Page:The Newspaper and the Historian.djvu/73

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awarding of prizes by them , and that the Pulitzer School of Journalism has annually awarded a prize to thenewspaper deemed to have contributed the most signal service to the press.

This enormous and rapid increase in the activities connected with the press has been greatly facilitated by the extraordinary development of inventions of the age. The telegraph , the cable ,

the telephone, wireless telegraphy, leased wires, and pneumatic tube mail service have greatly facilitated the reception of news,41 although the fact that news is transmitted by these means often

gives it a factitious importance. Stenography 42 and the type writer have increased the speed with which the news received

is transmitted into “ copy," while at the same time they reduce to a minimum the danger of error from undecipherable chirog raphy. The linotype and the Morkrum printer increase the speed with which “ copy " is in turn transmuted into the newspaper. The folder , which made the web -perfecting press a possibility,

the rotary press, and themultiple press in all its forms expedite the printing of the newspaper.43 In turn ,again, the very fact that

news is printed , and that the press has at its command all the inventions of an inventive age tends to give news an importance

often out of all proportion to its real value. The substitution of

esparto grass,44 and later of straw and of wood pulp for cotton rags in the manufacture of paper has reduced the price of the newspaper and thus increased its circulation , - it is indeed impossible to estimate the enormous extension of the press that IF. W . Scott gives an interesting table showing how closely the establish ment of daily newspapers in Illinois followed the opening of new telegraph lines. - Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814 - 1879, p . lxx. Alfred Baker, The Life of Sir Isaac Pitmon .

43 R . Hoe, in A Short History of the Printing Press, gives a full account of the inventions that have made possible the enormous increase in the pro duction of newspapers and a corresponding decrease in the time and labor demanded . T . Catling gives an account of the interest aroused by the introduction of the Hoe press into Europe. — My Life's Pilgrimage, pp. 50 -55.

J. C . Francis cites from the Athenaeum , March 17 , 1849, an account of an American printer who had died in Paris leaving £40 ,000 as a premium

to any one who would construct a press capable of striking off 10, 000 copies of a newspaper an hour. — John Francis, I, 155.

4 Thomas Routledge made paper from this grass in 1860 and it was gradually adopted by other papers, Lloyd's News being among the earliest to do so. - J . C . Francis, Notes by the Way,