"Of course," assented Jimmie, "that's the reason. Why didn't I see it?"
Curved Stereotype Plate
"Shall we go back to the office now where there is less noise and see what to-day's paper says?" asked Uncle Francis after giving Jimmie a good long time to watch the press. "There is one thing more I should like to have you see, but it is too late for you to do so to-day. Give one look at the type cylinder before you leave. Can you see that the type is not in little pieces of one letter each, but is in solid pieces of metal curved to fit the cylinder?" On the way back to the office Uncle Francis showed Jimmie a stereotype plate which he could study at close range.
"These plates are what you saw on the type cylinder," explained Uncle Francis. "You shall see one made sometime. In these days in the big offices after the real type is set letter by letter it isn't used for the printing at all. It wears it out too fast to print 50,000 newspapers from it each day, and besides it takes too much type. Instead of using the movable type for the printing, we cover the type with a soft substance like soaked up pasteboard, press it hard on the type, dry it, and have a perfect copy of the type except that the letters are little hollows instead of raised pieces.
"This copy, or model, is used for a mold into which we pour liquid metal. When this cools we have, you see, another copy of the type and in this the letters are all raised. The mold is curved to fit the cylinders before the molten metal is poured in, so that the stereotype plate, as the page of fixed type is called, can be clamped tight on the big cylinder. It is these big plates that you have seen used for type on the press cylinders."
"Jingles! but it is some work to print a newspaper!" exclaimed Jimmie.
"Yes, it is, and it is a very wonderful process, too, more wonderful every year. You and your mother will be interested in this paragraph in to-day's paper," said his uncle, passing Mrs. Granger one of the freshly printed papers. "In that article about the new press are some striking comparisons you will enjoy."
"What a change in printing!" said Mrs. Granger. "Just listen, Jimmie! 'The old flat screw press of the colonial period could print fifty small papers on one side in an hour; the Washington compound lever hand press in 1829—the best hand press ever made—brought the number up to 250; the revolving cylinder press made it possible to print about 1000 an hour; then in 1847 the Hoe lightning press printed 30,000; and now the Hoe rotary perfecting press prints on both sides,—not a little four-page paper, but a large-sized eight-page paper—at the rate of 24,000 an hour!'"