Chapter C: I. Cæcilii Hermiæ Signum (6)

The setter has been operated in competition with two superior compositors of many years’ practice, and has done more work than both, on fair and equal terms. Such being the results in the present condition of the machinery, it is only just to conclude that this is an invention which not only does honor to the art, and is an important step in its progress, but must contribute materially to the cheapening of books and the dissemination of literature, and so serve the highest interests of human life.

XXIII.

Stereotyping.--Plaster Moulds.--Planing and Beveling.--Correcting
Stereotype Plates.--Process of Electrotyping.--The
“Guillotine.”--Ornamenting.

The invention of stereotyping is also a great improvement in printing. Almost all works, after being put in type, are stereotyped; the advantage is that a new edition can be struck off as often as called for, without the labor of resetting the type.

The process of stereotyping differs from common printing, in that the letters, after being set up, are cast in plates of entire pages, from plaster of Paris moulds.

The workman in the picture is about removing the moulds from the type beneath. The mould, forming a perfect _fac simile_ of the page intended to be printed, is placed with others in a great oven, where it is dried and baked hard. The edge of the oven can be seen at the right of the picture on the following page, which represents the interior of the Stereotype Foundery.

While the plaster mould is baking in the oven, the foundery man is getting things in readiness for converting it into lead. Upon the left, in the picture, is a high pile of bars of lead, looking like an irregular chimney. When the bars of lead are put into the cauldron to melt, a certain amount of antimony is put in also, to render it brittle, and tin is added to give a brightness of surface. When the lead, antimony, and tin are well melted, and the scum has been removed, the composition is poured into iron moulds, where it hardens, and comes out in the shape of the lead that was put into the kettle in the first place. These bars of composition, lead being by far the largest material, are put into the boiler over which you see the man working, and melted again, making a molten mass, which is kept liquid by the hot fire beneath and the frequent stirring. When the plaster pages, or moulds, are well baked in the oven, they are ready to be plunged in their lead bath. An iron pan about two feet long, a foot broad, and two or three inches deep, is the vessel, in which is laid a false bottom of iron, called a floater; on this are laid the plaster moulds, face down, and the whole is covered with an iron slab, which does not, however, rest on the plaster moulds, but upon the edge of the iron pan. An iron handle, like that of a basket, is secured to the middle of the pan upon the wooden stand in front of the picture. A crane overhangs the boiler, and from it drops a hook surrounded by four legs; the hook takes hold of the hole in the handle, and the four legs press upon the iron cover of the pan; the crane swings round, holds the iron pan with its plaster moulds snugly shut up in it, and suspends the body over molten lead, lowering it until it is partly sunken in the lead but not wholly plunged in it.

The four corners of the pan are not square; and as the iron cover does not fit into the grooves, there is access to the interior of the pan by this means. Down them, then, the founder pours the lead, dipping it from the boiler, until it fills up completely all the little type openings in the plaster moulds. Then the crane lifts it and swings it over to the trough by which the boy is standing. It is lowered into the water to cool, after which a crane swings it over to the wooden standard, where one is waiting to be opened. The handle is removed, and then the founder, taking a heavy hammer, knocks off the lead at the corners and edges, where it has sealed up the iron lid on the pan. The cover is removed, and the contents of the pan taken out. The plaster is chipped off and thrown away; but now are seen lead plates of the size of the plaster moulds, having their surface raised in letters, just as that of the moulds was sunken in letters. The plates are about double the thickness of the slates used in schools.

These plates are cooled, and washed free of plaster in the trough,--the boy in the picture is now doing this,--when they are ready to go into the finishing room, to be trimmed, planed, picked out, corrected, and generally made ready for use in the printing-office.

In the first place, the plate is trimmed at the edges, and planed in a planing-machine, which shaves off, from the back, strips of the rough lead. It is beveled also; that is, the edges are shaved down in the left hand of the three smaller machines shown in this picture: the object of the beveling is to secure the plate afterward, when it comes to be put on the press. It is also picked out: a workman goes over the lettered surface with a sharp tool, clearing out letters which have accidentally become filled up with lead, and correcting all inaccuracies of form which he discovers.

The man at work in this picture is planing the back of the plate again, for the purpose of getting the requisite thickness. The knife in this plane makes one shaving of lead, which rolls up as it leaves the plate, like any fine shaving. To take off another shaving, a piece of pasteboard is placed under the plate, by which it is raised a trifle higher, and so again brought under the knife.

A proof is taken on a common hand-press, and with this proof before him the corrector marks such letters as were overlooked when the plate was picked out. This proof goes into the proof-reader’s room again, who now goes once more over the page, to see if everything is right; and after he has marked it, back it goes to the corrector, who now, with the printed proof-sheet before him, makes the corrections that are required. If, for instance, a letter is set up wrong, as _pan_ for _pen_, and has been overlooked by the proof-reader, and the plate is cast, what is to be done?

