Nothing but a series of sections and diagrams could give the reader an idea of the construction of this unrivalled instrument.

The time to see it and wonder at it is when the press is in full work.

And even then you can see but little of its construction, for the cylinders are wheeling round with immense velocity.

The rapidity with which the machine works may be inferred from the fact that the printing cylinders (round which the stereotyped plates are fixed), while making their impressions on the paper, travel at the surprising speed of 200 revolutions a minute, or at the rate of about nine miles an hour! Contrast this speed with the former slowness.

Go back to the beginning of the century.