For the benefit of those who have no opportunity of visiting a city printing office and would know something of how such a one is arranged and regulated, and also for the further satisfaction of those who have visited an office of this description and learned only enough to make them desire to know more, we will endeavor to describe the process of making a daily newspaper, taking for a special subject the Witness Printing House, where this magazine is published.
The general appearance of a newspaper has no little to do with its success. It should be neatly and clearly printed, so that it may be read with ease and pleasure. This depends chiefly on the mechanical workmanship. Good paper is also a desideratum, but then it must not be expensive, and need not be made as if to last for all time, as from its nature the life of any single number of a newspaper is short, although in the continual succession of numbers, day after day, there is much of permanency about an established journal. A daily newspaper is the world's history of one day to be read on the same day or the next, and too often forgotten on the third; and to habitual news readers news forty-eight hours behind the date is almost as ancient history, and only interesting as a memorial of how the people lived so long ago.
There is hardly any portion of the world which has not been ransacked for material of which to make cheap paper. The "American Encyclopædia" gives the following extensive, though incomplete, list of substances from which paper has been made: "Acacia, althæa, American aloe or maguey, artichoke, asparagus, aspen, bamboo, banana, basswood, bean vines, bluegrass, broom, buckwheat straw, bulrushes, cane, cattail, cedar, china grass, clematis, clover, cork, corn husks and stalks, cotton, couch grass, elder, elm, esparto grass, ferns, fir, flags, flax, grape vine, many grasses, hemp, hop vines, horse chestnut, indigo, jute, mulberry bark and wood; mummy cloth, oak, oakum and straw, osier, palm, palmetto, pampas grass, papyrus, pea vines, pine, plantain, poplar, potato vines, rags of all kinds, reeds, rice straw, ropes, rye straw, sedge grass, silk, silk cotton (bombax), sorghum, spruce, thistles, tobacco, wheat straw, waste paper, willow, and wool." The principal materials are: "1, cotton and linen rags; 2, waste paper; 3, straw; 4, esparto grass; 5, wood; 6, cane; 7, jute and manila." In Canada, the principal ingredients used in the newspaper are a mixture of cotton rags and basswood; although from a very prevalent habit amongst some of chewing paper, it might almost be presumed that tobacco was also commonly used. The process of converting these different ingredients into pure white paper is a most interesting one, but we shall pass on to other materials used in making the newspaper without further notice.
The central idea in the printing process is the movable type from which the impression, which we call printing, is made. Types are composed from an alloy known as type metal. Its chief ingredient is lead; antimony is added to make it more stiff, and tin to give it toughness. A very small quantity of copper is sometimes added to give it a still greater degree of tenacity, and in some cases the ordinary type is faced with copper through the agency of the galvanic battery,—an expensive operation, but one which adds greatly to the durability of the letters. A type has been described as a small bar of metal, with the letter in relief upon one end, as in the illustration, by which, also, it will be seen that the letter on the type is reversed, so that the impression will appear on the paper as we see it.
Types are of a uniform height, ninety-two hundredths of an inch being the invariable height of all types, and of everything used to print along with types all over the world. They are of various sizes, from the letters two or more feet across, used in posters, to the minute type only seen in the very smallest editions of the Bible, or in marginal notes. The largest size commonly used in the present day is "pica," of which 71.27 lines go to a foot. The next smaller is "small pica," with 80 lines to a foot; then "long primer" (with which this article is is printed), with 89.79 lines to a foot; then "bourgeois," 100.79 lines to a foot; "brevier," 113.13 lines to a foot; "minion" (with which the Witness is principally printed), 126.99 lines to a foot; "nonpareil," half the size of "pica;" and "agate" (with which the Witness advertisements are set), 160 lines to a foot.
Pearl.
Machinery now does nearly every part of labor, thus saving tim
Agate.
Machinery now does nearly every part of labor, thus sav