ROWLAND HILL.
Sheweth,
That your Memorialist has recently obtained His Majesty’s Letters Patent for certain improvements in the method of letter-press printing by machinery, the object of which improvements, besides considerable economy, is a very greatly increased speed in the printing of newspapers, but which object cannot be fully realized unless a change can be permitted in the manner of impressing the Government Stamp upon the newspapers printed by his machines, inasmuch as it is an important part of his plan to make use of the paper, not in separate sheets but in very long scrolls, i.e., in the state it is first produced by the modern paper-making machines, each long scroll as it passes rapidly through the printing-machine receiving a series of repetitions of the letter-press.
Further that
Your Memorialist’s
apparatus is so constructed that one complete impression, and no more, is produced by one revolution of the machine, since the types necessary to the printing of a complete impression are arranged around a cylinder, whose surface is by the said types, with the addition of proper marginal spaces, wholly covered, so that each revolution of this cylinder gives exactly one impression.
Also
That the Government Stamp could readily be attached to the printing cylinder of your Memorialist’s machine, so that each revolution of the cylinder giving an impression of the type, should necessarily give an impression of the Stamp also; and that there are contrivances well known to machinists, and extensively used by them, by which the number of turns made by a machine can be recorded without chance of error or possibility of fraud. The Gas Meter is the most familiar instance, and upon its accuracy the Gas Companies stake their important interests without doubt or hesitation.
That
Under these circumstances your Memorialist ventures to hope that in the Bill now before Parliament for the consolidation of the Stamp Acts, a power may be given to the Commissioners of Stamps to make such arrangements as they may deem advisable for affording to your Memorialist and to the Public the advantages which the use of his improved printing machine offers.