the feasibility of the type-setting machine.  But mechanical enterprise was then comparatively inactive in America, and nothing of immediate practical importance resulted from the Professor’s experiments.  Nor did greater success attend the efforts of Dr. William Church, of Vermont, a contemporary inventor, who constructed an apparatus for setting types, but failed to provide for their distribution.  Subsequently, for a long time, the idea slumbered.

At length, about the year 1840, Mr. Timothy Alden, a printer, and a native of Massachusetts, conceived a plan for setting and distributing type, which has since been put into successful operation.  Mr. Alden’s workshop was, I believe, situated at the corner of Canal and Centre Streets, in New York city.  There he labored in privacy, year after year, encountering all manner of difficulty and discouragement, till his great work was substantially completed.  His invention was patented in 1857, but the studious and persevering inventor did not live to reap the fruits of the seed he had sown.  Worn out with care and toil and long-suffering patience, he died in 1859, a martyr to scientific progress.  His patent passed into the hands of his cousin, Mr. Henry W. Alden, who has since organized a company for the manufacture and sale of the Alden Machine.

In appearance, this machine resembles a circular table, having in its centre a wheel, placed horizontally, from the outer edge of which lines of type radiate, like spokes from an axle, to the distance of about one foot.  Three-quarters of the circle is filled up by these lines.  In front is a key-board, containing one hundred and fifty-four keys, by which the operator governs the action of the machine.  The central wheel controls some forty “conveyors,” half of which compose the types into language, while the other half distribute them, guided by certain nicks cut upon their sides, to their proper places, when no longer needed.  Both operations may go on at the same time.  The types, as they are composed, are fed out in a continuous line, at the left of the key-board.  The operator then divides this line into proper lengths, and “justifies” it by hand.  “Justifying,” it should be stated, consists in placing spaces between the words, and making the lines of equal length.  This machine is a very ingenious invention, and marks the first great step towards successful improvement in the method of Type-Setting.

Another machine, originated by Mr. William H. Mitchell, of Brooklyn, New York, was patented in 1853.  In appearance it suggests a harp placed horizontally.  In front is a key-board, in shape and arrangement not unlike that of a piano.  Each key indicates a certain letter.  The types employed are arranged in columns, nearly perpendicular.  The touching of a key throws out a type upon one of a series of endless belts, graduated in length, from six inches up to three feet, which move horizontally towards the farther side of the