“But does it want a machine like that?”
“Oh no,” he replied: “that grew out of the idea. I was not satisfied then with my solid block of type, which might be used and then melted down again. It struck me, Antony, that it would be better if I made that solid block curved, so as to fit on a big cylinder, and let it go round instead of the paper. I could then print twice as many.”
“Ye-yes,” I said, “but I hardly see it.”
“I will show you presently, my boy,” he replied. “Well, I worked at that idea till I felt satisfied that I could carry it out, when a greater idea came.”
He paused and wiped his forehead, gazing now, though, out at the starry night, and speaking in a low earnest voice.
“It seemed to me then, Antony, that I ought to do away with the simple, clumsy plan of making men or boys supply or lay-on paper, sheet by sheets as the machine was at work.”
“What could you do?” I said.
“Ah, that was the question. I was thinking it over, when going through Saint Paul’s Churchyard I saw in one of the draper’s shops a basket of rolls of ribbon, and the thing was done.”
“How?” I asked.
“By having the paper in a long roll, a thousand yards upon a reel, to be cut off sheet by sheet as it is printed between the cylinders.”