The bed and platen system of printing was, up to the middle of the nineteenth century, the favorite method of printing fine books and cuts. The first “power” or steam press upon this principle was made by Daniel Treadwell, of Boston, in 1822. The frames were of wood, and it does not appear that more than three or four of these were ever constructed. The best machines of this description were those devised and patented by Isaac Adams, of Boston, in 1830 and 1836, and by Otis Tufts, of the same place, in 1834. They were first made with wooden and afterward with iron frames. In 1858 Adams’s business became the property of Hoe & Co., who continued to manufacture the machines with added improvements. In all more than a thousand, in no less than fifty-seven sizes, were sold for use in the United States, some being sent to other countries. In these machines, the type is placed upon an iron bed, after the usual manner of the hand press, and this bed is raised and lowered by straightening and bending a toggle joint by means of a cam, thus giving the impression upon the iron platen fixed above it, and firmly held in position by upright iron rods secured to the bottom bar, a strong cross-piece, at the base of the machine. The ink fountain is at one end of the press; the inking rollers travel twice over the form, in a movable frisket frame, while the bed is down; the paper is taken in by grippers on the frisket and carried over the form, when the bed rises and the impression is given; and finally the sheets pass forward from the frisket by tapes to a sheet flier, which delivers them on the fly board. One thousand sheets per hour is the maximum speed of the larger sizes of the Adams press. Although many of these machines were made and great numbers are still used, and notwithstanding the fact that it was thought by many experienced printers that fine book and cut work could be done in no other way than by flat pressure, this system of printing has given place to that of the cylinder press. [Illustration: ISAAC ADAMS’S BED AND PLATEN PRESS]