While poets and orators have expatiated on the glory and power of the press, rulers have exhausted their cunning in attempts to curb and regulate the art of which it is the symbol. Hedged in by arbitrary restrictions, it is not wonderful that printing was long carried on with clumsy implements. The earliest press resembled a screw-press, with a contrivance for running the form of types under the point of pressure. After the impression was taken, the screw was relaxed, and the form withdrawn and the sheet removed. This rude press continued in general use till 1620, when WILLEM JANSEN BLAEU, at first a joiner and afterward a mathematical instrument maker of Amsterdam, contrived a press in which the bed or carriage was brought under the point of pressure by moving a handle attached to a screw hanging in a beam with a spring, the spring causing the screw to fly back as soon as the impression was given. This movement was afterward effected by means of a double strap or belt, two ends of which were attached to an axle, and the others to opposite ends of the bed. The platen was so small that two pulls were necessary to print one side of a sheet, and each sheet, therefore, required four pulls to produce a complete impression. ADAM RAMAGE, who came from Scotland to Philadelphia about 1790, and who for a long time was the chief press-builder in the United States, made some improvements in the old press, one of which was the substitution of an iron bed for the stone one before in use. About the year 1800, EARL STANHOPE contrived a press which obtained much notoriety. It was constructed of iron, and of a size sufficient to print the whole surface of a sheet, and such a combined action of levers was applied to the screw as to make the pull a great deal less laborious to the pressman. [Illustration: COLUMBIAN PRESS.] The Stanhope press, however, was soon surpassed by the Columbian press, invented by GEORGE CLYMER, of Philadelphia. Mr. Clymer, as early as 1797, endeavoured to improve the common wooden press. His next efforts were directed to the production of an iron press, till finally eminent success was the result of his labours. In beauty, durability, and power, as well as facility of pull, the Columbian press stands perhaps unsurpassed. The power in this press is procured by a long bar or handle acting upon a combination of exceedingly powerful levers above the platen; the return of the handle or levers being effected by means of counterpoises or weights. The powerful command which the leverage enables the workman to exercise is favourable to delicacy and exactness of printing,—his arm feeling, as it were, through the series of levers to the very face of the types. The inventor removed to England in 1817, and introduced the press there, where it has long been held in high estimation. [Illustration: WASHINGTON PRESS.]