562 



PRINTING, PROGRESS OF, IN RECENT YEARS. 



Manutius. To-day there are single printing-estab- 

 lishments that could turn out as great a volume 

 of printing in a week or a year as did all the 

 printers of the globe in 1800. The industry now 

 ranks as one of three or four that are the great- 

 est in the world. Accurate statistics can not as 

 yet be produced to show this, but the conclusion 

 may be deduced from reasoning and observation. 

 The United States census returns for 1880 show 

 printing and publishing to be the seventh in- 

 dustry in value of products reported, and that 

 this product had more than trebled during the 

 preceding ten years; the rate of growth was 

 greater than that of any other large industry. If 

 the rates of growth for the larger industries of 

 the United States were maintained in the last 

 decade as in the previous, then the printing in- 

 dustry should rank first to-day. In any case, it 

 is reasonably certain that printing and publishing 

 ranks with foundry and machine-shops, iron and 

 steel manufactories, and men's clothing as one 

 of the four greatest industries. There are more 

 than 1,000 printing-offices in New York city alone, 

 and there are about 25,000 newspaper offices, and 

 nearly as many job-printing offices, in the United 

 States and Canada. The total number of printing- 

 establishments of all sorts in the world is be- 

 lieved to be nearly 100,000. 



It has been estimated that the newspapers and 

 periodicals of the United States and Canada cir- 

 culate nearly 4,000,000,000,000 copies annually, 

 and that the remainder of the world's issue might 

 double these figures ; but, as newspapers are prone 

 to overstate the facts, doubtless the truth is well 

 within these figures. Observation indicates that 

 the volume of commercial printing is not great- 

 ly below the volume of newspaper-printing. 



The quality of printing has increased strikingly, 

 but the cheapening of the work is more remark- 

 able. Forty to sixty years ago 4-page news- 

 papers were sold in the United States for 5 cents, 

 which represented about one-twenty-fifth part of 

 a workman's daily earnings. Now newspapers of 

 16 pages are sold at 1 cent, and the workman's 

 earnings have doubled, so that the twenty-fifth 

 part (10 cents), will buy 160 pages of newspapers, 

 or forty times as much in bulk. The reduction in 

 the cost of books is almost as great. Neatly bound 

 volumes are now commonly sold at 25 cents each, 

 whereas at the close of the civil war books were 

 mostly quoted at $2 or more. This reduction in 

 cost has been brought about largely by the fol- 

 lowing agencies: 1. Rotary printing-machines, 

 operable at much higher speeds than the flat-bed 

 reciprocating presses; 2, the use of paper in the 

 roll, instead of in single sheets that had to be 

 fed in one at a time by hand; 3, the substitu- 

 tion of pulped wood instead of the more costly 

 rags as a material for making paper; 4, the in- 

 troduction of composing-machines, each of which 

 performs the labor of five to six men; 5, the de- 

 velopment of mechanical processes of engraving, 

 making illustrations both better and cheaper than 

 wood-engraving. To these might be added a very 

 great number of minor causes, embodying the 

 general improvement in all sorts of machinery 

 and processes that enter into the production of 

 printing. 



Type-Founding. The early printers cast their 

 own types. Type-founding as a separate business 

 began in England about two hundred years ago. 

 The first permanent foundry in the United States 

 was that of Binny & Ronaldson, established in 

 Philadelphia in 1796. Their successors are in 

 business there to-day as a branch of the American 

 Type-Founders Company. The Bruces, of New 

 York, did more to develop type-founding here 



than any other concern. George Bruce accom- 

 plished a great deal in the way of systematizing 

 sizes, styles, and bodies of type, and the firm of 

 D. & G. Bruce originated and introduced a great 

 many new faces. David Bruce, Jr., invented the 

 type-casting machine, which came into use about 

 1840. In 1892 a majority of the type-founders of 

 the United States organized as the American 

 Type-Founders Company, and since that date have 

 largely controlled the business, having branches 

 in the principal cities, and being opposed by only 

 a few large foundries. 



About 1890 what is known as the " point sys- 

 tem " of type-bodies came into general use. It 

 was started in America by Marder, Luse & Co., in 

 1873, and proved so convenient that other foun- 

 dries were eventually driven to its use. The sys- 

 tem consists in making the widths of type-bodies 

 that is, non-technically, the thickness of the 

 lines all on a uniform scale. The smallest stand- 

 ard size of newspaper advertising type (formerly 

 called agate, and differing a little in size with 

 almost every foundry manufacturing) is now 

 known as 5-point, and any 5J-point from any 

 foundry can be set in the same line with 5^-point 

 type from any other foundry. This article is set 

 in 8-point type. The well-known size formerly 

 called pica is now 12-point. The point is 0.0138 

 of an inch, and all type and leads, type-furniture, 

 etc., are now made in even points. Within a few 

 years the Inland Type-Foundry, of St. Louis, has 

 been manufacturing type called "point set," 

 which is made in widths that measure even frac- 

 tions of a point in the direction of the length of 

 the line. As far as possible the widths are even 

 points and half-points, though in smaller sizes, 

 it is necessary to use the quarter-point and eighth- 

 point as the minutest units. The European type- 

 founders have point systems of their own, which 

 are different from the American. Most of their 

 type is made practically of the same height as 

 the American, so that it is possible to print them 

 together in the same page or form, but the dif- 

 ferences of body are such that this is not conve- 

 nient, and very little European type is sold in this 

 country and very little American type sold across 

 the Atlantic. 



The Earth automatic type-casting machine was 

 brought out in the Cincinnati Type-Foundry eight 

 years ago, and has been taken up by the American 

 Type-Founders Company, and is now being used 

 to produce a large portion of the body and job 

 type made in America. This machine delivers the 

 type completely dressed and ready for use, re- 

 quiring only inspection to discover any poor casts 

 that may occur by accident. In England the 

 Wicks rotary type-casting machine was intro- 

 duced in 1899, and is said to deliver type at the 

 rate of 60,000 an hour, a rate heretofore unknown 

 in type-casting. 



Type Composing and Distributing Ma- 

 chines. Several hundred patents have been 

 granted in England and the United States on 

 machines for doing the work of the compositor. 

 The first machine of any note that attempted td 

 solve the problem of rapid composition* was in- 

 vented by Dr. William Church, of Connecticut, in 

 1820, and patented in England in 1822, but did 

 not come into practical use. His method was to 

 cast and set the type directly from the molten 

 metal. At the Paris Exposition of 1855, Christian 

 Sorenson, of Copenhagen, exhibited a machine 

 that set type and distributed simultaneously. 

 This also failed of commercial success. 



The Alden machine, patented in 1857, and de- 

 veloped in New York, had the type arranged in 

 cells, around the circumference of a horizontal 



