About this time the Syndics seem to have taken counsel of, or at any rate to have compared notes with, the Oxford University Press; a rough notebook, kept by Isaac Milner, one of the most active of the Cambridge Syndics, contains various memoranda concerning the Oxford method of management. Milner seems particularly to have discussed with Mr Dawson, of the Clarendon Press, the proper percentage of profit on the printing and selling of bibles. One of Milner's notes is reproduced here as being of interest not only in the history of Cambridge printing, but also in the history of business; it should be added that there is a note appended to the calculation explaining that "the 25 per cent., it is supposed, will nearly leave the proposed profit of £10 per cent. and pay all the wear and tear and salary of superintendence." [Illustration: A PAGE FROM ISAAC MILNER'S NOTE-BOOK, 1800] Richard Watts, the printer elected at Cambridge to succeed John Deighton in December, 1802, also appears to have had previous experience in Oxford, where he had conducted, and had a share in, a paper under Dr Manor, called the _Oxford Mercury_, in opposition to Dr Jackson's _Oxford Journal_. Immediately before his election he seems to have been agent for Mr Hamilton, a printer of Falcon Court, London. A little more than a year after this appointment Cambridge received another offer of a secret for the process of stereotype printing. The inventor was the third Earl Stanhope, a remarkable man who, besides being prominent in political life, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the author of _Principles of Electricity_, and the inventor of many devices including a microscopic lens, a new kind of cement, a calculating machine, an artificial tile for keeping out rain, a cure for wounds made in trees, an instrument for performing logical operations, and several improvements in the art of printing. Of these last the most important were the Stanhope press and an improved process of stereotyping: the Stanhope press was made of iron instead of wood and an ingenious mechanism made it possible to print a sheet twice as large as on the old wooden presses; the university bought two of these new presses, which are still in use at the present day. The offer of the stereotype secret came to the university from Andrew Wilson, the London printer employed by Earl Stanhope. By a preliminary agreement of 20 April, 1804, Wilson was to receive for the space of 14 years one-third of the savings resulting from the employment of the stereotype process and was to act, in conjunction with Watts, as agent for the Syndics' bibles and prayer-books. The savings were to be calculated by arbitrators appointed by the respective parties. This not very business-like arrangement naturally led to a dispute before long. As early as October, 1805, Milner seems to have had misgivings both about the scheme and about Wilson's competency, as the following entries in his notebook show: