Workmen were then paid by the "day;" and it came to be one of the expressions then so much used in manual labour, corresponding to the sum of the least work of a good workman. M. Ladevèze, printer, thought that the "day" represented the work of about twenty thousand Roman or Cicero letters employed by a compositor. With us the "day" of compositors and pressmen is differently calculated. The latter have to take a certain number of sheets. The sheet, composition and press work, cost nearly seven crowns, or nearly two pounds. Jamet Métayer paid twenty crowns for four sheets in Italics; he demanded three months for the work. The primitive presses were wooden screw presses, and they so remained until the beginning of this century, when Lord Stanhope, a celebrated electrician, author, and politician, perfected them and gave his name to a new machine. His improvement consisted in that the bar was no longer fixed to the vice, but to a cylinder outside. A counter-weight brought back the platen at each blow. Pierre Didot had previously made metal platens. In 1820 the use of the Stanhope press commenced in France. England had, besides, taken a preponderating place in typographical invention. The printer of the _Times_, John Walter, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, seeking to publish his journal quicker, associated himself with craftsmen who constructed mechanical presses for him. The Didots lost no time, and themselves made improvements. In 1848, the presses of the _Constitutionnel_, thanks to the application of steam, produced twenty thousand papers an hour. In our time there are machines that print only on one side, as well as double machines, printing both sides at once. The rotary machines, with endless paper, take thirty-five thousand impressions an hour. In the newspaper machines of Marinoni, the great inventor, the paper is unrolled, printed, cut, and folded without leaving the machine, and falls into a place from which it is taken ready for the subscriber. The latest perfection of the printing press is the Walter press and the rotary machine of R. Hoe and Co., of New York, extensively used throughout the world. The elaborate book has little to do with these marvellous processes, although in its turn it largely benefits by the improvement of the printing machine. It is apart from our purpose to speak at length on the manufacture of paper. It is certain that it was well made before the invention of printing, for most of the accounts of the fifteenth century are written on linen paper, very resisting and well sized. Later on rags were used in this manufacture; and here, in a few words, is how paper was made in the mould, or "hand-made" before the invention of machinery for the purpose:-- [Illustration: Fig. 104.--Paper-making. Workman engaged on the tub with the frame of wires. Engraving by Jost Amman.]