SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 157 



2. Extemporaneous Printing Press, used hy Country 

 Comedians. 

 I was informed, the other day, that it is the common Simple method 

 practice of travelling companies of comedians to print their ? meanTof^a 

 bills by laying the damped paper upon the form of letter roller, 

 previously inked, and to give the pi-essure by a wooden 

 roller, clot'r'^d vith woollen cloth. Many years ago I made 

 experiments of this method, which I found very capable of 

 affording impressions, by a light pressure. The form of 

 letter must be disposed in a kind of frame, having its upper 

 surface about one-thirtieth of an inch lower than the inked 

 face, in order that the roller, being supported by the frame, 

 may not be obliged to rise with much obliquity, upon the 

 first letters ; and that it may pass off, at the other end, with 

 equal ease. If some such contrivance were not used, the 

 paper would be cut, and the impression injured at the be- 

 ginning and end of the rolling. The roller must be passed 

 in the direction of the lines, or across the page ; otherwise 

 the paper will bag a little between line and line, and the 

 impression will be less neat. In fact, the common method by 

 theplattin, or flat surface which presses the whole at once, 

 is best ; but the engine is less simple. 



But as the arts of writing and of printing have incal- 

 culably extended the knowledge and powers of man, it may 

 be allowed us to look forward to a time when communica- 

 tions shall be as much more rapid and effectual, compared 

 with those of the present time, as ours are, compared with 

 what they were before printing was invented. We may hope 

 for a time when men shall confer more rapidly, concisely^ 

 perspicuously, and comprehensively by writing than they 

 are now able to do themselves by articulated sounds. We 

 may contemplate a period when by easy combinations of 

 chemical a|ld mechanical skill, the multiplication of nume- 

 rous copies may demand scarcely moi'e time and apparatus 

 than is now required to write a single copy. And while we 

 speculate on possibilities of this nature, which are far from 

 being in the higher class of improbabilities, we may indulge 

 a philanthropic hope, that when it shall be more easy to 

 c(^vey, distribute, and apprehend the results of philosophi- 

 cal and moral research, the short span of human life will be 

 much less obscured by misery and accumulated suffering than 



it 



