The hand-press invented by Gutenberg is the only machine absolutely necessary for printers. A specimen of these rude wooden machines is the press used by Benjamin Franklin, now in the Patent Office at Washington. A hand-press has been illustrated and sketched in this volume; it was operated by two men, one attending to the inking, the other placing the paper, and pulling on the lever to make the impression. The first improvement on this press was made by Earl Stanhope in 1815. He built the whole of iron, and, substituting for the screw an obtuse-angled jointed lever, greatly lessened the labor of the pressman. He also enlarged the platen to the size of the bed, so that a full sheet could be printed by one pressure of the platen, instead of two, as in the old press. A second improvement was soon made by G. Clymer of Philadelphia, who in his elegant iron press, the Columbian, used a combination of levers; in some points it is still unsurpassed. For country papers of limited circulation, the hand-press is still in use; it is also a favorite in book offices for work of delicate execution. It is now common to print by hand two hundred and fifty impressions per hour, or one hundred and twenty-five perfected sheets. Near the end of the eighteenth century, the hand-press proving too slow for the demands of speed and economy, the ready intellect of inventors began upon the problem of moving presses by power. William Nicholson patented in England, in 1790, a plan for a press in which the types were adjusted upon a revolving cylinder, and were inked by contact with another cylinder having rotary motion. The ink was distributed by means of several inking rollers, the last of which was fed by the ink fountain. A large cylinder covered with felt, revolving in contact with the first, produced the impression, which was thus made by rolling the sheets of paper between the cylinders. Nicholson failed in fixing the types to the cylinder; but had he been able to do this, his plan of inking would not have been practicable, as the gelatine rollers were not then invented. Frederick Hoenig, a Saxon, so improved this press of Nicholson as to make it a mighty engine. Himself and another machinist, A. F. Bauer, found that the way to make a bed of type work rapidly was to effect the pressure with a cylinder instead of a flat surface. A machine was secretly built; and on the morning of November 28, 1814, the “London Times” informed its readers that they were reading a sheet printed by steam, in these glowing words:--