deerskin ball filled with wool and nailed to a stick of hickory.
Not until 1750 were printing-presses manufactured in America:
in that year, Christopher Sower, Jr., began to turn out hand-
presses at Germantown, Pennsylvania. Handicapped by the
lack of skilled labor, he was even then only able to manufacture
presses inferior to those imported from Europe.
Reliable printing-ink also came from abroad. Substitutes were frequently attempted by the early printers and were manufactured from wild berries. The fading of the impression in some of the early colonial papers may be traced directly to the use of such substitutes. Not until the close of the first half of the eighteenth century was there a manufacture of a printers' ink that was worth the name.
MAKERS OF TYPE
Much of the poor printing in the Colonial Period was due to the fact that the type had become badly worn from frequent use. Often, the type had been used for years in printing colonial documents and pamphlets before it was employed to print the news. To get new type it was frequently necessary for the printer to make a special trip to England. The first attempt to cast type was made in Boston about 1768 by a Scotchman by the name of Michelson. With the scant materials available, he did the best that could be expected, but his type lacked the wearing qualities of the imported variety. Christopher Sower, Jr., of whom mention has already been made in connection with the manufacture of printing-presses, began to cast type in 1772 at his foundry in Germantown, but was compelled to secure his raw material in Germany. One of Sower's workmen, Jacob Bey, started the second type foundry in Germantown, and made several improvements in the composition of the metal employed in the manufacture of type. The most important type foun- dry was that established by Benjamin Franklin in 1775. For years Franklin had been whittling type out of wood and had been making cuts of metal, but not until the outbreak of the Revolution did he make a business of casting type. In charge of his foundry he put his son-in-law, B. F. Bache, who later figured in Philadelphia journalism.
