SCIENCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD 



was made. The first improvement was made by 

 William Blaew, of Amsterdam, who improved the move- 

 ment of the platen and simplified the work of manipu- 

 lating the screw by a device for rolling in and out the 

 bed, so that the platen need only be raised a short 

 distance between impressions. This press soon became 

 very popular all over Europe, and remained practically 

 unchanged from its invention, in 1620, until the closing 

 years of the eighteenth century. By that time the de- 

 mand for more pressure upon the "form" caused the 

 Earl of Stanhope to produce a press having a frame 

 made of one piece of cast iron. He made several im- 

 provements in the system of levers for working the 

 platen, which were also very advantageous to the press- 

 men. But his press was still only a modified Guten- 

 berg press, as were those of Clymer, Rust, and Smith 

 a little later; and the "Washington" press, which 

 is even now the popular hand-press for taking fine 

 proofs, is really only the perfected product based on 

 all these models. 



By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury many improvements had been made in presses, 

 particularly in the manner of applying power, the old 

 hand-presses having practically disappeared except for 

 the special work just referred to. The press invented 

 by Isaac Adams, of Boston, in 1830 and in 1836 was a 

 very popular one; and Hoe & Company, of New York, 

 were busy in the preparation of presses that should meet 

 the increasing demands of the newspapers for faster 

 work. But as yet few of these presses departed very 

 radically from the original idea of a flat platen pressing 



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