A. D. 2000

by Alvarado M. Fuller

After lunch a visit was made to the offices of the “Daily American,” the great newspaper of the country. The establishment was situated at the southeastern corner of the city, just outside of section “South America.”

The making of the form and printing of this great paper was explained by Mr. McGregor, the manager.

The items of news and interest from all parts of the world were received at the “World” building by the sympathetic telegraph, and then transmitted by tube to the chief of copy at the office of the paper. Here it was assorted and given to the type-writers. Type, as used in the nineteenth century, had no place in the form of this paper.

Each compositor sat before a machine which appeared to Cobb very like a Yost type-writer, and printed his copy on slips about as long and twice as wide as the columns of an ordinary newspaper.

The paper was prepared, by immersion in certain chemicals, to undergo a change of texture and composition upon the passage of an electric current of 400 volts. The letter arms of the type-writers were connected with the batteries, and whenever, in printing, a letter was struck upon the paper, the current passed through to the metallic bed, leaving a silver-gray print of the character on the paper.

These strips, or columns of the paper, as they proved to be, were set together to form sheets or pages of the “Daily American.”

A little instrument, having a pointer with 100 metallic hairs, each about an inch in length, and each connected by an insulated wire to a sympathetic instrument, was placed on the outer edge of the sheet of paper, which lay flat and smooth upon a copper bed. The 100 little points were so set that they just touched the paper, but not each other; and their arrangement was such that, as the machine traveled over the sheet from bottom to top, every part of the paper for a width of two inches was touched by some one of these points.

Now, the current of electricity which passed through the slips of paper when printed, had not left the letters in clear color, but had changed the metallic composition in the paper into metallic letters.

Another, and one of the most important factors in this new process, was that the letter was metallic clear through the paper, the reverse side of the sheet showing a perfect type-form.

The “Daily American” was printed simultaneously in one hundred cities of the country, and from these cities delivered by train as in former days. Of course it was necessary that each city should have its own type-form, but the size of the paper precluded the possibility of sending such a vast amount of matter to each place and there putting it in type-form.