The corrector takes a sharp tool, and punches a hole through the plate where the interloper is, just the size of the type, and then restoring a common type _e_, through the opening, cuts it off even at the back of the plate, and solders it in its place with lead. In this way a whole line of type is sometimes introduced for an incorrect line in the plate. The corrections being made, the plate is ready for the press. When not in use, the plates, being very valuable, are carefully put in a box,--a large book requiring several boxes. They are stored in fire-proof safes, made for this purpose.

While books are generally stereotyped, woodcuts are always electrotyped. Instead of being moulded in plaster, the cut or illustrated page goes into the electrotype room, to be moulded in wax.

Let us look at the process.

A brass case, or very shallow, oblong pan is filled with liquid beeswax, which stands until it has hardened. The form containing the pages of type, well covered with fine black lead, is placed upon the bed of the press, shown in the picture; the face of the type is uppermost. There is an upper bed, which in the picture is swung half-way back. This is swung all the way back, and upon it is secured the brass case of wax. When the upper bed is brought back again, the wax face will of course be downward, and thus will be ready to receive an impression from the form of type resting on the lower bed; this lower bed is movable, and is gently raised by a screw until it presses into the wax, after the press is tightened, and now the soft wax receives the exact impression of the type; and the upper bed being swung back, the brass case, with its wax mould, is removed. We have got just as far, in fact, as when the plaster in stereotyping was ready to receive the casting. In the battery, a corner of which is seen in the picture, are hung one, two, three, or more copper plates; and from rods running parallel are hung the cases containing the wax moulds, one being hung on either side of the brass plate facing it. The positive pole is attached to the case, the negative to the copper plate; and the connection being made, a thin film of copper appears on the surface of the mould. This coating increases the longer the mould remains in the battery. After ten or twelve hours it is removed, and the result is a shell, as it is called, of the thickness of thin pasteboard, the upper surface a perfect _fac simile_ of the original page of type or wood-cut, every line, and every imperfection too, being reproduced. The under surface is exactly parallel; for each projection on the upper surface there is an indentation in the lower.

This thin shell of copper can be bent and crumpled up; it could not be used for printing in its present state, and it passes through a process called “backing up.” A thin coating of tin is applied to the back, when it is put face downward in a shallow dish, and kept in place by a number of small elastic rods. Then it is hung over a flat cauldron filled with melted type-metal, and lowered to rest in it. When the plate has acquired the same degree of temperature as the metal, the latter is ladled and poured over the plate, filling up all the hollows and indentations, and forming a solid back of lead. The coating of tin is first applied, as lead will not adhere to copper.

The plate, being now ready for the planing, beveling, picking, and correcting of stereotype plates, goes through the same process that we have before described.

When a book is to be bound, the pile of sheets which form it is made even at the back, and a saw, working by steam, cuts shallow grooves across the back, for the twine over which the sewing is done. Two girls are pictured sewing at their frames,--passing the needle through the fold of the sheet and round the upright twine, adding one sheet at a time to the pile, until the entire book is sewed. In the large apartment called the forwarding-room, the remaining processes of finishing are done. The rough and uncut edges of the book are made smooth by means of a cutting machine called the “guillotine.”

The edges of a number of books can be cut at a time, by being secured on a movable bed, which rises so as to bring them under a stationary knife, which cuts them smoothly as they are pressed against it.

There is also a backing-machine, for rounding the backs of books. The book is placed in a vise, and held near the edge of the back; and the man, working a treadle, moves a heavy roller over the back, thus drawing up the sheets in the centre; this is that the cover may be made fast to the book, the sides of the cover fitting tightly; the limp back is like a hinge. The stiff pasteboard covers are made by themselves; for instance, if a thousand copies of a book are to be made, while the folding and sewing of the thousand books is going on in one part of the building, in another two or three men are at work making cases; and when each is finished, they are put together.

But the stamped name on the back or ornamental work is done on the cases, after they are covered with cloth, and before the books are fastened into them. A brass die, or brand, is made of the title of the book; then the covers which are to be stamped are taken by the gilders, who first rub the white of an egg over the surface to be stamped, and upon that lay thin gold leaf, of gossamer lightness.

In the picture three girls are laying on the gold leaf with their pallet knives.

The covers are now ready to be stamped by the brass die, and that is put in place in the embossing press, seen behind the gilders. It is kept constantly heated, and is attached to the upper part of the press with its face down; the cases are slipped singly into the press, and pressed up against the die, the letters of which stamp the gold into the cloth; the rest of the gold is carefully rubbed off, and collected and preserved.

When the edges of the leaves are to be gilded, it is done by holding the books firmly in a vise, as seen in the cut, the gold leaf being laid on with a pallet knife; after which the surface is polished.

The workman is seen polishing the edges with an agate burnisher. The sheets having been pasted in their cases, and thoroughly subjected to a powerful press, are packed and put into the trade.

Another very curious process is marbling the edges of leaves.

