has been marvellous improvement in nearly all the machinery and processes
of printing. This is especially marked in rapid color-printing, and in
the successors of inadequate typesetting-machines--in the linotype, the
monotype, the typograph, etc.

Most wonderful of all, perhaps, is the improved printing-press itself,
in various classes, each adapted to its special purpose. The sum of all
improvements in this department of mechanical invention is seen in the
great cylinder-presses now in general use, especially the one known as
the web perfecting press. This is a machine of great size and intricate
construction, which yet does its complex work with an accuracy that
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