t
almost seems to denote conscious intelligence. It prints from an immense
roll of paper, making the impression from curved stereotype plates, runs
at high speed, prints both sides of the paper at one run, and folds,
pastes, and performs other processes as provided for. By doubling and
quadrupling the parts, the ordinary speed of about twenty-four thousand
impressions an hour may be increased to one hundred thousand an hour.
The multicolor web perfecting press prints four or more colors at one
revolution of the impression cylinder.

To meet the demands of such an enormous consumption of paper as the
modern press requires, it was necessary to invent other processes and to
utilize more abundant and cheaper material for paper-making than those
formerly employed. This requirement has been supplied in recent years
mainly through the extensive manufacture of paper from wood-pulp. This
method, together with improved processes in the use of other materials,
has removed all fear of a paper famine such as has sometimes threatened
the printing industry in the past.

"Nature does not advance by leaps," says an old proverb; neither does her
offspring, Art. All the great boons vouchsafed to man by a munificent
providence are of gradual development; and though some may appear to have
come upon us suddenly, reflection and inquiry will always show that they
have had their previous stages.

Indeed, nothing in this great world which concerns the well-being of man
takes place by accident, but is brought forward by divine will, precisely
at the moment most suitable to our condition. So it was with astronomy,
the mariner's compass, the steam-engine, gas, the electric telegraph, and
many other of those blessings which have progressed with civilization.
The elements were there and known, but the time had not arrived for their
fructification.

And so it is with printing: although its invention is placed in the
middle of the fifteenth century, and almost the very year fixed, this can
only be regarded as a matured stage of it. To illustrate this, I propose
to begin with a cursory view of its primitive elements, of which the very
first were no doubt initiative marks and numerals.

The use of numerals has been denominated "the foundation of all the arts
of life"; and we know with certainty that several nations, and among them
the Mexicans, had numerals before they were acquainted with letters. The
first method of reckoning was with the fingers