he dearly earned, I might still have remained silent."

Tilloch and Foulis endeavoured to make the invention profitable to themselves. They printed several books from stereotyped plates; but so great was the prejudice against this mode of printing, that they were obliged to conceal from the booksellers that the books had been printed in the new way. Stereotyping was again laid aside, after having been twice invented, and twice proved successful. What is more, attempts were made to obtain metal casts by other means. Some used matrices instead of moveable types in making the moulds; others plunged the moveable types into half-melted metal, which, of course, retained an impression when congealed: others used melted glass, sand, and other soft substances in the place of plaster. The most successful amongst the experimenters was Professor Wilson, of Glasgow, who devised a mode of multiplying engraved blocks or plates by stereotype impressions in glass and enamel, which he thought might be used for the prevention of forgery.

At length stereotyping was brought into common use by Lord Stanhope, the inventor of the Stanhope press. At the commencement of the present century his lordship received instructions from Wilson, Tilloch, and Foulis. He made a series of experiments at his country seat in Kent; and at the end of two years,

and at a cost of 8001., he succeeded in producing very good metal casts from type as small as nonpareil and pearl. Professor Wilson attributes the ultimate success of stereotype printing to the genius and perseverance of Lord Stanhope, who, he says, "had overcome every difficulty, combining the most beautiful simplicity with the most desirable economy; the ne plus ultra of perfection, with that of cheapness." The Society of Arts, however, awarded a gold medal to Wilson, "for his great skill and exertions in stereotype printing." The best of the books printed by him was "Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary." In 1807, the process of stereotyping was adopted at the University of Cambridge, and in 1809, at the University of Oxford. All the Bibles and other standard books printed at the Universities, and elsewhere, are stereotyped; first, because it is the cheapest mode of printing books which sell largely; and secondly, because it affords security against typographical errors; for the letters cannot be displaced, as they are sometimes in printing from moveable types. If the types used in printing books of mathematics, arithmetic, dictionaries, and other works, are once composed accurately, they may be permanently preserved from errors. Stereotyping is also used in printing a book in two places at the same time. For instance, the types used in printing Chambers' Edinburgh Jour

nal are composed at Edinburgh; metal casts of the pages are then taken, and while the work is printed in Edinburgh from the moveable types, it is also printed in London from these metal casts. The proprietors, instead of sending several thousand printed copies of the work to London every week, send the metal casts of the pages from which the copies required in England are printed. The cost of casting these plates is considerably less than the amount which must otherwise be expended in conveying the printed copies from Edinburgh to London. A method of casting from moulds made with paper was introduced about years ago, but it did not answer so well as the plaster.

25

THE PRINTING PRESS.

But

The first method of printing consisted in placing the paper on the types with the hand, and rubbing the back of it with a brush, as the Chinese continue to do at this day. as the art advanced, the increased size of the surface to be printed, required the application of increased pressure. The screw would naturally suggest itself as at once the simplest and the most powerful means of obtaining great pressure and it seems to have been adopted at the earliest period in the history of printing. The first press resembled the linen press, the cider press, and the other screw presses of the

present day. It consisted of a board on which the type to be printed was placed; a sheet of

First Printing Press.

another board, attached to a screw fixed in a frame. The screw was then turned round by a handle, the board at the end of it was thereby pressed down on the paper and the types, and the impression was given. The preceding cut of an old press will convey a general idea of all the different presses that were made until a comparatively recent period; for although there may have been differences in the details, there were none in the principle.

A A is the framework supporting the press. B is the board or table on which the types are placed to be printed. Cis the handle by which the table is rolled in, to receive the pressure; the table stands on runners not unlike a railway, which cannot be shown in the engraving. Dis the screw, E the handle, and F the platen, by which the pressure is given. G is the frisket, an iron frame covered with paper, which in the engraving has been cut into four holes for the printing of four pages of type, and H is the tympan, consisting of a fine blanket laid between two skins of parchment, which are stretched on a square iron framework.

The press is worked in this way. The type to be printed is laid on the table, and inked with a soft roller, made principally of boiled glue and treacle. The printer lays a sheet of paper on the tympan, and turns down the frisket upon it. The object of the frisket is to keep the paper from falling off the tympan, and to prevent any part of it, except those