PRINTING AND MAKING OF BOOKS 



such discoveries would be impossible. Indeed this has 

 occurred so frequently that some one was prompted 

 to remark recently that one reason why the practical air- 

 ship had not been invented sooner was because every- 

 body expected that it would be. "Let all the scientists 

 come to the agreement that aerial flight is impossible," 

 said this cynic, "and very soon we shall fly." 



Be this as it may, it is certain that the invention of a 

 printing-press with the type revolving on cylinders 

 followed closely upon the statement by the world's 

 leading journal that such a machine was mechanically 

 impossible. "No art of packing could make the type 

 adhere to a cylinder revolving around a horizontal axis 

 and thereby aggravating centrifugal impulse by the 

 intrinsic weight of the metal," said the London Times 

 in December, 1848. Ten years later the same paper 

 was being printed by a machine of this impossible kind, 

 the invention of the American, Richard M. Hoe. 



It is perfectly obvious to anyone that there would be 

 many advantages in a printing-machine to have the type 

 arranged on the surface of a revolving cylinder which 

 could be rotated continuously in one direction, printing a 

 sheet at every revolution. But the difficulty, as The Times 

 pointed out, lay in discovering some method of holding 

 the type in place on such a machine. The imperative 

 demands of the American newspapers, however, acting 

 as a constant stimulus to inventors, caused them to 

 make ceaseless efforts to produce such a machine, or 

 one that would turn out more work; but it was not until 

 1846 that such a machine was perfected. In that year, 

 a "Hoe Type-Revolving Machine" was placed in the 



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