In 1840, there were 1,631 newspapers in the United States; by 1850, there were 2,526 with a total yearly circulation of half a billion copies for a population of just less than 23.2 million people. The majority of those newspapers were weeklies, but the increase in daily newspapers was even more noticeable. The daily circulation rate was already over 100,000 in 1840 and reached almost 350,000 by 1900.