city streets with its crowd of interested spectators who wanted
the news even before it could appear in "Sporting Extras." The
speed with which news has been told by metropolitan bulletin
boards is one of the most remarkable mechanical achievements
of American journalism. In a baseball game when the ball has
been batted out into the field and has been caught by the center-
fielder, this fact has been recorded on a bulletin board fifteen
hundred miles away from the game before the ball could reach
the home plate in an attempt to put out a man running bases
after the fly had been caught.
PRINTING-PRESSES OF PERIOD
During 1822 steam was first used in America as the motive power to run a printing-press : this was seven years before steam turned the wheel of the first locomotive in England. Daniel Treadwell of Boston built the pioneer power press : its frame was constructed of wood and its mechanism was clumsy but it worked. Another Yankee, Isaac Adams, perfected the press and made it more practical. Called to New York in 1827 to repair a Treadwell press, he soon saw the possibilities of im- provement and in 1830 he successfully put his own press on the market. Later, the demand was so great that he took his brother, Seth Adams, into partnership. The Adams press differed from the hand-press in that, after the type had been put on a flat bed, "the bed was raised and lowered by straightening and bending a toggle joint by means of a cam, thus giving the impression upon the iron platen fixed above it" to quote a technical description. Isaac Adams "automatized the printing- press." Automatically his press inked the type; automatically it drew the sheet between the type-bed and the platen for the impression; automatically it took the sheet now printed from the type-bed; automatically it "flirted," after registering, the sheet to a pile by a "fly" invented by Adams and still used on cylinder presses. The various patents of Adams passed in 1858 to Robert Hoe, who by that time had made many improvements but those make a story for another chapter. About one thou- sand sheets per hour was the maximum speed of the improved Adams press.
