Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

THE PRODUCTION OF A NEWSPAPER. Simple as this operation seems in the de- scription, in reality it becomes a very highly skilled class of labour, upon which only the most experienced men are engaged. The whole appearance of the newspaper depends upon the arrangement of the different items, all of which to the novice seem alike, and the man who can “ make up ” so that every item of news is given its due importance is almost an artist in type. When the arrang- ing of the page is satisfactory, steel blocks are placed within the frame, a turn is given with a key and the whole mass of type is immovably locked together. I he work of the compositors is done, and the table with the page upon it is wheeled or taken by lift to the stereotyping foundry. Here in one corner a great cauldron of melted white metal bubbles above the fire that keeps it hot, while scattered about, in precise order, are the heavy steel casting boxes, the machines for planing the metal plates, and the great press, like an iron mangle, which is used in making the matrices. With great rapidity the moulders cover the face of the type with a sheet of damp papier-mache, beating it down until the soft pulp is forced into every nook and crevice. The process is finished by running the page through the heavy rolling machine. The sheet of paper is quickly dried, either in a hot sand bath or a steam-heated press, and emerges of almost horny consistency with every dot and mark of the type deeply impressed upon its surface. This is the matrix from which the stereotype plates are cast. In the time of the hand press, when editions were small and printed with great labour, the impression was obtained direct from the surface of the type, which rested upon a flat bed. When the rotary press with its rapidly revolving cylinders came into existence, printing from type was no longer possible. Obviously a mass of loose pieces of metal could not be made to cling satisfactorily to the surface of a steel roller. T he solution of the difficulty was found in stereotyping ; that is, in casting, from such a matrix as has been described, a mass of solid metal with the same circumference as the cylinders of the machinery. The way in which this is clone is simple. The papier-mache matrix, having been pre- pared, is fixed within a steel box, the interior of which is curved to half a circle.