In the engraving is a long trough, in which is a thin mixture of water and gum tragacanth, over which the workman holds two dictionaries in his hands. The colors which combine in the marbling are water-colors, and are distributed in the seven jars with brushes. The marbler shakes one of these brushes over the vat, the color falling is held on the surface by the glue, and little circles of blue, or whatever was dropped, are scattered over the water; with another brush he sprinkles in the same way, and so on for any number of colors, producing effects as gorgeous as the mingling colors of autumn leaves or of sunset clouds. If a piece of paper now were dipped into the trough, it would, when removed, be mottled or marbled. The marbling is elongated or streaked by slowly passing a coarse rake through the water. The marbler, taking two books, dips the edges into the trough; the gum causes the colors to adhere to the paper, and the precise pattern in the vat is elegantly painted on the book; the next is dipped in a different place, and when the surface has been taken up, the scum is skimmed off, and the colors again sprinkled on the water, and the process repeated as long as required.

XXIV.

The Hand-press.--Earl Stanhope’s Press.--Improvements.--Cylinder
Presses.--Press-room.--Drying Room.--Sewing Room.--Elevator.--
Books for the Blind.--Type, Press, and Paper invented.--
Catalogue of Great Exhibition.--Estimate of Rapid Labor by
Machinery.

We have already referred to the earliest modes of taking the impression from the types by friction, or the rubbing of some hard smooth substance over the paper when laid upon the face of the types.

The hand-press invented by Gutenberg is the only machine absolutely necessary for printers. A specimen of these rude wooden machines is the press used by Benjamin Franklin, now in the Patent Office at Washington. A hand-press has been illustrated and sketched in this volume; it was operated by two men, one attending to the inking, the other placing the paper, and pulling on the lever to make the impression. The first improvement on this press was made by Earl Stanhope in 1815. He built the whole of iron, and, substituting for the screw an obtuse-angled jointed lever, greatly lessened the labor of the pressman. He also enlarged the platen to the size of the bed, so that a full sheet could be printed by one pressure of the platen, instead of two, as in the old press. A second improvement was soon made by G. Clymer of Philadelphia, who in his elegant iron press, the Columbian, used a combination of levers; in some points it is still unsurpassed. For country papers of limited circulation, the hand-press is still in use; it is also a favorite in book offices for work of delicate execution. It is now common to print by hand two hundred and fifty impressions per hour, or one hundred and twenty-five perfected sheets.

Near the end of the eighteenth century, the hand-press proving too slow for the demands of speed and economy, the ready intellect of inventors began upon the problem of moving presses by power. William Nicholson patented in England, in 1790, a plan for a press in which the types were adjusted upon a revolving cylinder, and were inked by contact with another cylinder having rotary motion. The ink was distributed by means of several inking rollers, the last of which was fed by the ink fountain. A large cylinder covered with felt, revolving in contact with the first, produced the impression, which was thus made by rolling the sheets of paper between the cylinders. Nicholson failed in fixing the types to the cylinder; but had he been able to do this, his plan of inking would not have been practicable, as the gelatine rollers were not then invented. Frederick Hoenig, a Saxon, so improved this press of Nicholson as to make it a mighty engine. Himself and another machinist, A. F. Bauer, found that the way to make a bed of type work rapidly was to effect the pressure with a cylinder instead of a flat surface. A machine was secretly built; and on the morning of November 28, 1814, the “London Times” informed its readers that they were reading a sheet printed by steam, in these glowing words:--

“Our journal of this day presents to the public the practical result of the greatest improvement connected with the practice of printing since the discovery of the art itself. The reader of this paragraph now holds in his hand one of the many thousand impressions of the ‘Times’ newspaper which were taken off last night by a mechanical apparatus. A system of machinery almost organic has been devised and arranged, which, while it relieves the human mind and frame of its most laborious efforts in printing, far exceeds all human powers in rapidity and dispatch. That the magnitude of the invention may be justly estimated by its results, we shall inform the public, that after the letters are placed by the compositor, and inclosed in what is called the form, little remains for man to do save to attend upon and watch this unconscious agent in its operations. The machine is then merely supplied with paper; itself places the form, inks it, adjusts the paper to the form newly inked, stamps the sheet, and gives it forth to the hands of the attendant; at the same time withdrawing the form for a fresh coat of ink, which itself again distributes, to meet the ensuing sheet now advancing for impression; and the whole of these complicated acts is performed with such a velocity and simultaneousness of movement, that no less than 1,100 sheets are impressed in one hour.”

The line of success was inaugurated; and ten years later, the same paper says, “In consequence of successive improvements suggested and planned by Mr. Hoenig, the inventor, our machines now print 2,000 per hour with more ease than 1,100 in their original state.”

By successive improvements made in this machine by Messrs. Applegath & Cowper, at length, in 1852, it could produce 11,000 impressions per hour.

Isaac Adams, of Boston, succeeded in making hand-presses work by power, and issued patents of different machines in 1830 and in 1836. The capacity of working slow for fine work, or rapidly for newspaper printing, characterized these presses, and made them favorites with printers.

