In the meantime various experiments had demonstrated the possibility of casting stereotype plates on a curve. The process was brought to perfection by the use of flexible paper matrices, upon which the metal was cast in curved moulds to any circle desired, and these plates were placed upon the Hoe “Type Revolving Machine” upon beds adapted to receive them instead of the type forms. The newspaper publishers were thus enabled to duplicate the forms, and run several machines at the same time with a view of turning out the papers with greater rapidity. In some large offices, such as the New York “Herald,” London “Daily Telegraph,” and the London “Standard,” as many as five of these machines were in constant operation. About this time the stamp duty in England of one penny upon each sheet of printed matter was repealed. This in itself aided materially in the development of the newspaper press. [Illustration: APPLEGATH’S TYPE-REVOLVING PRESS] After the return of Koenig to Germany, an Englishman named Applegath, in connection with a machinist named Cowper, made various improvements, mostly in the way of simplifying Koenig’s presses. After many experiments, they in 1848 constructed for the London “Times” an elaborate machine, entirely upon the cylindrical principle. All of the cylinders of this machine instead of being horizontal, as in presses heretofore used, were vertical. The type was placed upon a large upright central cylinder, but the circumference instead of presenting a complete circle represented as many flat surfaces as there were columns in the newspaper, the forms thus being polygonal. Around this central or form cylinder were placed eight smaller vertical cylinders for taking the impression, inking rollers being introduced to ink the type as it passed alternately from one of these impression cylinders to another. The sheets were fed down by hand from eight flat horizontal feed-boards through tapes; then grasped by another set of tapes and passed sideways between the impression cylinder and the type cylinder, thus obtaining sheets printed upon one side. The impression cylinder delivered them, still in a vertical position, into the hands of boys, one stationed at each cylinder to receive them. The results obtained from this machine were in a measure satisfactory, as the number of papers printed per hour upon one side, from one form of type, was materially increased; not, however, in proportion to the number of impression cylinders placed around it, as the press at its best could produce but 8,000 impressions per hour, on one side of the sheets. Having devised no means to lock up the type other than in flat columns, the polygonal form was a necessity, and the irregularities in it were made up by underlaying the blankets on the impression cylinders to take up these inequalities. Although this press, used in the London “Times” office, was the only one of the kind ever made, its size and importance warrant some record and description of it.