The type setting was interesting to Jimmie because it was all new to him. His type was just like the type in a printing office. Each piece was a thin bar of metal with a raised letter on the end, unless it had a punctuation mark instead of the letter, or was blank in order to make proper spaces between the words. Each letter of a word had to be picked up by itself out of the case of type and put in place before the next letter of the word could be placed where it belonged. It was slow work and it was a little hard at first to be spelling a line of words with every letter upside down, but Jimmie found out the very first thing that it had to be so if the words were to be right side up on the printed page. It made _Widow_ look like this: [Illustration: Widow (inverted)]; but it did not take long to learn to read the words that way to make sure they were right. When the type for the first column of the paper was in order and securely locked into the form which held it, there were two things more to be done--inking the type and pressing the paper on it. Jimmie did the inking and his father put on the paper and took off the impression. The first printing showed that Jimmie had been too lavish with his ink, but the second was so good they put it away for his Uncle Francis. "Our history says that Benjamin Franklin learned the printer's trade. Did he set the type and print this way?" Jimmie asked his uncle the first time he came out after Jimmie became a printer. "Yes, just that way," answered his uncle. "In Benjamin Franklin's time and most of the time ever since, each letter has had to be picked up by hand and put in place. There is a little type-setting machine now which is quite a help, but we need something better." "I don't see how you ever get a daily paper ready," exclaimed Jimmie. "It must take millions of letters." "Not so many, I think," replied his uncle, "but enough so that it does take a good many girls to set the type. There is going to be a great change soon, however, because in a short time there is going to be an entirely new type-setting machine. Mr. Ottman Mergenthaler of Baltimore has been working on one for ten years and it is almost ready for us. When that is perfected it will be as wonderful as the big presses though it is not a large machine. He will call it the linotype (line-of-type). It will work somewhat like a typewriter. When the operator strikes a letter on the keyboard that same letter in the type will be freed from its place in the type case and come sliding down a path, or channel, to take its place in the word and line that is being set. When this machine is perfected one person will be able to do as much as four now can." [Illustration: FRANKLIN'S PRINTING PRESS] "If Benjamin Franklin could visit our newspaper office at the present time," continued his uncle, "what would astonish him most are the big steam cylinder presses. He never saw anything but a hand press of the simplest kind."