Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, December 1899: Vol. LVI, November, 1899 to April, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
With the sudden demand for more papers came rapid progress in the
mechanical department of the business. Double cylinder presses capable
of printing twenty thousand papers an hour were soon perfected,
folding machines came into general use, stereotyping was employed to
save time, labor, and wear of type, white paper was made from wood
pulp at greatly reduced cost, and the progress in all departments of
the business was by leaps and bounds until every demand was more than
supplied and new expectations created. From that time forward
invention kept pace with every increase of circulation. As soon as one
press was found inadequate or imperfect, the manufacturers were ready
to set up a faster and better one. As competition reduced the selling
price of the newspaper, invention supplied every demand for the
material of production at a reduced rate. The impetus to circulation
imparted by the civil war created a new reading public, which rapidly
grew to include every person who could read and a demand for all the
news of the world once created would not be denied. The collection of
news was quickly reduced to a system and perfected, until to-day no
event of importance occurring in any part of the world is omitted from
the daily record of current history.
The great cost of collecting news at the front and transmitting by
telegraph full reports of battles during the civil war caused certain
newspapers in New York city to enter into an arrangement to receive
reports in duplicate and share expenses. Then the cost was further
reduced by selling the news to papers in other cities. That was the
beginning of the Associated Press, a plan of newspaper combination
that ultimately made the buying and selling of news a great commercial
enterprise. Within a few years after the close of the war this system
had been developed until practically all the daily newspapers of the
country were interested in it or subscribers to the news collected and
sold. This feature of the business continued to grow until agencies
for the collection and transmission of news were established
throughout the world. Similar associations were formed in England and
on the continent of Europe, and news exchanged with the American
organization. In the United States the business was developed until
newspapers of particular sections of the country and even those of
single States formed associations on the principle of mutual benefit
for the collection of full reports of all important events within the
territory where they circulated. At the present time the system has
been perfected until the great news agencies of the country receive
reports of important events from every quarter of the globe with a
degree of promptness and accuracy rendered possible only by
thoroughness of organization and the constant exercise of the keenest
intelligence. The collection of all the news of the world would not be
possible under any other plan, but the American newspapers, having
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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