With the evolution from the flat-bed to the web or rotary presses there came further development in typesetting-machines—­the linotype, the monotype, and others.  With paper and presses brought to such simplification, newspapers have sprouted in every town, almost every village, and the total number of American periodicals is counted by tens of thousands.  There are magazines that have a circulation of more than a million copies weekly.  The leading daily newspapers in New York print anywhere from one hundred thousand copies to four times as many, and they can put extra editions on the streets at fifteen-minute intervals.

The aggregate circulation of daily newspapers in the United States is close to forty million copies.  Weekly newspapers and periodicals reach fifty millions, and monthly publications mount almost to one hundred millions; and all this would be impossible without wood-pulp paper.

The annual production of wood-pulp in the United States and Canada is estimated by Albrecht Pagenstecher, the survivor of the innovators, to be worth nearly five hundred millions of dollars.  Take into consideration the hundreds of thousands employed in the mills, the men who cut and bring in the raw product, the countless number in the printing, publishing, and distributing trades.  Then hark back to the accident that put the wasp’s nest under the toe of Gottfried Keller!

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(Providence Journal)

One zinc-etching illustration reproducing an old wood-cut of the ship, with the caption, “The Savannah, First Steamship That Crossed the Ocean.”

CENTENNIAL OF THE FIRST STEAMSHIP TO CROSS THE ATLANTIC

(7-column head)

One hundred years ago this week there was launched at New York the ship Savannah, which may be called the father of the scores of steamers that are now carrying our soldiers and supplies from the New World to the Old World.

The Savannah was the first ship equipped with steam power to cross the Atlantic ocean.  It made the trip in 25 days, using both sails and engine, and the arrival of the strange craft at Liverpool was the cause of unusual stir among our English cousins.  Like every step from the beaten path the idea of steam travel between the New World and the Old World was looked upon with much scepticism and it was not until about 20 years later that regular, or nearly regular, steamer service was established.

The launching of the Savannah took place on Aug. 22, 1818.  It was not accompanied by the ceremony that is accorded many of the boats upon similar occasions to-day.  As a matter of fact, it is probable that only a few persons knew that the craft was intended for a transatlantic trip.  The keel of the boat was laid with the idea of building a sailing ship, and the craft was practically completed before Capt.  Moses Rogers, the originator of the venture, induced Scarborough & Isaacs, ship merchants of Savannah, to buy her and fit her with a steam engine for service between Savannah and Liverpool.