Thus the question
was early forced upon his consideration, whether he could not
devise machinery for the purpose of expediting the production of
newspapers. Instead of 300 impressions an hour, he wanted from
1500 to 2000. Although such a speed as this seemed quite as
chimerical as propelling a ship through the water against wind
and tide at fifteen miles an hour, or running a locomotive on a
railway at fifty, yet Mr. Walter was impressed with the
conviction that a much more rapid printing of newspapers was
feasible than by the slow hand-labour process; and he endeavoured
to induce several ingenious mechanical contrivers to take up and
work out his idea.
The principle of producing impressions by means of a cylinder,
and of inking the types by means of a roller, was not new. We
have seen, in the preceding memoir, that as early as 1790 William
Nicholson had patented such a method, but his scheme had never
been brought into practical operation. Mr. Walter endeavoured to
enlist Marc Isambard Brunel--one of the cleverest inventors of
the day--in his proposed method of rapid printing by machinery;
but after labouring over a variety of plans for a considerable
time, Brunel finally gave up the printing machine, unable to make
anything of it. Mr. Walter next tried Thomas Martyn, an
ingenious young compositor, who had a scheme for a self-acting
machine for working the printing press.
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