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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 3

[miscellaneous paragraphs]

We do not often have to make a correction of a correction; but from a printed circular sent us by Messrs Stephenson, Blake, & Co., we learn that they were, as we at first supposed, the originators of the combination brass rule borders, and that the statement, taken by us from an English trade journal, attributing this important invention to another house, was not correct. Messrs S. B. & Co. say, « No specimens of ornamental brass-rule, produced by uniting two or more rules so as to form a self-contained design, was ever issued until we introduced them in 1882. » —We also take the opportunity of correcting an inaccuracy in our article on brass-rule, p. 85 of last volume. We mentioned the withrawal from the market of certain brass leader rules because they could not be cut with sufficient accuracy. We are informed that the want of accuracy was not in the cutting but in the rolling, and the demand did not warrant the firm in erecting machinery to do the rolling themselves.

The last chapter of « Roundabout Papers, » in the Printing Times, concludes with the following valuable practical suggestion: « We would further counsel machine-makers to devise some means of registering or gauging the amount of pressure of the cylinders of letterpress and litho printing-machines, so that printers and machine-minders might not be working entirely in the dark as at present. Good blocks and new type may be ruined by being run through the machine, even once, with excessive pressure, whilst, with enough and only just enough to give a perfect impression, blocks and type would hardly be injured at all, whilst in litho machines the breaking of stones would be frequently avoided. By the introduction of a pressure gauge, instead of guessing pressure as now, and too frequently erring in using far more than is actually necessary, practice would enable the machine-minder to know before-hand what pressure was required, and he could then regulate it accordingly. Every ounce of needless pressure, though it may seem a matter of small moment, means extra work for the engine; that is, extra consumption of fuel or gas, and extra wear and tear of machinery, and, in the case of letterpress work, extra wear and tear of type and blocks; and all this waste produces no better result. In the litho hand-press pressure is to some extent gauged by the resistance offered in pulling the table through; and in the letterpress by the lever being too much to pull over; but, in the machine, the minder, unless he pulls the cylinder over by hand instead of power, has no means of knowing what pressure he has put on. We urge machine-makers to take this point into consideration. »