It was reserved for an American, Richard M. Hoe, of New York, to make the first successful type-revolving press. After several costly unsuccessful attempts, in 1847 he produced a perfect machine, on the cylinder of which the types are held by friction, between beveled column-rules. This is styled the Lightning Press, and is in use throughout the world, where rapid printing is required.

Recently a new press, the Bullock, is spoken of as entering the lists with the Lightning Press. “It feeds itself from a roll of paper, cutting it into sheets, which are printed on both sides, and delivered in an even pile.” Its future success or failure must decide its place in history.

It will be kept in mind that there are four things necessary in printing,--the page of type, or the stereotype or electrotype plate, to print from; the paper, to receive the impression; the ink, to exhibit this impression; and lastly the printing-press to press the paper upon the inked plate.

In our walk over the printing-house, let us step into the Press-room where book-work is done.

On the left, in the foreground, is a large cylinder press used for printing newspapers; there is another in the distance, and between can be seen parts of a number of hand-presses. On the right are great “platen” presses, that are kept in motion by steam-power. They are used for the nice execution of book-work, and print only from six hundred to one thousand impressions an hour.

Let us watch the operation of one of these platen presses on the right. The paper, having been dampened and pressed, is laid on an inclined table on the press, from which the “feeder,” as the girl by the second press in the picture is called, takes one sheet at a time, and places it upon an opposite inclined table, where it is clutched by the iron fingers of the press, and carried into the machine. If we stood near the press, we should see the bed of type adjusted with the face up, and long rollers brought quickly back and forth, evenly smearing it with ink. The iron fingers before mentioned as having grasped the edge of the sheet, lay it on the inked bed of type, where it comes under the platen, when the bed is raised up against the paper; the bed falling again, the force of the machine slides out the paper over rollers upon a light frame, which throws it over upon a board where the pile of sheets collects. This process prints the paper on one side only; turning the paper, the sheets are put through the press the second time, and the printing is completed.

But this and other departments of the art here pursued, give employment to hundreds of operatives of both sexes, throwing off annually many millions of impressions. Here rumbles the thunder of the modern steam-propelled printing-presses. What a clangor is made by the simultaneous revolutions of so much complicated machinery! Broad leather straps, rapidly revolving in every direction, cause you to start back, fearful lest you be caught in their toils. And yet how docile, how easily managed, how orderly, how almost human in intelligence,--and with what lightning swiftness the monster steam-presses throw off their work, so that the eye can scarcely follow the successively printed sheets!

In the adjoining Stock-room, some two days before being printed, the paper is “wet down,” or dampened with water, and then put under powerful screw pressure of many tons’ weight, that the sheets in the process of printing may take a clear impression from the inked type. The paper, damp from the printing-press, is then taken on trucks and by an elevator to the Drying-room, and dried, that it may not tear or the printing be defaced. In the ceiling are immense frames with cross-bars, and hanging on the latter are the printed sheets drying. There is also a steam closet to be used during damp weather, and when it is required to dry the sheets quickly. Steam-pipes circulate in the closet, by means of which a high temperature is attained, and “no postponement on account of the weather.”

Workmen are busy bringing in the printed sheets, and hanging them to dry, and removing those that are dried. The thorough drying of the printed sheets is most important.

The three work-people seen in the corner of the Dry-press room, are engaged in laying the paper in piles, with a piece of stiff, highly polished pasteboard, of the size of the sheet, placed between them. The pressure upon this pasteboard flat-iron is to be given by the hydraulic press. The sheets are placed in piles on trucks, that move upon a little railroad, by which they are conducted to the hydraulic presses, some of which are seen at the right of the picture, packed with sheets. Here they are put under powerful screw pressure of from one hundred to four hundred tons, and come out not only much dryer, but ironed smooth of wrinkles, and the indentations made by the type. Next, the pasteboard is removed, and the piles of sheets sent into the Folding-room to be folded.

It is interesting to mark some of the avenues of employment that printing has opened to women. The working force in this room is composed almost entirely of girls. Standing by the one at the right hand in the foreground, let us watch her rapid motions! With her simple paper-folder she skillfully folds each sheet once, and smooths the fold, then with like expertness folds this doubled sheet again, and firmly smooths the thicker fold with the ever-in-hand paper-folder; and once more she folds the compact sheet into one having eight thicknesses, or sixteen pages. This is book folding, and she is guided by the numbers at the corners of the pages, or _folios_--if these numbers meet, the folding is sure to be exact. In an adjacent room is that ingenious aid of modern printing--a rapid and dexterous folding-machine, which, had it been discovered at work in Gutenberg’s office at Strasbourg, would have been proof additional that he dealt in witchcraft.

But to return to our lady folders and their work. The sheets, as fast as they are folded, are arranged in piles upon the table, the girl who gathers the sheets together into separate books following the order of the _signatures_, or figures on the first page of each sheet.

