cylinder, so as to bind the type securely. These wedge-shaped column-rules are held down to the bed by tongues projecting at intervals along their length, which slide in rebated grooves cut crosswise in the face of the bed. The spaces in the grooves between the rules are accurately fitted with sliding blocks of metal, even with the surface of the bed, the ends of which blocks are cut away underneath to receive a projection on the sides of the tongues of the column-rules. The form of type is locked up in the bed by means of screws at the foot and sides, by which the type is held as securely as in the ordinary manner upon a flat bed.

DOUBLE CYLINDER PRESS.

This press was regarded as the highest degree of perfection, until William A. Bullock, of Philadelphia, put out his web perfecting press. This completely revolutionized the printing business so far as the newspapers were concerned. It came into use in 1861,—just before the breaking out of the war of the rebellion in the United States,—in time to meet the enormous demands made upon the printing press at home and abroad. It had been in operation but a short time when the newspaper owners of Great Britain took hold of it, and for several years no other press was used by the newspapers of large circulation.

How slow and toy-like it seems in comparison with the monsters of the present day! And yet this machine met the demands of a period when it was supposed the circulation of the daily press had reached an altitude never to be surpassed. A newspaper like the New York “Herald,” which had attained a daily circulation of about 75,000, was looked upon as achieving the highest degree of success. In this last year of the nineteenth century the “Journal” and “World” of New York send out at least a million copies of their papers 365 days in the year.

William A. Bullock worked at his web printing press for six years before he had it in shape to pronounce it applicable to the requirements. It was not long after it was in successful operation that one of his limbs caught in the machinery of one of his presses, and death was the result. As the presses first were made, and indeed for many years thereafter, the paper was cut in the press before being printed, and it was a difficult matter properly to control these single sheets until they were delivered, while the presses were without any folding attachment. But these old style Bullock presses did succeed in turning out 6000 eight-page papers an hour, printed on both sides.

In 1873 a great improvement was made in the Bullock presses, which allowed of the papers being printed on the endless roll before the paper was cut.

With the aid of other improvements subsequently made these presses attained to a capacity of 16,000 eight-page papers an hour. But an unexpected limit was found in the impossibility of delivering beyond a certain rate from the fly. Then R. Hoe & Co. (about 1877) invented a contrivance which obviated the difficulty. It consisted of an accumulating cylinder, on which six or eight sheets were laid one above the other and then delivered from the fly at one motion. This increased the capacity of their perfecting press to 18,000 an hour. A folding attachment was then added; next a pasting and cutting attachment. Thus, in 1879 they were able to turn out a press which produced 30,000 perfect eight-page papers an hour—printed, cut, pasted, and folded.

The next great achievement was put in operation in a New York pressroom in 1885. That was the double supplement press, which in reality combines two presses in one. It was the first press to insert supplement sheets automatically, and it was the first press to print from two rolls of paper, one roll being placed at right angles to the main roll. As the name of the press implies, from the secondary roll the supplements are printed at the same time that the main part of the paper is being printed from the other roll. And by means of what to the ordinary man seems a miraculous contrivance, but which to the initiated in the mysteries of mechanics is no doubt very simple, the supplement is automatically inset and pasted into the main paper before reaching the fly, and dropped out folded ready for the newsdealer.

From this press has been evolved the superb printing machine which, in recent years, has astonished the world. On it can be printed eight-, ten-, or twelve-page papers at a running speed of 24,000 an hour, or 400 a minute, and whether eight, ten, or twelve pages are printed they all come out with the supplements inset and the paper pasted and folded. From this press was developed the next triumph, the quadruple press. Marvelous machines these quadruple presses are, and it seemed impossible that any press could be built for many years to come that would beat them.

The printing business stood amazed, awe-stricken at the sight of so many papers being turned out each hour. And before the amazement had subsided there came forth the machine which is destined to go down in history as one of the great achievements in mechanics of the nineteenth century,—the sextuple press, manufactured by Hoe & Co., which has brought forth as many wonderful improvements as any mechanical concern in the world.

Although it is impossible to explain in language comprehensible to the man who is not an engineer how this monarch among printing presses does its work at a rate of speed which is well-nigh incredible and outstrips the flight of imagination itself, yet it is possible to convey an idea of what the extent of the work is.

FIRST PERFECTING PRESS.

