Newspaper Page Text
Entered according to Act of Congress, in June,lß7o, by J. W. Buber Sl Cos., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the So. District o/Georgia
Vol. IV — No. 23.
Written for Burke’s Weekly.
HOW BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS
ARE MADE.
lay the fulfillment of our pro
mise; and even now the task'is
undertaken amidst many press
ing duties, which leave us but
little time to devote to the sub
ject.
The art of printing —as some
of you know—dates back to about
the beginning of the fifteenth cen
tury. It is not fully agreed who
was the discoverer of this won
derful art, nor exactly where the
discovery was made.
The cities of Haarlem in Hol
land, and Mentz and Strasburg
in Germany, all claim the honor ;
and MacKellar, in his American
Printer , concludes, that it was
discovered in the first - named
city, and improved and perfected
in the other two the earliest
date being about 1429.
Printing was introduced into France
as early as 1402, and into England in
1474 —nearly 400 years ago. To give
the children of the present day some
idea of the kind of school-books used in
England, even as late as 1731, we give
on the next page a picture of the Horn
Book of the 17th century. This horn
book was the primer of that day—the
first book put into the hands of English
boys and girls. It consisted of a single
leaf, printed on one side, containing
the alphabet, large and small, a few
words of two letters, the Lord s Bray
er, etc. This leaf was usually set in a
frame of wood, with a piece of thin,
transparent horn covering it, from
which it took the name of horn book.
There was generally a handle to hold
it by, and in the handle there was com
monly a hole for a string, with which it
was tied to the scholar’s belt. How
would you children, who use elegantly
illustrated primers and readers, like to
go back to the horn book of a hundred
and fifty years ago?
The first printing pi ess used on the
American continent was introduced in-
promised the
readers ofthis
paper a long
time ago that
we would tell
them how
news - papers
and books are
made. Many
things
have
cons
pired
to de-
to Mexico, by the Jesuits (Roman Ca
tholic priests), in 1540. The first one
brought to the English Colonies in Am
erica, was used at Cambridge, Mass.,
about the year 1038, and the first book
printed was a Psalm book, in 1640.
The first newspaper printed in Amer
ica was the Boston News Letter , which
appeared April 24th, 1704, and was pub
lished regularly for nearly 72 years. If
the little reader of this article could see
one of these antiquated newspapers —
with its old-fashioned type, and dingy
brown paper, about the size of a fools-
MACON, GEORGIA, DECEMBER 3, 1870.
cap sheet —he or she would learn how
much the papers of this day are im
proved over those of a century and a
half ago.
The process of type-setting of the
present day is a good deal the same as
it was many years ago, except that
great improvements have been made in
the arrangement of the types in the
case. In the engraving at the top of
the next column, the man you see is
setting type. He stands in front of
what the printers call a case. You can
see that it is divided off into little
compartments —these the printers call
boxes. Now, each one of these little
boxes contains a particular letter used
in printing. The upper case, which
you see leaning against the wall, is
divided in the middle. That half of it
on the man’s left contains the capital
letters, and the other half contains what
the printers call small caps. The case
nearest to the man contains the small
letters, or lower case, as they are
called.
The man holds in his left hand what
is known as a composing stick, like the
Whole No. 179.
one you see at the beginning of
this article, and with his right
hand he picks up the letters, one
at a time, until line by line he
fills his stick.
Think of this, children: the
largest newspapers and books are
made up of single letters, and
these are picked up one by one,
until enough of them have been
arranged in regular order to make
all the words and sentences that
are in the book or paper. It
would seem to you, no doubt, an
endless job; and it is a tedious
one, even to those who do nothing
else requiring patient, steady
application. But printers learn
to pick up the type very rapidly,
and it is wonderful how many
type a good compositor will 4 set’
in a day.
In large printing offices a great
many compositors are employed,
because it takes a great many
men to set type as rapidly as the
fast-working power-presses, dri-
ven by steam, are ready for them. In
the large picture you have a represen
tation of the composing room in a daily
newspaper office in a large city. In this
picture you see quite a number of stands
and cases, like the one at the top of
this column, with a man setting type at
each one of them. Near the centre of
the picture, a little to the left, you see
something that looks like a table, with
two men, one at either side, and hat is
what the printers call a stone, and the
two men are “ making up” a form ; but
of this we will tell you more particularly