At the left of our picture, near the middle of the room, is seen a gatherer, who is engaged in making up “Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary.” She is in a narrow isle between two tables, joined at the foot by a short one. On these three tables one half of the Dictionary is spread out at a time, in one hundred and fifteen piles of sheets. She walks down this isle picking a sheet off each pile, and when she has gone the entire round she has gathered one half of the book. When these piles are all gathered, the other half of the book is arranged, and gathered in the same way.

Next, the sheets of the book are put into the stabbing-machine, that three holes may be made at the inner edge, when the sheets are stitched together by hand.

The backs of magazines are covered with a strong paste, and the covers are then put on.

The elevator machinery connecting with each story, of a capacity for lifting two tons, worthily facilitates the immense work of the establishment, as with colossal strength it lifts great burdens of paper, type, machinery, and deposits them on just the floor where they are needed.

If the first printers could revisit the earth, with what interest would they make the tour of a modern printing-office! How would they call to mind their own narrow quarters, poor facilities, and creeping progress, contrasting them with the convenience, system, swiftness, finish, and grand results of to-day, in the now beautifully moulded and polished metal types, the success seemingly gained in setting type by machinery, and the comprehensive arrangements, of various perfected departments, all brought under the easy control of human skill! How unlike their own embryotic efforts “which gave to themselves fame, their art an existence, and civilization its motive power!”

The first introduction of printing into America was in Mexico, by the Jesuits, who issued a “Manual for Adults,” in 1540. The first printing-office in America was established in Cambridge, Mass., in 1638; the first book printed was the “Bay Psalm-Book,” in 1640; the first newspaper was the “Boston News Letter,” published April 24, 1704.

The first attempt made to print books for the blind was made by the Abbe Hauy, at Paris, in 1785. The letters were so large, however, the paper so thick, and the books so bulky and expensive, that they were of little practical use. No improvement had been made upon this system, so late as 1830, when the Paris press was still lumbering on in the old method. A few years later a French author, a teacher of the Paris school for the blind, writes, “The Americans have effected a revolution in the art of printing for the blind.”

It was Mr. S. P. Ruggles, the well-known inventor, who, by his genius and untiring industry, wrought this great change. He first turned his attention to the education of the blind in 1835 at the Perkins Institute, in Boston. For years he closely studied their wants and capabilities by constant daily observation of the pupils. Books were the first thing required; the few made being so cumbersome and costly as scarcely to be available.

In the emergency which calls for a hero, one is provided; and it is worthy of record that this man, to supply the famishing intellect of the blind, clambered up step by step the rugged height which Gutenberg had scaled, to give light to the seeing world.

After many experiments, he became convinced that he could produce a type of less size, and less height of face, which the blind could read with the greatest facility; providing the raised impression was hard and sharp, and the angles of the type adapted to the touch of the fingers. He finally succeeded in reducing the size of the type and the height of its face so as to place books, of comparatively small dimensions, in the hands of blind students and pupils. The size of the type now in use, the height, and peculiar bevel of its face, are his invention.

He next devised and built the first press ever made for printing for the blind. This was a very powerful machine, giving an impression of about three hundred tons to each sheet impressed, yet so contrived that the blind could do their own printing.

After succeeding in the making of the new kind of type, and in the construction of the ponderous press for printing, he was met by an unexpected difficulty. There was no paper in the market adapted to this kind of printing or embossing. That which was hard enough would crack and break through when printed; and that which was flexible enough not to crack, would flatten down when pressed upon by the fingers of the pupils when reading. His reduced type required a new kind of paper. The peculiar and definite bevel, and height of face of the type, and the texture of the paper printed on, were most intimately connected, and it took a long series of trials, in the manufacture of paper, to get them so harmonized as to work well together. But at last, after many experiments with gums and gelatine, he produced the article required.

His new method of making books being perfected, Mr. Ruggles next invented an entirely new map for the blind. It was made with a raised character, similar to his type; but arranged with such combinations that, at a trifling cost, he could produce a succession of maps of any size. Maps made in this way were never before known, and the Perkins Institute immediately issued, from this plan, an “Atlas” of the United States, and also a “General Atlas.” It would, by most persons, be thought impossible that separate type could be so contrived as to admit of their being arranged in such a manner as to produce a map of any country and then to use the same type to make a map of any other country. Yet all this was perfectly accomplished by this new invention--every piece of type matching its neighbor with miraculous cunning, while following the crooked lines and angles, or graceful curves of rivers, coasts, and islands, with which such works abound.

He next produced the plates for a book on geometry, on a plan similar to his maps. These works proved very valuable and interesting to the blind--for with them they could pursue their studies without the assistance from seeing persons, which, before this, was necessary.

In 1838 this gentleman went to Philadelphia, and established one of his powerful presses for printing for the blind in the Institution in that city; and a year or two later placed another press in the Institution for the Blind in the State of Virginia. The perfect success of his method for reducing the size and expense of books for the blind, inaugurated a new era in the history of this kind of work, and the books were rapidly multiplied throughout this country and Europe.

On the opposite page is given a specimen of the types referred to, and which are now used for printing for the blind: the face, or white part of these letters, being raised in their books about one fortieth part of an inch above the surface of the paper.

