[Illustration: Bas-Relief on Gutenberg's Monument: Comparing a printed Sheet with a Manuscript.]
[24] We have taken this sentence as a motto which may point to the general scope of this volume.
[26] 'Curiosities of Industry.' By George Dodd.
[27] 'Everett's Working Man's Party.' Printed in the American Library of Useful Knowledge, 1831.
[28] Note in Mr. Lane's admirable translation of the 'Thousand and One Nights,' original edition, vol. ii. p. 635.
Invention of printing--Effects of that art--A daily newspaper--Provincial newspapers--News-writing of former periods--Changes in the character of newspapers--Steam conveyance--Electric telegraph--Organization of a London newspaper-office--The printing-machine--The paper-machine--Bookbinding--Paper-duty.
The art of printing offers one of the readiest and most forcible illustrations of the advantages that have been bestowed upon the world by scientific discovery and by mechanical power. Although there is, happily, little occasion now to combat any wide-spread hostility to machinery, the argument for its use derived from printing may be very briefly stated.
It is nearly four hundred years since the art of printing books was invented. Before that time all books were written by the hand. There were many persons employed to copy out books, but they were very dear, although the copiers had small wages. A Bible was sold for thirty pounds in the money of that day, which was equal to a great deal more of our money. Of course, very few people had Bibles or any other books. A mode was invented of imitating the written books by cutting the letters on wood, and taking off copies from the wooden blocks by rubbing the sheet on the back. Soon after, the idea was carried farther by casting metal types or letters, which could be arranged in words, and sentences, and pages, and volumes; and then a machine, called a printing-press, upon the principle of a screw, was made to stamp impressions of these types so arranged. There was an end, then, at once to the trade of the pen-and-ink copiers; because the copiers in types, who could press off several hundred books while the writers were producing one, drove them out of the market. A single printer could do the work of at least two hundred writers. At first sight this seems a hardship, for a hundred and ninety-nine people might have been, and probably were, thrown out of their accustomed employment. But what was the consequence in a year or two? Where one written book was sold, a thousand printed books were required. The old books were multiplied in all countries, and new books were composed by men of talent and learning, because they could then find numerous readers. The printing press did the work more neatly and more correctly than the writer, and it did it infinitely cheaper. What then? The writers of books had to turn their hands to some other trade, it is true; but type-founders, paper-makers, printers, and bookbinders, were set to work, by the new art or machine, to at least a hundred times greater number of persons than the old way of making books employed.