Of course, the great necessity under the new conditions was more rapid printing facilities, and this demand was met by the inventors about 1829. Some 15 years prior to that time a German printer named Konig went to England to produce a cylinder machine for the use of the London Times. While the press that he con structed was rather successful, he returned to Germany before it was perfected, leaving the English inventors to complete the improvement of his work This they did in many respects, but the credit for the first actual success in the making of cylinder presses is due to the Ameri can manufacturers, firms like R. Hoe and Com pany, who took the somewhat unsatisfactory foreign machines and brought them to a state of comparative perfection. By depending only upon good material and thorough workmanship they produced cylinders that were so much more satisfactory than the foreign goods, that, in spite of the fact that the home product is cheaper, English printers have long found it expedient either to import American printing machines, or to make their own presses from American models.
After 1833, therefore, America needed no further help from England in the development of her printing industry. With the best of paper, ink, type and presses, all made in the tinned States, and with plenty of money to invest in manufacturing enterprises connected with this trade, it was unnecessary for her to turn to any foreign nation for assistance, and when, in 1830, the system of cloth book-binding was intro duced, all the requisites for literary progress were in her own hands.
Of course, with the development of the power press the character of the newspapers of America also began to change. Whereas they had originally been small and dull, having but little news in them, the ability to print many copies enabled them to increase their circula tion, as well as their size. In 1833 the Pr ew York Sun, printing a sheet by 17 inches on a hand press, could not produce more than 400 copies an hour. As the demand for the paper continued to increase, however, a• cylinder press, propelled by a man at a crank, was introduced in 1834, and a year later this was supplanted by a double-cylinder operated by steam power. As other papers in other parts of the country met with similar experiences, the demand for rapid newspaper presses continued, and, by 1845, it was found that even the double-cylinder ma chine was too slow for the requirements of the constantly growing circulation of the great dailies. See NEWSPAPERS, AMERICAN.
It was to comply with this demand that R. Hoe and Company, in 1847, invented the type revolving rotary printing press, a machine in which the type was fastened to the cylinder and successively presented to each of the impression cylinders placed around it. For more than 20
years this press was able to meet every demand of periodical publications, but, in 1869 finding that it had at last become too slow, R. Hoe and Company perfected their web-printing machine, a press which prints continuously from stereo typed plates on a cylinder against an endless roil of paper. In spite of the almost incredible speed at which this press can be run, other in ventions, which have since been perfected, now enable it, not only to print 4, 8, 12 or even mare pages, but at the same time, to fold,.
a count paste them; to insert sheets or add the necessary covers, or even to print illustra tions in many colors. In 1854 William A. Bul lock perfected the first cylinder machine that was capable of printing a newspaper from a roll on both sides at the same time, but the other ' improvements have been the work of R. Hoe • and Company, or some of their business rivals like Cottrell, Babcock, Campbell, Potter, Huber, Miehle, Joss and others.
Great as has been the improvement in the making of machine-presses, however, the other branches of the art of printing have succeeded in keeping pace with it. In stereotyping, for etample, the invention of the papier-miche process enabled printers to make a number impressions of the same page of type, while the demand for a convex plate was met, in 1854, when Charles Craske of New York succeeded in stereotyping a curved surface.
The period between 1833 and the outbreak of the Civil War also witnessed many improve ments in the art of printing, the most import ant being the introduction of fast printing in fine book and job work The invention of the power press had been a blessing to the news papers, but, for a long time, book and fine job work was still done on hand presses. It was not until 1836 that Harper and Brothers intro duced a power press, although Daniel Fanshaw of New York, the printer of the Bible Society, had 10 power printing machines in operation in his shop prior to that time. These machines were manufactured by Daniel Treadwell of Massachusetts, and, although they were both bulky and inconvenient, they were the best presses on the market until the Adams press came to take their place. During all this period, however, it was believed that cylinder machines were incapable of doing fine work, and it was not until Francis Hart of New York had demonstrated the fallacy of this theory that the incredulous could be persuaded to make the change which the proper development of the trade had so long demanded.