Steel-plate and copper-plate printing, together with the lithographic process, are modern inventions; but our limits confine us to glance only at a part of the processes used in the preparation of books.

An illustration of the perfection to which the art of printing has been brought, was given in the printing of the catalogues of the great Exhibition of 1851. The Exhibition opened on the first of May; yet with all the speed that could be made, it was not till midnight of the 30th that the catalogue, a closely printed volume, was ready to go to press. By the next morning, however, a bound copy was presented to Queen Victoria. Twelve trades were necessary for the production of this catalogue. And so large an edition was issued that thirty-seven tons of new type were employed, of which amount twelve tons were manufactured in the short space of six weeks! Twenty-seven thousand reams of paper were used, while the ink required for the small catalogue alone amounted to 4,000 pounds. Specimens of typography were also exhibited from the imperial printing-house of Vienna at this Exhibition. About 500,000 sheets, or 1,000 reams, of paper per day are required for the consumption of that establishment.

A French paper makes a calculation to show how marvelously human labor is outrivaled by the mechanical arrangements of the steam press. The paper, “La Patrie,” contains about 4,230 lines: 8,000 copies make 34,560,000 lines. A clerk could write about three lines in a minute; therefore it would require 11,520,000 minutes, or 192,000 hours, for a single clerk to supply 8,000 copies of “La Patrie;” in other words, it would require 192,000 men to supply, by copying, the same amount of paper which the cylinder printing-press supplies in one hour.

What great armies of compositors are at work in the printing-houses of Christendom! What numberless presses by night and by day throw off multitudinous papers, pamphlets, and books, which are scattered to every home, business mart, and travelling conveyance in the land.

At the Great Exhibition one Bible Society alone had specimens of the Word of God printed in one hundred and twenty different languages. And a single religious publishing society of London, as early as 1862, had issued five hundred and seventy-six millions of copies of its publications. But that is only one of many societies of similar character, and moreover, every enlightened nation abounds in book and periodical publishers and booksellers.

XXV.

Time of the Great Invention.--A First Gift.--The Use of the
Alphabet.--A New Era.--Royal Printers.--Knights of Type and
Pen.--A Mighty Engine.--Gutenberg’s Dream.--The Press mighty.

If the “undevout astronomer is mad,” what shall be thought of the unbelieving observer of God’s dealings with the human race? If evidences of infinite design appear in the material bodies that people space, can we think that God has stamped his creating, ordering hand less distinctly on the affairs connected with the progress of the souls for whom all things exist? The needle pointing to the pole helps on navigation; it is the servant of the seamen: without it, what would commerce do? But how happened it that the principle of the mariner’s compass was discovered just when in the turmoil of events it would be most useful--when it could suitably and most effectively introduce the old to the new world? How providential, too, the time of the invention of the art of printing! Had it been much earlier, the materials for writing were so scarce that it must have come to naught. Had it been deferred, doubtless many works which we prize as among the most valuable and excellent would have been lost. In less than a half-century from the invention of the wonderful art, the continent of America was discovered by Columbus, in 1492. In less then a century, Copernicus discovered the true theory of the planetary motions; and, shortly after, only a few years intervening, he was succeeded by the three great heralds of Newton,--Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo.

Man is above nature. The senses only, do not constitute man; for the brutes have some senses like us, and, not seldom, stronger, more delicate, more subtile, quicker to act, more infallible. It is _thought_, then, that gives man the preëminence. But what if thought could never be expressed? What if the members of the human race could never discover thought to each other, never reveal what passed within the mysterious and mighty laboratory of the mind only as the infant seeks to make its wants known, by gestures and moans and “inarticulate cries?” But the Creator gave man speech; God’s first grand interposition for the soul was the gift of speech! “We believe,” says a brilliant French writer, “that speech was not born of itself on the lips of primitive man,” as some affirm, “like a stammering of chance, attaching, from age to age, certain vague significations to certain inarticulated sounds, and giving to others, by the sound and connection of these human cries, lessons which he who uttered them had not himself received. To reach thence from these instinctive cries to speech; from speech to the unanimous agreement of the meaning of words--of the sense of certain words to the verb and phrase--of the verb and phrase to logical syntax--of this syntax to the language of Moses, David, Cicero, Confucius, Racine, it is necessary to suppose more ages of existence to the human race on this earthly globe than there are stars, visible and invisible, in the Milky Way. It is necessary to suppose numberless ages of stupidity during which the human race, essentially moral and intellectual, should vainly search, like the brutes, its _instrument_ of morality and knowledge, without power to find it only after myriads of generations. Humanity deaf and mute during a hundred thousand years! I shudder at the blasphemy of believing such a mystery. I love better to believe in the other; that is to say, in the fatherly mystery of the Creator himself, inspiring on the lips of his infant creature, speech; the word, the sentence, the inborn expression, which at sight gave things names appropriate to their form and nature.”

