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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 4
[miscellaneous paragraphs]
We have received a copy of No. 149 of the monthly London and Provincial Music Trade Review, a flourishing and well-edited paper, now in its thirteenth year.
A Paris telegram of 2nd March states that the president of the French executive council has ordered the prosecution of La Gaieté (?) newspaper for publishing an article advising the German socialists to shoot the emperor. La Gravité will probably henceforth be the more appropriate title for this lively sheet.
Steinkopf, the German correspondent of The Times, for libelling Sir Morell Mackenzie, has been ordered to pay £1500, and the aggrieved doctor has recovered £150 from The Times for giving publicity to the libel. It is doubtful whether Sir Morell will obtain as much from the correspondent, notwithstanding the verdict.
In consequence of the complaints of the Victorian printers and publishers as to the disadvantage at which they are placed by the New South Wales Government carrying and delivering all locally-published periodicals free, the Postmaster-General has invited the Postmaster-General of New South Wales to a conference on the subject.
In the case against the Auckland Observer, for libelling Humphries, a lawyer, the grand jury found no bill. Those who read the sample of the objectionable matter in our last issue, will agree that the ways of juries are inscrutable. For publishing stuff not one whit worse, unfortunate John Baldwin suffered six months' imprisonment—in his case a sentence of death.
The Worker, which has just been started in Brisbane, Q., as the organ of the Trade Unions, is a new experiment in journalism. It is a purely co-operative concern, the property of the Unions, who own the plant, elect trustees, appoint the editor by plebiscite, and pay a per capita, subscription, in exchange for which each member receives a copy of the paper. We doubt whether a paper on these lines will succeed. It will i probably split on the rocks of socialism or land nationalization.
The little radical weekly Age in Christ-church has had but a brief existence. It has been discontinued, and the plant sold by auction.
The Buchdrucker Zeitung says that the old forests of pines and of firs in central Europe are rapidly disappearing, owing to the demand for wood pulp for the paper mills. Over the sites of some of them mills have arisen. The annual produce of wood cellulose is now more than 700,000,000?, and as it requires 3? of wood to produce 1? of celluloid, this means an annual conversion of upwards of 2,000,000,000? of wood.
Now that so many good patterns of office files are to be had, it is time that the clumsy and dangerous « spike file » was abolished. The Press narrates how a commercial gentleman in Wellington, one day lately, dozed at his office table. As he dozed he nodded, and at length spiked the tip of his nose on one of these pointed instruments. The injury was painful, and might easily have been much more serious.
The criminal action by Mr Warden Bird against James Wilkie of the Eeefton Guardian came before the Supreme Court, Hokitika, on the 18th inst. The strongest sentence in the article complained of was this: « We have frequently commented on the extraordinary decisions of the Court, but yesterday's irrational verdict eclipses all previous records in inbecility. » Mr Jellicoe, of Wellington appeared for accused, who pleaded not guilty, and a jury was empanelled. Then the prosecutor decided not to go on with the case and the Crown Prosecutor obtained leave to enter a nolle prosequi. This is the second time that Mr Wilkie has been put to the trouble and cost of travelling to Hokitika to he a target for blank cartridge. In a case of libel,—and of criminal libel especially— parties taking action should be made to deposit reasonable securities to prevent « bogus » actions.
The date is often printed in roman numerals at the foot of a title, and the changes sometimes bother compositors who are not familiar with the notation. For a long time the symbols have been progressing in a regular series, forming in 1888 about as unwieldy a group as could well occur; and the sudden change in 1890 has set the comps considering as to the correct notation. Here it is:
1888 Mdccclxxxviii
1889 Mdccclxxxix
1890 Mdcccxc
The change after the close of the nineteenth century will be sharper still; and the characters will form a most unfamiliar group:
1899 Mdcccxcix
1900 Mcm
1901 Mcmi
There are signs that this cumbrous old notation is dying out. It is certainly convenient in Scripture references (« Matt. xx 20, » for example), but it is abandoned in the Revised Version, and even, we notice, in the latest editions of the Authorized Version issued by the Bible Society—a great innovation. It has always been a stumbling-block to the illiterate. An old story, now going the rounds, tells of a clerk who never could master the notation, and on one occasion announced: « We will sing to the praise and glory of God in the X and the L and the one-eyed psalm. »
Edison's phonograph has been tried in the office of the Berlin National Zeitung. The editor dictated a sentence into it in his private room, and the apparatus was then sent into the composing room, and a compositor set up—with perfect accuracy it is Stated—what the phonograph repeated. This is the first practical application of the invention in a German newspaper office.