was to turn the “favourite broadsheet” of the English public into
the “leading journal of the world.” When Delane retired, he was
succeeded as editor by Thomas Chenery, and on his death in 1884
by George Earle Buckle (b. 1854). At the beginning of 1908 considerable
changes took place in the proprietorial side of The Times,
which was converted into a company, with Mr A. F. Walter (chief
proprietor since 1891) as chairman and Mr C. Moberly Bell (b. 1847;
manager since 1890) as managing director; the financial control
passing into the hands of Lord Northcliffe.
In the history of The Times its influence on the mechanical side of newspaper work was very great. The increasing circulation of The Times between the years 1840 and 1850 made an improvement in the printing-presses necessary, as sometimes the publication could not be completed before the afternoon. To meet this want the Applegath vertical press was introduced in 1848 and the American Hoe ten-feeder press in 1858. Meanwhile the idea of stereotyping from the movable types had been making steady progress. About the year 1856, however, a Swiss named Dellagana introduced to The Times Kroning’s idea of casting from papier-mâché instead of plaster, and was allowed to experiment in The Times office. After a time the invention was so much improved that matrices of pages could be taken and the stereotype plates fixed bodily on the printing machine in place of the movable type. This cleared the way for the introduction of the famous Walter press. Hitherto only one set of “formes” could be used, as the type was set up once only—one side of the paper being worked on one machine and the sheets then taken to another machine to be “perfected.” Stereotyping enabled the formes to be multiplied to any extent, as several plates could be cast from one matrix. Mr MacDonald, the manager of The Times, had devoted himself for several years to the production of a press which could print papers on both sides in one operation from a large reel of paper, the web of paper being cut into the required size after printing, instead of each sheet being “laid on” by a man and then printed. After years of experiment the Walter press was introduced into the Times machine-room in 1869, and the question of printing great numbers in a short time was solved. Each press turned out 12,000 sheets per hour, and it was therefore only a question of multiplying the stereo plates and presses to obtain any number of printed papers by a certain time. Meanwhile Messrs Hoe had set about producing something even quicker and better than the Walter press. They succeeded in accomplishing this by multiplying the reels of paper on each press, and also adding folders and stitchers. The result was the production of over 36,000 sheets per hour from each machine. These presses were adopted by The Times in 1895.
In 1868 the question of composing machines for the quicker setting-up of type was taken up by The Times. A German named Kastenbein had an invention which he brought to the notice of The Times, and arrangements were made for him to continue his experiments in The Times office. In a couple of years a machine was made, which was worked and improved until in 1874 several machines were ready to set up a portion of the paper; but it was not until 1879 that the arrangements were sufficiently advanced to make certain that they could do all that was wanted from them. The introduction of composing machines, and the necessary alterations in the office arrangements which followed, led to some trouble among the compositors, which in 1880 culminated in a partial strike; but a part of the staff remaining loyal, the printer was able by extra effort to produce the paper at the proper time on the morning following the strike. Various improvements were made, until one machine was able to set up as many as 298 lines of The Times in one hour, equal to 16,688 separate types. A system of telephoning the parliamentary report from the House of Commons direct to the compositor was begun in 1885, and was continued until the House decided to rise at midnight, which enabled the more economical method of composing direct from the “copy” to be resumed.
Ever since the introduction of the composing machines the business had been much hampered by the question of “distribution”—that is, the breaking-up and sorting of the types after use. Kastenbein had invented a distributing machine to accompany his composing machine, but it proved to be unsatisfactory. Various systems were tried at The Times office, but for many years the work of the composing machines was to some extent crippled by the distribution difficulty. This had been recognized by Mr Frederick Wicks (d. 1910), the inventor of the Wicks Rotary Type-casting Machine, who for many years had been working at a machine which would cast new type so quickly and so cheaply as to do away with the old system of distribution and substitute new type every day. In 1899 his machine was practically perfect, and The Times entered into a contract with him to supply any quantity of new type every day. The difficult question of distribution was thus surmounted, and composition by machines placed on a satisfactory basis.
Thus during the last half of the 19th century The Times continued to take the lead in new inventions relating to the printing of a newspaper, just as it had in the fifty years preceding. The three most important advances during the later period were practically worked out at The Times office—namely, fast-printing presses, stereotyping and machine composing, and without these it is safe to say that the cheap newspaper of the present day could not exist. Further indications of the enterprise of The Times in taking up journalistic novelties may also be seen in its organizing a wireless telegraphy service, with a special steamer, in the Far East, at the opening of the Russo-Japanese War.
