The New York _Tribune_ is using the Linotype
machine for all its typesetting except the displayed advertisements,
and other papers are using it for a portion of their work, while still
others are using the Rogers and various machines, of which there are
already six or more. It seems probable that within the early future
newspaper composition will very generally be done by machinery.
It has been suggested to me that many of my hearers this evening know
little or nothing of the processes of the printer's art, and that some
exposition of it may interest a considerable portion of this audience.
The vast number of these little "messengers of thought" which are
required in a single modern daily newspaper is little known to
newspaper readers. Set in the manner of ordinary reading, a column of
the New York _Tribune_ contains 12,200 pieces, counting head lines,
leads, and so on; while, if set solidly in its medium-sized type,
there are 18,800 pieces in one column, or about 113,000 in a page, or
about 1,354,000 in one of its ordinary 12-page issues. A 32-page
Sunday issue of the New York _Herald_ contains nearly, if not quite,
2,500,000 distinct types and other pieces of metal, each of which must
be separately handled between thumb and finger twice--once put into
the case and once taken out of it--each issue of the paper. No one
inexperienced in this delicate work has the slightest conception of
the intensity of attention, fixity of eye, deftness of touch,
readiness of intelligence, exhaustion of vitality, and destruction of
brain and nerve which enters into the daily newspaper from
type-setters alone.
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