The Emporia weekly news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1881-1889, 1884-04-03
ORIGIN or rHE LoNDog rTwE.

- II
The starting Of this great newspaper,
one hundred years ago, was mere SC
cident in the development of another
business. Almost every one who has
stood in a printing Office watching com
positors set type must have sometime
asked himself, Why not have the whole
words cast together, instead of obliging
the printer TO pick up each letter sepa-
ratelyl Such words as and, the, but, it,
Is, and even larger words ike although,
and Notwithstanding, occur very often in
ali compositions How easy it would
be, inexperienced persons think, to take
up long word such as extraordinary,
and place it in position at one stoke.
In the year 1855 there was a printer in
London named John Walter, we'll estab-
iished in business, who was fully resolved
on giving this system trial. At great
expense and trouble he had all the com
mones. words and phrases cast together.
He would give his type-founder an order
ike tkis:-"Send me a hundred weight,
made up in separate pounds, of heat, cold,
wet, dry, murder, fire. dreadful robbery,
atrocious outrage, fearful calamity, and
alarming explosion"
This system he called Geographic print
photographic being a combination of
swo Greek words signifying word-writ-
ing. In order to give publicity to the
new system, on which he held patent,
as well as to afford it fuller trial, he
started q newspaper, which he called the
nai1vy TIrivaraal RaUiafar TIE ,,au,ax,e
per had some little success from the be-
ginning: but the Geographic printing
system would not work. Not only did
the competitors place obstacles in the
way, but the system itself presented diff
6culties which neither John Walter nor
any subsequent experimenter has been
able to surmount.
"The whole English language" said
Mr.. Walter, in one of his numerous adj
dresses 70 the public, ''lay before me in
a confused arrangement. 1t consists of
about 80, 900 words. This multitudinous
mass reduced to about 5000, by sepa.
rating the parcels, and removing the OBJ
solete words, technical terms, and COM
mon terminatiOns."
After years of labor, this most resolute
and tenacious of men was obliged to
give it up. 1t WAS too expensive, too
cumbersome, too difficult; il required a
vast amount of space; and, in short it
was a system which could not, and can
not be worked to profit. But though the
geographic printing was a failure, the
Daily UHiyersal Register proved more
and more successful. ItwRs dingy lit
tie sheet, about twice as large as sheet
of foolscar, without LEADER" and con-
tanning small number of we'll selected
Il, Ia l. ~.
casionally short notice of the plays of
tie night before. and few items of what
we now call fashionable intelligence"
The advertisements, after the paper had
been in existence three years, averaged
about fifty day, most of them very
short. Its price was Jhreepence. The
paper upon which it was printed was
coarse and cheap. In the third year Of
lis existence, on the first of January,
1888, the name was changed to the
fines.
Fr, n this period the newspaper APP
p,ars to lave gone forward, without any
interruption, to the present day. In due
.iuie john Walter withdrew from the
management, and gave it up to his eldest
.,.i,, J.,!n Walter the second, who seems
y have possessed his fathers resolution
al ,uergy, with more knowledge of the
so-!d and q hetter education. It was he
sI;;, :o; q The first decisive step toward
!ac:Eg tie Times at the head of
journalism.
Until the yesr 1914. all the printing
II the wnlld was done by hand, and the
iihi.s- could only be struck of at the rate
f fe,lr hundred and fifty copies an hour.
Heucr, the circulation of the paper, when
it had reached three or four thousand
copies day, had attained the utmost
development then supposed to be posi-.
bic; and when such news came as that of
the battle of Austerlitz, Trafalgar or
Waterloo, the edition was exhausted long
before the demand was supplied. There
was a compositor in the Office of the
Times, named Thomas Martyr, who, as
early as 1904, conceived the idea of ap-
plying Watts improved steam engine to
printing press. He showed his model
to John Walter, who furnished him with
money and room in which to continue
his experiments, and perfect his machine;
but the pressmen pursued the inventor
with such blind hate, that the man was
in terror of his life from day to day, and
the scheme was given up.
Ten years later another ingenious in
ventor, named. Kouig, procured a patent
for steam press, and Mr.. Walter deter
mined to give his invention trial at all
hazards. The press was secretly set up
in another building, and few men,
pledged to secrecy, were hired and put
| In training to work it. On the night of
the trial the pressmen in the Times build
ing were told that the paper would not
go to press until very late, as important
news was expected from the Continent.
At six in the morning John Walter went
into the pressroOm and announced to the
men that the whole edition of the Times
had been printed by steam during the
night, and thenceforth the steam press
would be regularly used. He told the
men that if they attempted violence there
was force at hand TO suppress it; but if
they behaved well, no man should be q
loser by the invention. They should
either remain in their situations, or re-
ceive fall wages until they could procure
| Others. This conduct in rich and power
| ful IN IN was no more than decent. The
n,en accepted his terms With alacrity.
| Tie Tim, is still chiefly owned aRd
o',,int:ed by Mr.. John Walter, the
ss.iai~tn CT the founder.