“Why, it is—it is,” I cried, clapping my hands, as he leaned towards me; “it’s a printing machine.”
“You’re right, Antony,” he said; “quite right. It is the model of a printing machine.”
“Yes,” I said, with all a boy’s excitement; “and it’s to do quickly what the men do now so slowly in the presses, sheet by sheet.”
“Yes, and in the present machines,” he said. “Have you noticed how the machines work?”
“Oh, yes!” I said; “often. The type runs backwards and forwards, and the paper is laid on by boys and is drawn round the big roller and comes out printed.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Well, Antony, you have seen the men working at the presses?”
“Yes.”
“It is hard work, and they print about two hundred or two hundred and fifty sheets an hour, do they not?”
“Yes; I believe so.”
“And the great clumsy machines print six or seven hundred an hour. Some a thousand.”