work, sent for Mr. Hoe to put it up. He and Richard succeeded in
setting up the press, and worked it successfully.

The success of Napier's press set the Hoes to thinking. They made models
of its peculiar parts and studied them carefully. Then, in pursuance of
a plan suggested by Richard, his father sent his partner, Mr. Newton, to
England, for the purpose of examining new machinery there, and to secure
models for future use. On his return with ideas, Mr. Newton and the
Hoes projected and turned out for sale a novel two-cylinder press, which
became universally popular and soon superseded all others, the Napier
included.

Thus was steam at last harnessed to the press, but the demand of the
daily papers for their increasing editions spurred the press makers to
devise machines that could be worked at higher speed than was found
possible with the presses, in which the type was secured to a flat bed,
which was moved backward and forward under a revolving cylinder. It was
seen, then, that if type could be secured to the surface of a cylinder,
great speed could be attained. In Sir Rowland Hill's device the type was
cast wedge-shape; that is, narrower at the bottom. A broad "nick" was
cut into its side, into which a "lead" fitted. The ends of the "lead" in
turn fitted into a slot in the column rules, and these latter were
bolted into the cylinder. The inventor, Sir Rowland Hill, the father of
penny postage in England, sunk, it is said, L80,000 in the endeavor to
introduce this method.

In the meantime Richard M. had succeeded to his father's business, and
was giving his attention largely to solving this problem of holding type
on a revolving cylinder. It was not until 1846 that he hit on the method
of doing it. After a dozen years of thought the idea came upon him
unexpectedly, and was startling in its simplicity. It was to make the
column rules wedge-shape instead of the type. It was this simple device,
by the introduction of the "lightning press," that revolutionized the
newspaper business of the world, and made the press the power it is. It
brought Hoe fame and put him at the head of press makers. His business
grew to such dimensions that he has in his employ in his New York
factory from 800 to 1,500 hands, varying with the state of trade. His
London factory employes from 150 to 250 hands.

Yet the great daily cravings demanded still faster presses. The result
was the development of the Web press, in which the paper is dr