The building of rotary presses for printing illustrated papers was attempted as early as 1874 or 1875 in London, by the _Times_, but apparently without success, as no public mention has ever been made of any favorable result. The proprietor of the _London Illustrated News_ obtained better results. In 1877 an illustrated penny paper, an outgrowth of his great journal, was printed upon a rotary press which was, according to his statement, constructed by a machinist named Middleton. The first one, however, did not at all meet the higher demands of illustrated periodical printing, and, while another machine constructed on the same principle was shown in the Paris Exposition of 1878, its work was neither in quality nor quantity adequate to the needs of a largely circulated illustrated paper. A second machine, also on exhibition at the same time, designed and built by the celebrated French machinist, P. Alauzet, could not be said to have attained the object. Its construction was undertaken long after the opening of the Exposition, and too late to solve the weighty question. But the half-successful attempt gave promise that the time was at hand when a press could be built which could print our illustrated periodicals more rapidly, and a conference with the proprietors of the Augsburg Machine Works resulted in the production by them of the three presses from which _Uber Land und Meer_ and _Die Illustrirte Welt_ are to-day issued. As a whole and in detail, as well as in its productions, the press is the marvel of mechanic and layman.