Letter by letter, and word by word, is the composing-stick filled ; and by the same progression the galley is filled by the contents of successive sticks.
In composing pages for a book, when the compositor has set up as many lines as fill a page, he binds them tightly round with cord, and places them under his frame ; this is making-up. We need scarcely say that the sizes of books greatly vary ; but they are all reducible to a standard determined by the number of leaves into which a sheet of paper is folded. The most common size is milled octavo, the size of 3Iacaulay's ' Ilistory of England,' and this contains 16 pages to the sheet ; the next is duodecimo, the also of the British Almanac,' con taining 24 pages to a sheet ; and the next octodecimo, or eighteens, containing 36 pages in a sheet. There are many other sizes, such as the larger quarto, which is the size of the present work, and the smaller twenty lours. 3luch skill and ingenuity are employed in are called schemes of imposition. In regular and perfect sheets of a work this is usually all settled, but in the endings of volumes the chances are much against their forming complete sheets, and the compositor has then to consider how he can best dispose the pages so as to avoid waste of paper and expense in working at press.
In every came, when a sheet is complete, the compositor arranges the pages in proper order upon the imposing-steno, which is a large table with a polished stone or iron top : he places around the whole a stout iron frame, called a chase, and surrounds each page with pieces of wood called furniture, so as to leave an equal margin to every page, and finally wedges the whole tightly together with a wooden mallet in the chase. If the work is properly executed, the pages thus wedged up. constituting one aide of a sheet, termed a form, are perfectly tight and compact ; and the form may be carried about with as much ease as if it were composed of solid plates, instead of being formed of 40,000 or 50,000, or even 100,000 moveable pieces, weighing frons a few pounds to a couple of hundred-weight. In this state a proof is pulled ; that is, a single impression is taken at the press.
In newspapers, periodical works, and many other works in which much alteration is anticipated in subsequent stages from the author, the type or matter, as it is technically Called, is wedged in brass galleys, in what aro called slips, and after it has undergone the process of correcting, it is then made up into pages and imposed, or arranged in order to be worked on the paper.
The inventive faculty has also been applied to methods for facilitating the arrangement of the type, as well as for type founding. In the Report on Printing, ,tc., of the I'sris Exhibition of 1855, Mr. Knight says : —" During the last twenty years there have been various attempts to produce a machine that will, to some extent, supersede that portion of manual Labour in printing which is called composition.' Without attempting to describe the various contrivances by which a more rapid method of arranging moveable types was to be effected than by the ordinary method, it may be sufficient to that by keys, like those of a pianoforte, some force might he applied to remove a single letter from its proper receptacle, and arrange it in a com bination of words and sentences There were several composing and distributing machines in the French Exhibition, but the most remarkable one, and that which appears to me, as it appeared to Didot and other competent judges, to approach nearer than any other invention to the accomplishing of this long sought for object, is thus entitled—' Machine k composer et mettre ban pour l'usago de l'imprimerie, composZe et execut& par Christian Sorensen.' It was stated that a Copenhagen newspaper, of which a copy was shown, had been printed for some time by this method. It would be impossible to convey an adequate notion of the details of this machine without drawings. I will endeavour briefly to stato the principle :—The types are of the usual thickness and height In the centre of each type, in the front, is a deep nick of a dovetail shape, which fits upon a metal edge, so that the typo cannot be displaced. But of 111 letters which are required in the fount, each letter has two, three, or four nicks cut at right angle'', the nicks of no one letter being the same as another. A cylinder, which may be described as a large basin, has a number of metal edges placed vertically in its sides, upon which the types without any regard to order, being the matter for distribution, are rapidly slid by the dovetail nick.