It has been said that printing sprang into the world fully armed. At least this is certain, that for nearly four centuries after its birth the printing-press in use in all printing-houses remained the same in form as that which Caxton's workmen had used in the Red Pale at Westminster. There had been some unimportant alterations made in it by an Amsterdam printer in the seventeenth century; but until the year 1800 no important change in the form or mechanism of the printing-press had ever been introduced. Some such change was sorely needed. The productive powers of the old press were quite unable to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for books and newspapers that a quickened intelligence and national anxiety had awakened. Up to 1815 England was constantly at war, and men and women alike were eager for news from abroad. In 1800 Charles Mahon, third Earl Stanhope, invented a new printing-press. The Stanhope press substituted an iron framework for the wooden body of the old press, thus giving greater solidity. The platen was double the size of that previously in use, thus allowing a larger sheet to be printed, and a system of levers was adopted in place of the cumbersome handlebar and screw used in the wooden press. The chief merits of the new invention were increased speed, ease to the workman, evenness of impression, and durability. Further improvements in the mechanism of hand machines were secured in the Columbian press, an American invention, brought to this country in 1818, and later in the Albion press, invented by R. W. Cope of London, and since that time by many others. Yet even with the best of these improved presses no more than 250 or 300 impressions per hour could be worked off, and the daily output of the most important paper only averaged three or four thousand copies. But a great and wonderful change was at hand.