This machine will print, fold, paste, and deliver 90,000 of a four-page paper or six-page newspaper in one hour. It will require some figuring to convey an adequate idea of how fast that is, for, as a matter of fact, it is faster than a man can think, and that is why I say that the speed of the machine outstrips the flight of imagination.

Ninety thousand copies an hour is equivalent to fifteen hundred copies a minute, and fifteen hundred copies a minute means twenty-five copies per second!

Now take out your watch, and while the second hand is passing from one second to another try to grasp the idea that in all that brief interval of time twenty-five six-page newspapers have been printed. You can’t do it. It is faster than you can think.

And yet in that second those twenty-five papers are not only printed, but the inside sheets are automatically pasted in, and the twenty-five papers are all cut and folded ready for delivery to the newsdealers. Is there anything more marvelous than that recorded in the “Arabian Nights”? Who said that there are no miracles in this nineteenth century? Why, if old Gutenberg,—peace to his soul,—or Faust, or Caxton, or even our own Benjamin Franklin had seen anything of the sort, they would have sworn that it was either a miracle or the work of the supernatural, with the chances in favor of the latter.

Each page of the average newspaper has six columns, and in each column there is on an average 1800 words. Six multiplied by six and the product of that by twenty-five, and that again by 1800, you will find makes 1,620,000, which is just about the number of words that this press prints in a second when it is turning out six-page papers at the rate of twenty-five a second. That is something that will stagger any man’s imagination if he tries to realize what it is.

This press will print, cut, paste, fold, count, and deliver 72,000 copies of an eight-page newspaper in one hour, which is equivalent to 1200 a minute and 20 a second.

It will print, cut, paste, count, and deliver complete 48,000 copies of a ten- or twelve-page newspaper in one hour, which is equivalent to 800 a minute and a fraction over 13 a second.

It will print, cut, paste, fold, count, and deliver complete 36,000 copies of a sixteen-page newspaper an hour, which is at the rate of 600 a minute, or 10 a second.

It will print, cut, paste, fold, count, and deliver complete 24,000 copies of a fourteen-, twenty-, or twenty-four-page newspaper an hour, which is at the rate of 400 a minute, or very nearly seven a second.

This is lightning work with a vengeance, and yet it is possible that there may be some who read this who will live to call it slow. That will probably be when they have found out all about how to put a harness on electricity. No one can predict when inventive genius will reach its limits in the printing press. Before this press was built, the fastest presses in the world were Hoe’s quadruple presses, which will turn out 48,000 four-, six-, or eight-page papers an hour, 24,000 ten-, twelve-, fourteen-, or sixteen-page papers an hour, and 12,000 twenty- or twenty-four page papers an hour, all cut, pasted, and folded.

The sextuple press has a well-nigh insatiable appetite for white paper. To satisfy it it is fed from three rolls at the same time, one roll being attached at either end of the press, and the third suspended near the centre. It is the only press which has ever been able to accomplish that feat. Each roll is sixty-three inches wide. When doing its best this press will consume 25-7/8 miles of 63-inch wide white paper in one hour, and eject it at the two deliveries, each copy containing an epitome of the news of the world for the preceding twenty-four hours, and each copy cut, pasted, and folded ready for delivery. It is a sight worth seeing to see it done, and in its way it is just as impressive as Niagara.

A man turns a lever, shafts and cylinders begin to revolve, the whirring noise sets into a steady roar, you see three streams of white paper pouring into the machine from the three huge rolls, and you pass around to the other side and—it is literally snowing newspapers at each end of the two delivery outlets. So fast does one paper follow the other that you catch only a momentary glitter from the deft steel fingers which seize the papers and cast them out.

The machine weighs about fifty-eight tons. It is massive and strong, with the strength of a thousand giants. And yet, though its arms are of steel and its motions are all as rapid as lightning, its touch is as tender as that of a woman when she caresses her babe. How else does the machine avoid tearing the paper? Paper tears very readily, as you often ascertain accidentally when turning over the pages. Truly wonderful it is, and mysterious to anybody but an expert, how this huge machine can make newspapers at the rate of twenty-five a second without rending the paper all to shreds.

It has six plate cylinders, each cylinder carrying eight stereotype plates, and six impression-cylinders. These cylinders, when the press is working at full speed, make two hundred revolutions a minute. The period of contact between the paper and the plate cylinders is therefore inconceivably brief, and how in that fractional space of time a perfect impression is made even to the reproduction of the finest, is one of those things which, to the man who is not “up” in mechanics, must forever remain a mystery.

FOUR ROLLER TWO-REVOLUTION PRESS.

A double folder forms part of the machine. A single folder would not be equal to the task imposed on it. As it is, this double folder has to exercise such celerity to keep up with the streams of printed paper which descend upon it that its operations are too quick for the eye to follow.

The press has two delivery outlets. At each the papers are automatically counted in piles of fifty. No matter how rapidly the papers come out, there is never a mistake in the count. It is as sure as fate. By an ingenious contrivance—if I should try to describe it more definitely most people would be none the wiser—each fiftieth paper is shoved out an inch beyond the others which have been dropped on to the receiving tapes, thus serving as a sort of tally mark.

Truly it is a marvelous machine—this sextuple press. Nowhere you will find a more perfect adaptation of means to ends, nowhere in any branch of industry a piece of mechanism which offers a finer example of what human skill and ingenuity is capable of. And it is free from that reproach which is sometimes brought against the greatest triumphs of inventive genius in other departments of human activity,—that they make mere automatons out of human beings.

There was recently manufactured by the Hoe Company for a New York paper an addition to this wonderful piece of machinery designated an octuple press. Running at full speed it will print, paste, cut, fold, and count 96,000 eight-page papers an hour. It is nearly 14 feet high, and 25 feet long. Ten men are required to operate it. The cylinders revolve 200 times in every 60 seconds.

This monster is divided into two working parts. The printing is done on the half of the machine to the right. The paper passes over the cylinders there, where it is printed from the stereotype plates, and then runs through the other half of the machine on the left, where it is cut, inserted, pasted, delivered, and counted from four outlets folding in half-page size.

This press shows four distinct double printing machines, each fed by its own roll of paper. The paper from each roll passes against two sets of stereotype plate cylinders—one for each side of the printed sheet. The machine is so perfectly adjusted that by simply turning a screw and moving a gear a few inches each of the four sets of cylinders can be thrown out of operation; that is to say one quarter, one half, three quarters, or the whole press can be operated at will.

The folder is harmonized for each adjustment of the printing cylinder. The folding of the papers has been brought to the highest state of perfection. The sheets are folded, cut, and delivered by a rotary motion at a speed that could never have been attained with the reciprocating arms, such as were used prior to the Hoe inventions.

When a sixteen-page paper is being printed it comes in four-ply thickness, and then doubles and shoots eight thicknesses under the knife.

When a twenty-four-page paper is being printed it passes over the longitudinal folder in six-ply thickness and passes under the knife in twelve thicknesses. All this is attained without the use of guiding tapes. In fact, the speed could not be attained with them.

As the papers are folded and delivered from the four outlets, with a speed too great for the eye to follow, the machine itself counts them in total and in bundles, as is done on the sextuple press. This monster octuple machine has a perfected system of ink distribution with which no other presses are equipped. Under the system results are obtained by decreasing the size and increasing the number of ink-rollers around each cylinder of plates.

The arrangement of the type cylinders is such as to make the press one that can be handled with great ease and rapidity. Along the right hand of the machine, between the two rows of cylinders, is an open passageway. It is large enough for men to pass through either from the ground or from the gallery near the latitudinal centre of the press.

From this open passageway the pressmen are able to watch every movement of the machine’s interior working, and from it they are able to make quick changes on the plate cylinders. The change in position of only two ink-rollers is necessary to change a plate on any cylinder. This is a matter of great importance to a paper which prints many editions, for it is necessary to change plates so often and to economize every minute of time in order to catch the fast mails which carry the paper to all quarters of the earth.

On the octuple presses each roll of paper is guarded against breakage. There is a device in the shape of a short endless belt of rubber which passes over two pulleys and rests on top of the roll of paper. The paper is then pulled from the roll as gently as the thread is pulled from the spool of a sewing machine. The belt pushes the roll along at a speed equal to and sometimes a little greater than that of the stereotype cylinders. Hence, all tension is removed from the paper.

From the stereotyper’s department, where they have been made in a few minutes, come the plates of curved, bright metal. Passed to the pressmen, they are locked on the cylinders as fast as they can be handled. The rolls of paper have been placed in their proper positions.

