With one of these hand-presses and the aid of two men about two hundred and fifty sheets an hour could be printed on one side. The increase in the circulation of newspapers before the opening of the 19th century demanded greater rapidity of production and turned the attention of inventors to the construction of power or machine presses. Like the paper-making machine, the power press was conceived in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and like that art was also not developed until the nineteenth century. William Nicholson of England is believed to have been the first inventor of a machine printing press. He obtained an English patent for it in 1720. The type were to be placed on the face of one cylinder, which was designed to be in gear, revolved with, and press upon another cylinder covered with soft leather, the type cylinder to be inked by a third cylinder to which the inking apparatus, was applied, and the paper to be printed by being passed between the type and the impression cylinder. These ideas were incorporated into the best printing machines that have since been made. But the first successful machine printing press was the invention of two Saxons, König and Bauer, in 1813, who introduced their ideas from Germany, constructed the machine in London, and on which on the 28th of November, 1814, an issue of the _London Times_ was printed. The _Times_ announced to its readers that day that they were for the first time perusing a paper printed upon a machine driven by steam power. What a union of mighty forces was heralded in this simple announcement! The union of the steam engine, the printing press, and a great and powerful journal! An Archimedean lever had been found at last with which to move the world. The production of printed sheets per hour over the hand-press was at once quadrupled, and very shortly 1800 sheets per hour were printed. This machine was of that class known as cylinder presses. In this machine ordinary type was used, and the type-form was flat and passed beneath a large impression cylinder on which the paper was held by tapes. The type-form was reciprocated beneath an inking apparatus and the paper cylinder alternately. The inking apparatus consisted of a series of rollers, to the first of which the ink was ejected from a trough and distributed to the others. In 1815 Cowper patented in England electrotype plates to be affixed to a cylinder. Applegath and Cowper improved the König machine in the matter of the ink distributing rollers, and in the adaptation of four printing cylinders to the reciprocating type bed, whereby, with some other minor changes, 5000 impressions on one side were produced per hour. Again Applegath greatly changed the arrangement of cylinders and multiplied their number, and the number of the other parts, so that in 1848 the sheets printed on one side were first 8000 and then 12,000 an hour.