And when we consider how necessary the use of language is to the convenience, comfort, and progress of man, and that man had at once conferred upon him a body “curiously and wonderfully made,” and a mind capacious, active, strong, and penetrating, can we harbor the idea that after his creation, God left him,--a perfect, full-grown being, the noblest of his works, and the lord of nature,--without speech? Rather must we not infer, with a distinguished writer, that “the same Divine Author of the physical organs of speech imparted to man the knowledge of their use and power”?

But speech carries thought from the mouth to the ear by sound, and then perishes like the medium which conveyed it there. There needed to be, therefore, a process to _preserve_ thought, by reducing it to material signs on some enduring substance. So writing was given to the world. And the wonderful discovery of alphabetical writing, how did it come about? By chance? by human ingenuity? or through the “fatherly mystery of the Creator inspiring it” in man? Says the learned Shackford, “That men should immediately fall on such a project, to express sounds by letters, and expose to sight all that may be said or thought in about twenty characters variously placed, exceeds the highest notions we can have of the capacities with which we are endowed.” How difficult to submit our reason to the theories which have been argued of a _gradual_ construction of alphabetical letters! Is it reasonable to suppose, for example, that the old Shemitish letter D was suggested by the word _door_, or the letter H by the word _fence_, and the V by a _hook_ or _nail_? Do we not find evidence, that alphabetical writing was divinely revealed, in the tables of stone written by the finger of God and given to Moses on the Mount? In those ten commandments so anciently bestowed, all the Hebrew letters, with one exception, are found--every guttural, labial, lingual, and dental is disclosed. Some quote the Chinese as leading the way in imprinting language. But their writing was hieroglyphical, they did not reach alphabetical writing, and they use one hundred and twenty thousand characters to express thought.

But whether writing, which has well been spoken of as “nearly divine,” is the invention of man, or is truly divine in its origin, its possession was a great step in human progress. By it speech became enduring and universal; it could be preserved, it could be diffused. Poetry, history, science, law, art, religion, thus found expression for all time. Through it we commune with the thinkers of antiquity. By its aid “the Book” has come down to us. Nevertheless, this mode of transmitting knowledge was slow, toilsome, costly, and not available to the masses. At the beginning of the eleventh century, for example, books were so scarce in Spain that one and the same copy of the Bible, St. Jerome’s Epistles, and some volumes of ecclesiastical offices, served several different monasteries. Books were the privilege of the wealthy and the powerful; and the common people had them not. “The head of society was in the light, the feet in the shade,” and “the progress of truth, science, letters, politics, arts, was slow, and suspended through long periods.” Some process was needed by which the written thoughts of the thinkers could be reproduced with greater rapidity, and thus placed within the reach even of the poor. This, John Gutenberg, in the good providence of God, gave mankind, in the discovery of printing. With the new art came a new era for the world. In a few years after Gutenberg’s death all the capitals of Europe had their printing-presses. France, England, Holland, Germany, Venice, Genoa, Rome, Poland, seized the invention, and spread abroad religious and secular works. In 1500 the Jews published tracts on Rabbinical literature in Constantinople. And Russia, in 1680, established a press in Moscow.

The invention had its enemies, and printing its martyrs; but its glory could not be dimmed, nor its progress arrested. Kings and queens turned engravers and compositors, glorying to labor with their own hands in the wonderful art. The wife of Henry IV. designed and printed cuts for some royal publications, and engraving with her own hand a figure of a young girl, presented it to “Philip de Champagne.” Louis XV. in his youth, printed in his own palace a “Treatise on European Geography.” The chief printers of the times succeeding that of Gutenberg were often the artists, the learned men, the writers. They not only reproduced the buried works of antiquity, but were able to explain and interpret them.

The Emperor Maximilian ennobled the printers and compositors of the new art, authorizing them to wear robes braided with gold and silver, such as the nobility only had the right to wear, and giving them, for a coat of arms, an eagle with wings extended on the globe, symbol of free and rapid flight and universal conquest. Deserved honor! fitting symbol! What marvels has printing wrought. It has given elementary instruction to the masses,--putting into every hand, however humble or toilworn, the printed page, multiplying books to teach, amuse, and elevate even the little child. It has reformed corrupt religions, fashioned and developed philosophy anew, and permeated laws with their true spirit. Before its magic touch, the old feudal despotisms of the dark ages have fallen, and later and no less oppressive systems have wasted away. By its aid time and space seem annihilated, as “railways open to it routes, steam lends to it wings, and the electric telegraph gives it the instantaneousness of powder!” The “preserver of all arts,” it broods over and perpetuates all useful institutions and discoveries; and trade and commerce are stimulated, guided, systematized, enlarged, and furnished with boundless facilities. But this mighty engine can be used for evil as well as for good, and strike like the thunder-bolt the best interests of man. The poet-historian from whom we have before quoted, illustrates this by a dream of Gutenberg’s, which he is said to have related to his friends, and to have been translated from the German, at Strasbourg, by Mr. Garaud.