This accomplished, the men step back from the machine, the brakeman pulls the lever, and the giant press begins its work. Slowly its cylinders revolve at first, but as headway is gained the rumble that accompanied the start increases into a shrill shriek as the limit of speed is reached.

LITHOGRAPHIC PRESS.

The paper rushes from its continuous rolls, is printed, folded, cut, and thrown out from the four outlets at a speed that would be over twice greater than that of any express train if it were confined to one roll. Every paper is just like every other one, perfect in every detail.

When this has gone on for an hour, two hours, or however long it may take to run off the editions, the monster press can be stopped in an instant. With the simple touching of a lever all its movement will cease before the cylinders can revolve five times, and they had been revolving two hundred times a minute before.

The two wonders just described are confined to newspaper work. This same American firm has produced presses upon which are printed the fine specimens of magazines where the work takes a striking resemblance to lithograph printing. They have a speed of 8000 an hour. From them come booklets of 16, 20, or 24 pages. From the presses of 4000 an hour come books of 32, 40, and 48 pages. In construction they are complicated and grand.

Then come the presses upon which are printed different colors. These are made in England and the United States, and are used with satisfactory results on prominent publications in both countries. A recent issue of the “British and Colonial Printer” directs attention to this advance in mechanism through the medium of the Hoe art rotary form feeder. It says:—

“This machine carries the mind back naturally to pre-rotary days, when the Hoe multi-feeder held the field as the newspaper machine, to the days of the heavy, and as we consider in these advanced days, clumsy turtle. When the creative genius of Colonel Hoe evolved the rotary press, the multi-feeder was almost at once relegated to the lumber room of obsolete mechanics. It is hardly conceivable that it entered the mind of any practical man at this time that the principle of multi-fed flat sheet printing would ever be adapted to the production of high art illustrated literature, at a speed equal, or nearly so, to the former Hoe news machine. It has, at all events in our country, long been a settled opinion that such work could only be successfully accomplished upon a flat-bed machine, that the mere curvature of a plate must destroy the beauty of a fine process block for example, and that any attempt to travel at a greater speed than 1200 to 1500 an hour must be at the sacrifice of depth and sufficiency of rolling. Whether this is really so readers will now be able to form their own opinion from the pages of the ‘Strand Magazine.’ Those pages abound in very varied methods of engraving, woodcut and process, line and nature, and reproductions alike from photos and from wash and crayon drawings. Every page has undergone the process of electrotyping, cast straight and curved subsequently, and therefore the conditions of printing at the high speed of 4000 (or to be strictly accurate, four sheets of 16 pages each put through at the rate of 950 each, or 3800 per hour) are as severe as could be desired.

“The British printer has yet to acquire a full mastery of its capabilities, and the engineer has equally before him in some degree a period of development. Some of the portraiture, human and animal, is equal to anything seen. The make-ready (upon hard packing) exhibits the highest quality, and the distribution of color perfection. The plate-cylinder is made as large as the desired speed renders practicable, in order that the curvature of the plates may be reduced to a minimum. The provision for securing adequate distribution and in-rolling is upon a liberal scale, but not one whit more so than is requisite, extent of surface and speed of running considered. There are 16 inkers and 38 distributors, with 16 iron distribution cylinders. The sheets are fed in two at either side of the machine, those from the right hand feeders being delivered upon the table at the extreme left, the other upon the inner delivery board. The plates are rigidly secured by special clutches. To facilitate the imposition of the plates, or any attention required by the cylinder, the short rear portion of the machine back of the cylinder is detachable and can be run out upon an extended base, and then closed up and put into gear again. This renders it perfectly accessible at the most essential point. The sheets are of course printed on one side only. We have not yet attained to the perfecting stage in art work in combination with high speed; the introduction of the Hoe art rotary press, however, marks a distinct epoch in this class of printing in Great Britain. Color printing-presses are in use in the newspaper and magazine offices in this country, and from them are produced the artistic as well as the lurid styles of art.”

What the possibilities of the printing press are, looking at the degree of excellence at present attained, it is difficult to predict. It would seem as if the height of perfection now had been reached. The probability is that the printer at the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century may look with something akin to contempt upon the machines which now are regarded with so much pride.

Such a thing is possible in this age of invention.

NUMBERING CARD PRESS.