Carrier-pigeon.
What the carrier-pigeon was in the conveyance of intelligence in the middle ages, and even within a few years, the electric telegraph is in the present day. The carrier-pigeon went out from a besieged castle, to ask for succour, in eastern countries, five centuries ago. The electric telegraph, land and submarine, brings the tidings of slaughter and sickness from Sebastopol, and England and France send instant reinforcements. The carrier-pigeon, in the last century, was despatched by the merchants of the English factory, from Scanderoon to Aleppo, to announce the arrival of the company's ships. The electric telegraph communicates to London the arrival of an Australian packet at Southampton. Within the last ten years one of the annual expenses of a London newspaper was 1800l. for pigeon expresses. The pigeons have lost their employment. The price of stocks and shares in 'Change-alley is known every quarter of an hour upon the exchanges of our great commercial marts; and the closing price of the French funds is in type before midnight at our daily newspaper-offices. The carrier-pigeon travelled sixty miles an hour. The time which it takes to transmit a message by the electric telegraph is inappreciable. The newspapers of the United States employ the electric telegraph far more extensively than our English papers; for the distances between one State and one city and another State and another city are so great, that steam travelling would not accomplish the object of communication with sufficient rapidity. The density of our population renders the employment of the telegraph less necessary for the ordinary transmission of intelligence. But private curiosity, in a time of great public interest, steps in; and one of the most remarkable exhibitions of our provincial towns at the time at which we are writing—when an agonizing anxiety for the fortunes of our heroic defenders in the Black Sea is the chief thought of millions—is the crowd about the telegraph-office to know something more than the morning paper, brought by railway speed, can furnish to this universal excitement. In America the distance between Quebec and New Orleans, a distance of three thousand miles, is overleaped by the electric telegraph. Two lines, each two thousand miles long, connect New York with New Orleans; and over this space messages are transmitted, and answers received, in three hours. When we read long paragraphs in the London morning papers, received by electric telegraph after midnight from Paris, we wonder how this is accomplished. Eighteen words, which are equal to about two newspaper lines, are transmitted every minute; and the full message from Dover, carefully transcribed, is in the hands of the newspaper editor in half an hour.
To carry out all this scientific conquest of time and space, by the most perfect mental and mechanical arrangements in the newspaper-office itself, appears, at first sight, almost as great a wonder as the rapid communication. Nothing but the most perfect organization of the division of labour could accomplish the feat.
There is, after midnight, in the office of a morning paper, a constant necessity for adapting the labour of every quarter of an hour to the requirements of the instant time. Much of the newspaper matter may have been in type in the evening; some portion may be quite ready for printing off. But new necessities may derange much of this preparation. Say that the Parliament is sitting. The reporters are in the gallery at the meeting of the House, and each arrives at the office with his assigned portion of the debate. A heavy night is not expected, and the early reporters write with comparative fulness. Suddenly an unexpected turn is given to the proceedings. A great debate springs up, out of a ministerial statement or an opposition objection. Then come reply and rejoinder. Column after column is poured in. Smaller matters must give way to greater. The intelligence that will keep is put aside for the information that is pressing. The debate is prolonged till one or two o'clock, and the paper is approaching its completion. But an electric telegraph communication has arrived—perhaps an important express. Away goes more news. Advertisements, law reports, police reports, correspondence—all retire into obscurity for one day. There is plenty of manipulating power in the great body of compositors to effect these changes. But not in any department is there any apparent bustle. Nor is there any neglect in the labours that wait upon the work of the compositors. One word is not put for another. The readers are as vigilant to correct every error—to have no false spelling and no inaccurate punctuation—as if they were bestowing their vigilance upon a book to be published next season. The reporters are as careful to make no slips which would indicate a want of knowledge, as if they were calmly writing in their libraries after breakfast. The one-presiding mind of the editor is watchful over all. At four or five o'clock the morning paper goes to press.
Cowper's machine.