Gutenberg had succeeded in an important experiment. His success filled him with such enthusiasm that he scarcely slept the night following. In his troubled and imperfect rest he had his dream,--a dream so prophetic, and so near to the truth, that one questions, in reading it, if it be not the reflecting presentiment of a wakeful sage rather than the fevered dream of a slumbering artisan. This is the account or legend of this dream as it is preserved in the library of the counsellor Aulique Beck:--

“In a cell of a cloister of Arbogast sits a man with a wan forehead, a long beard, and fixed look, before a table, supporting his head with his hand. Suddenly he passes his fingers through his beard with a quick joyous movement--the hermit of the cell has discovered a solution of the problem he sought! He rises and utters a cry; it was as a relief to a long pent-up thought. He hastily turns to his trunk, opens it, and takes therefrom a cutting instrument; then, with nervous jerking movements, he sets himself to carve a small piece of wood. In all these movements there was joy and anxiety, as if he feared that his idea would escape,--the diamond he had found, and which he wished to set and polish for posterity. Gutenberg cut roughly and with feverish activity, his brow covered with drops of sweat, while his eyes followed with ardor the progress of his work. He wrought thus a great while, but the time seemed short. At length, he dipped the wood in a black liquid, placed it on parchment, and bearing the weight of his body on his hand in the manner of a press, he printed the first letter which he had cut, in relief. He contemplated the result, and a second cry, full of the ecstasy of satisfied genius, burst from his lips; then he closed his eyes with an air of happiness such as would befit the saints in paradise, and fell exhausted on a joint-stool; when overcome of sleep, he murmured, ‘I am immortal!’

“Then he had a dream which troubled him. ‘I heard two voices,’ said he, in relating it; ‘two unknown and of a different sound, which spoke alternately in my soul. One said to me, “Rejoice, John; thou art immortal! Henceforth, light shall be spread by thee throughout the world. People who dwell a thousand leagues from thee, strangers to the thoughts of our country, shall read and comprehend all the ideas now mute,--spread and multiplied as the reverberations of the thunder, by thee, by thy work. Rejoice, thou art immortal! for thou art the interpreter whom the nations await that they may converse together. Thou art immortal; for thy discovery comes to give perpetual life to the genius which would be still-born without thee, and who, by acknowledgment, shall all make known in their turn the immortality of him who immortalized them!” The voice ceased, and left me in the delirium of glory. But I heard another voice. It said to me, “Yes, John, thou art immortal. But at what a price? Thought not unlike thine, is it always pure and holy enough to be worthy of being delivered to the ears and eyes of the human race? Are there not many--the greater number it may be--which merit rather a thousand times to be annihilated, and sink to oblivion, than to be repeated and multiplied in the world? Man is oftener perverse than wise and good; he will profane the gift that you make him; he will abuse the new faculty that you create for him. More of the world, in place of blessing, will curse thee. Some men will be born with souls powerful and seductive, and hearts proud and corrupt. Without thee, they would rest in the shade; shut in a narrow circle, they would be known only to their associates, and during their lives. By thee, they will bear folly, mischief, and crime to all men and all ages. See thousands corrupted with the disease of one! See young men depraved by books whose pages distill soul-poison! See young women become immodest, false, and hard to the poor, by books which have poisoned their hearts! See mothers mourning their sons! See fathers blushing for their daughters! Is not immortality too dear which costs so many tears and such anguish? Dost thou desire glory at such a price? Art thou not appalled at the responsibility with which this glory will weigh down thy soul? Listen to me, John: live as if thou hadst discovered nothing. Regard thy invention as a seductive but fatal dream, whose execution would be useful and holy, if only man was good. But man is evil. And in lending arms to the evil, art thou not a participator in his crimes?”

“‘I awoke in a horror of doubt! I hesitated an instant; but I considered that the gifts of God, though they were sometimes very perilous, were never bad, and that to give an instrument to aid reason, and advance human liberty, was to give a vaster field to intelligence and to virtue,--both divine. I pursued the execution of my discovery.’”

Thus has the art of printing come down to us consecrated by the martyr struggles of a heroic soul. He died poor, able only to leave a few books to his loving sister, yet enriching all mankind by the fruits of his genius. “I bequeath to my sister,” said he in his will, “all the books printed by me in Strasbourg.”

But which of the voices that the legend represents as speaking to Gutenberg in his dream, shall prove a true prophet of the art? Shall its resistless power blast the world with error and crime, or bless the ages with truth and purity? “The first cries of the press,” says a historian, “were praise and prayer.” Let its utterances be for religion and learning, God and humanity; then welcome the hour when the earth shall be covered with its swiftly multiplying issues, “the leaves of the tree which are for the healing of the nations.”

THE END.

Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced quotation marks retained.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Illustrations without captions at the beginning and end of most chapters are decorative headpieces or tailpieces.

Page 52: “He revolved” was printed that way.

Illustration captions on pages 162 and 188: The Psalm number in “PSALTER, PSALM I.” appears to have been printed as a Roman numeral, but may be an Arabic “1”.

Page 175: “pierced his roul” may be a misprint for “soul”.