The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-04-25
BIBLES BY THE THOUSAND.
HOW THE HOLY BOOK is PRINTED
IN $50 LANGUAGES.

Press-Compositors Have Been
working 33 Years on "A bible i'm
Syrinc-This Takes Ten Pieces of
Type For IA single letter.
From the New Orleans Picayune.
oxford. England. March 2s-Every once
in a while one reads OF the enormous edi-
ton of some book. an edition Of 10000 or
! perhaps 10000 and the world marvels at
/ the genius whose brain evolved such
! masterpiece. Such book is reviewed by
] literary critics in every corner Of the
| world. a tremendous hullabaloo is raised.
and the universe is aglow with enthusi-
asm.
| In this historic university town there
| is a printing house which turned out an
edition of 1910, 4S9 copies of a, book dur
ing the year 1895, and not word was said
| Of it, For more than 300 years the presses
of this institution have been printing this
| same book, and the demand has steadily
Increased from the first year of its exist
ence to the present time. How many cop
les have been turned out in the past three
centuries would be a vexing problem for
the brain of a mathematician to compute.
| il would run into scores of millions, fig
ures too magnificent for human realiza-
| ton
This concern is the University Press,
whole sole business for centuries has been
the printing Of Bibles. The place was es-
tablished some fifty years after the Ger
man Gutenberg invented movable type,
and the first book turned out bears the
date 1853, but this was a mistake by ten
years Ii should have been 147s. For near
~ 100 years the Oxford Press printed
books of all kinds, and then, toward the
end of the sixteenth century. II began the
printing of Bibles From that time to the
present the presses have been turning
out Bibles and Testaments, and nothing
else.
Were II not for religious wars which
veNed England in the fifteenth and six
teenth centuries the University Press
would have begun its career of printing
Bibles at an earlier period. Wycliire
the first man to translate the Bible into
English, escaped torture, but his bones
were dug up and burned by frenzied
priests Tindale, another translator, who
brought out a New Testament in 1895,
was strangled and burned, and Matthews
was strangled at Smithfield because of the
Bible he published in 1887.
The disputes and wrangles continued
until 1911, when an authorized version
safe to print Bibles on these lines tho
Oxford concern, under a special patent
of the king, prepared TO start on the
work which II is still pursuing
II may be OF interest to know the
sources of the Bible as IL appears to-day.
In the first place the making Of the Bible
did not begin in its modern aspect until
the middle of the fourth century after
Christ. The Bible is based upon four
great manuscripts. One of them, the
Codex Alexandrinus. now In the British
museum; the Codex Vatcanus now in
the Vatican. and the Codex Slnaiticus and
| the Codex Ephraemi Each Of these is of
| immense antiquity.
| The Codex Alexandrinus in the British
| museum is at least $500 years old. and
| 1t is the most priceless object in the vast
| collection OF that famous institution. This
| document consists of 773 sheets OF dull
| gray goatslin, the skin being exception
| ally thin and each sheet measuring 12A
| inches by 1854 inches. 1t Is written on
| both sides of the sheet I'm two columns OF
| faint but clear Greek characters. It once
| belonged to the patriarchal chamber Of
| Alexandria, and was sent as present to
| King Charles the First In 1927.
From manuscripts such as these; from
| the Latin version of the fourth century;
| from manuscript TRANSACTIONS Of the Bible
into Coptic, Syriac and other languages
| dating from the sixth century, and from
second century comes the Bible Of to-day.
The home of the University Press is
| great quadrangular building, or series OF
| buildings erected in 1880, and laid out in
the usual college form. with square
| court Of flowers and grass in the center.
| The composing rooms Of this place are
| its most wonderful feature. There are
| fonts of type for the printing OF the Bible
| in 800 different languages, comprising all
the known tongues OF the past and pres
| ent. There is a Bible for every savage
| race on the face of the globe, and the
wonders of composition represented by
some OF them would stagger the ordinary
| printer.
For instance, there is now a piece OF
| type setting going on which was begun
| in 1862 and It won't be finished until the
| twentieth century is well under way. 1t
| is a little brochure in Peshito Syriae for
| the use OF old manuscript students. The
| compositor works over a case containing
| 900 boxes. each with its separate char
acter. A single letter requires six differ
ent pieces of type, and some Of them re-
| uuire ten With a thousand boxes before
him, the composition cannot work with
machine-like rapidity,a and his fingers often
| fall into the wrong box. Since this par
| ticuIar task was begun, thirty-three years
| ago, thirty-one Of the hundreds OF com
positors engaged upon It have passed TO
| the great beyond.
| The number OF Bibles turned out daily
averages 5000 the year through. Some
are little and some are big, and with
| bindings Of all kinds. Mistakes seldom get
| into any of these millions OF Bibles, for
| there Is a standing offer Of a guinea to
| the person woo first discovers an error.
| Toward the end of a long edition the con-
slant wear on the plates sometimes
rnashes a letter. Once the word teach
| ing" was changed into 'eaching." and then
| the letter was worn down, changing Il
into aching" Fifty thousand Bibles
were sent out with this imperfectlon, but
| they we're all recalled and the error rec
tified by the laborious use Of a hand
stamp
IL took more than thirty years 10 per-
| feet the kind OF paper which r. now used
for printing Bibles This paper IL wonder
fully thin. but Is absolutely opaque IL
Is called India paper, and was discovered
by an oxford student while travelling IN
the far east The native method Of pre-
pairing II was too laborious for modern
use and II was not until 1874 that a pro-
cess was discovered by which II could be
a.. la "a nd