[Illustration: THE EARLIEST PRINTERS AT WORK]
They soon stood before a great throbbing monster, a mystery of wheels within wheels and of gleaming steel. At one end was a huge roll of white paper; at the other was an unceasing stream of newspapers. Jimmie watched in wide-eyed wonder. He heard his uncle say that the huge roll, or web, of white paper was being fed into one end of the press, was being printed on both sides, the newspaper sheets were being cut apart, folded, and finally delivered, counted, at the other end of the press. How could it be done!
"Well, what do you think of it all?" asked Uncle Francis, turning to Jimmie.
Jimmie hardly took his fascinated gaze from the great whirring monster.
"It's great! It's a hundred times more wonderful than I thought it would be! Now that I've seen what this press can do I think I shall run one of these instead of being an editor."
His uncle laughed. "All right," he said; "you see how this runs, do you?"
"Probably the type part bothers you," said his uncle, "because you are accustomed to seeing the type in a flat steel frame, or chase, as we call it. Here it is on the outside of one of those huge rollers, or cylinders, as we call them. Do you see it?"
"Yes," said Jimmie, "but there isn't any type on the cylinder just under it."
"No," answered his uncle, "the other is the impression cylinder. Those two big cylinders work together like the rollers of a clothes wringer. That broad ribbon of paper, just as wide as our newspaper, goes between the two cylinders as clothes pass between the rollers of the wringer. The impression cylinder rolls the paper hard against the inked type cylinder and prints one side of the paper. If one of the rollers of a clothes wringer had ink marks on it they would be printed on the clothes as they went between the rollers, wouldn't they? That is the way this press works. Can you see the paper as it goes on?"
"Yes, and there are two more cylinders like the other pair!" cried Jimmie.
"That's right," answered his uncle. "I think you can see that when the paper passes between the second pair the other side of the paper is printed. Just get your eye on the paper as it is unwound from that enormous spool, or web, and watch as far as you can. The white paper in that web is a strip four miles long and as wide as two pages of the _Record_. The type cylinders turn so fast you can't see what is on them, but there is enough type to print four pages of the newspaper on each cylinder."