“It remains to be explained why the invention never came into general use.”
[It was Sir Rowland Hill’s wish that the passage which next followed in the Prefatory Memoir should be enlarged. He was not well enough himself to make the additions which he desired, but he supplied his son, Mr. Pearson Hill, with the necessary information and documents. After suggesting in a manuscript marginal note the changes which should be made, he added: “I leave this in my son’s hands, who will best know how to deal with it.” Mr. Pearson Hill has accordingly supplied me with the following statement:—]
“The practical difficulties to the employment of the machine for the printing of newspapers—the work for which it was especially fitted—were all in a fair way of being removed. A provisional contract, which is still in our possession, had even been entered into with certain parties to provide my father with the means of rapidly casting curved stereotype plates, similar to those now used for printing newspapers, when he found himself face to face with what proved an insuperable difficulty on the part of the Stamp Office.
“In those days, and indeed for many years after, newspapers were charged with Stamp Duty. By the requirements of the Inland Revenue Department, every separate sheet on which a newspaper was printed had to bear an impressed stamp—the separate sheets being sent to the Stamp Office to be so impressed, and then returned to the various newspaper printing offices ready for use.
“This necessity for cutting the paper into separate sheets before printing, of course, was absolutely inconsistent with printing the newspaper from a continuous scroll. My father applied, therefore, to the Treasury to make arrangements to allow the stamp to be affixed by machinery as the scroll passed through the press (as was indeed done years afterwards), but his request was refused.[88] This decision on the part of the Treasury deferred for something like five-and-thirty years the introduction of the present rotatory printing-press.
“The following is a copy of his memorial to the Treasury, and of the answer that he received:—
To
The Right Honorable the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The Memorial of