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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