“It is but just to record, that in giving my invention a practical shape, I was constantly and ably assisted by my brother Edwin, who, I may here add, afterwards became known as the originator of the machine for folding envelopes, which attracted so much attention at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Many of the minor parts, essential, however, to the efficient working of our printing machine, were of his device and construction, and in my necessary absence the work proceeded under his superintendence. “At length, as is already implied, the machine was completed, and the patent secured. Its operation was repeatedly shown to members of the trade and others interested in the matter; the work produced, though at high speed, being pronounced beautiful, and that which is technically called the register accurate perhaps beyond parallel, while its action was so rapid that even when worked by hand it threw off double impressions of the size of the _Globe_ newspaper at the rate of eight thousand per hour, or nearly ten-fold the number produced at the same time by the reciprocating machine; nay, more, during this very process it could concurrently throw off eight thousand single impressions from each of its two rollers; thus making up thirty-two thousand single impressions in all. “It remains to be explained why the invention never came into general use.” [It was Sir Rowland Hill’s wish that the passage which next followed in the Prefatory Memoir should be enlarged. He was not well enough himself to make the additions which he desired, but he supplied his son, Mr. Pearson Hill, with the necessary information and documents. After suggesting in a manuscript marginal note the changes which should be made, he added: “I leave this in my son’s hands, who will best know how to deal with it.” Mr. Pearson Hill has accordingly supplied me with the following statement:—] “The practical difficulties to the employment of the machine for the printing of newspapers—the work for which it was especially fitted—were all in a fair way of being removed. A provisional contract, which is still in our possession, had even been entered into with certain parties to provide my father with the means of rapidly casting curved stereotype plates, similar to those now used for printing newspapers, when he found himself face to face with what proved an insuperable difficulty on the part of the Stamp Office. “In those days, and indeed for many years after, newspapers were charged with Stamp Duty. By the requirements of the Inland Revenue Department, every separate sheet on which a newspaper was printed had to bear an impressed stamp—the separate sheets being sent to the Stamp Office to be so impressed, and then returned to the various newspaper printing offices ready for use.