At the printing end it looks like a
collection of small cylinders or rollers. The first thing to be
observed is the continuous roll of paper four miles long, tightly
mounted on a reel, which, when the machine is going, flies round
with immense rapidity. The web of paper taken up by the first
roller is led into a series of small hollow cylinders filled with
water and steam, perforated with thousands of minute holes. By
this means the paper is properly damped before the process of
printing is begun. The roll of paper, drawn by nipping rollers,
next flies through to the cylinder on which the stereotype plates
are fixed, so as to form the four pages of the ordinary sheet of
The Times; there it is lightly pressed against the type and
printed; then it passes downwards round another cylinder covered
with cloth, and reversed; next to the second type-covered roller,
where it takes the impression exactly on the other side of the
remaining four pages. It next reaches one of the most ingenious
contrivances of the invention--the cutting machinery, by means of
which the paper is divided by a quick knife into the 5500 sheets
of which the entire web consists. The tapes hurry the now
completely printed newspaper up an inclined plane, from which the
divided sheets are showered down in a continuous stream by an
oscillating frame, where they are met by two boys, who adjust the
sheets as they fall.
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