But there are many hundred copies to be despatched by the morning mails. Manchester and Glasgow would be frightened from their propriety, if the daily London papers did not arrive at the accustomed hour. The London merchant, banker, lawyer, would go unwillingly to his morning labour, if he had not had one passing glance at the division in the House, the state of the money-market, the last foreign intelligence. Late as the paper may have been in its mental completion, Manchester, Glasgow, and London will not be kept without that illumination which has become almost as necessary as sunlight. Machinery has been created by the demand, to carry the demand farther than the warmest imagination could have anticipated. In 1814, Kœnig, a German, erected the first printing-machine at the "Times Office," and produced eighteen hundred impressions an hour on one side. The machine superseded the duplicates of the type which were once necessary, painfully and laboriously to keep up a small supply, worked by men, with relays, at the rate of five hundred an hour. In 1818 Edward Cowper produced his cylinder-machine, which effected a revolution in the commerce of books; and, in connexion with the paper-machine, enabled the principle of cheapness to contend against an impolitic and oppressive tax. This is still the machine in general use for many newspapers and much book-printing. We will briefly describe the operation of printing a sheet of paper on both sides by this instrument.
Upon the solid steel table at each end of the machine lie the pages which print one side of the sheet. At the top of the machine, where the laying-on boy stands, is a heap of wet paper. The signal being given by the director of the work, the laying-on boy turns a small handle, and the moving-power of the strap connected with a steam-engine is immediately communicated. Some ten or twenty spoiled sheets are first passed over the types to remove any dirt or moisture. If the director is satisfied, the boy begins to lay on the white paper. He places the sheet upon a flat table before him, with its edge ready to be seized by the apparatus for conveying it upon the drum. At the first movement of the great wheel, the inking-apparatus at each end has been set in motion. The steel cylinder attached to the reservoir of ink has begun slowly to move,—the "doctor," or more properly "ductor," has risen to touch that cylinder for an instant, and thus receive a supply of ink,—the inking-table has passed under the "doctor" and carried off that supply,—and the distributing-rollers have spread it equally over the surface of the table. This surface, having passed under the inking-rollers, communicates the supply to them; and they in turn impart it to the form which is to be printed. All these beautiful operations are accomplished in the sixteenth part of a minute, by the travelling backward and forward of the carriage or table upon which the form rests. Each roller revolves upon an axis which is fixed. At the moment when the form at the back of the machine is passing under the inking-roller, the sheet, which the boy has carefully laid upon the table before him, is caught in the web-roller and conveyed to the endless bands or tapes which pass it over the first impressing cylinder. It is here seized tightly by the bands, which fall between the pages and on the outer margin. The moment after the sheet is seized upon the first cylinder, the form passes under that cylinder, and the paper being brought in contact with it receives an impression on one side. To give the impression on the other side the sheet is to be turned over, and this is effected by the two drums in the centre of the machine. The endless tapes never lose their grasp of the sheet, although they allow it to be reversed. While the impression has been given by the first cylinder, the second form of types at the other end of the table has been inked. The drums have conveyed the sheet during this inking upon the second cylinder; it is brought in contact with the types, and the operation is complete.
Kœnig's machine, which was a very complicated instrument, was supplanted at the 'Times' office by a modification of Applegath's and Cowper's machine, which printed four thousand sheets an hour on one side. But that has been superseded by a vertical machine, which prints ten thousand copies an hour, on one side. The separate columns of type are fixed on a large type-drum, two hundred inches in circumference. The drum is surrounded by eight impressing cylinders; the ink is applied to the surface of the type by rollers which work between these cylinders; and the sheets are laid on upon eight tables, (h, h, h,) which, by a most ingenious mechanism, carry each sheet to a point where its position is suddenly changed, and it is impressed between the type and the cylinder; the paper being then suspended by tapes, from which it is released as it passes forward, to be laid upon the heap which will be scattered, in a few hours, to every corner of the kingdom.