The price at which The Times has been sold has been changed at various dates: in 1796 to 412d., 1799 to 6d., 1809 to 612d., 1815 to 7d., 1836 to 5d., 1855 to 4d., 1861 (Oct. 1) to 3d., and in 1904 (still remaining at 3d.) it started a method of payment by subscription which gave subscribers an advantage in one form or another and thus in reality reduced the price further. In 1905 this advantage took the form of the price (3d.) covering a subscription to The Times Book Club, a circulating library and book-shop on novel lines (see Bookselling and Publishing).
The first number of the paper contained 57 brief advertisements, but as it grew in repute and in size its advertising revenue became very large, and with the growth of this revenue came pari passu the means of spending more money on the contents. As far back as 1861 a single issue had contained 105 columns of advertisements, and another 98. Prior to 1884 the paper had only on two occasions consisted of 24 pages in a single issue. Between that year and 1902 more than 80 separate issues of this size were published, many of them containing over 80 columns of advertisements. Of two issues, one containing the news of the death and the other the account of the funeral of Queen Victoria, 140,000 copies were printed. From that time issues of 20 pages and over became an ordinary matter: and on May 24, 1909 (Empire Day), The Times signalized the occasion by bringing out a huge supplement of 72 pages full of articles on Imperial topics.
The Times has long stood in a class by itself among newspapers, owing to its abundance of trustworthy news, its high literary standard and its command of the ablest writers, who, however, are generally anonymous in its columns. It has always claimed to be a national rather than a party organ. It was Liberal in its politics in the Reform days, but became more and more Conservative and Imperialist when the Unionist and anti-Home Rule era set in. On the conversion of Mr Gladstone to Home Rule, The Times was, indeed, largely instrumental in forming the Liberal-Unionist party. In the course of its vigorous campaign against Irish Nationalism it published as part of its case a series of articles on “Parnellism and Crime,” including what were alleged to be facsimile reproductions of letters from Mr Parnell showing his complicity with the Phoenix Park murders. The history of this episode, and of the appointment of the Special Commission of investigation by the government, is told under Parnell. One of the strongest features of The Times has been always its foreign correspondence.
Among leading incidents in the history of The Times a few may be more particularly mentioned. In 1840 the Paris correspondent of the paper (Mr O’Reilly) obtained information respecting a gigantic scheme of forgery which had been planned in France, together with particulars of the examination at Antwerp of a minor agent in the conspiracy, who had been there, almost by chance, arrested. All that he could collect on the subject, including the names of the chief conspirators, was published by The Times on the 26th of May in that year, under the heading “Extraordinary and Extensive Forgery and Swindling Conspiracy on the Continent (Private Correspondence).” The project contemplated the almost simultaneous presentation at the chief banking-houses throughout the Continent of forged letters of credit, purporting to be those of Glyn & Company, to a very large amount; and its failure appears to have been in a great degree owing to the exertions made, and the responsibility assumed, by The Times. One of the persons implicated brought an action for libel against the paper, which was tried at Croydon in August 1841, with a verdict for the plaintiff, one farthing damages. A subscription towards defraying the heavy expenses (amounting to more than £5000) which The Times had incurred was speedily opened, but the proprietors declined to profit by it; and the sum which had been raised was devoted to the foundation of two “Times scholarships,” in connexion with Christ’s Hospital and the City of London School. Three years afterwards The Times rendered noble public service in a different direction. It used its vast power with vigour—at the expense of materially checking the growth of its own advertisement fund—by denouncing the fraudulent schemes which underlay the “railway mania” of 1845. The Parnell affair has already been mentioned. And more recently the “book war,” arising out of the attack by the combined publishers on The Times Book Club in 1906, was prosecuted by The Times with great vigour, until in 1908 it came quietly to an end.
Various adjuncts to The Times, issued by its proprietors, have still to be mentioned. The Mail, published three times a week at the price of 2d. per number, gives a summary of two days’ issue of The Times. The Times Weekly Edition (begun in 1877) is published every Friday at 2d., and gives an epitome of The Times for the six days. The Law Reports (begun in 1884) are conducted by a special staff of Times law reporters. Commercial Cases deals with cases of a commercial nature. Issues is a useful half-yearly compilation of all the company announcements and demands for new capital, taken from the advertisement columns of The Times.
In 1897 The Times started a weekly literary organ under the title of Literature. In 1901, however, a weekly literary supplement to The Times was issued instead, and Literature passed into the hands of the proprietor of the Academy, with which paper it was incorporated. The “Literary Supplement,” which appears each Thursday
