1821 William Church, of Connecticut (but then a resident of London), proposed a method for casting and setting type by one operation with great rapidity, but the machine for this purpose was never put to practical work. In 1853 William Mitchell invented a type-setting machine that was used for many years in the printing house of John F. Trow, of New York, but it was not generally approved. Other machines succeeded, and many had merit. The Mergenthaler or linotype, a complex mechanism that casts composed types in solid lines, is the approved machine for daily newspapers, and is used to some extent for book composition. The Lanston machine by different apparatus casts and composes isolated types with nearly equal speed. Either machine, in the hands of a skilled operator, can produce as much composed type in one hour as was done in a day by the hand compositor. See Type-Setting Machines.
Paper. Improvements in paper-making have been great aids in the development of printing. In 1827 the Fourdrinier paper machine, that produced paper in the so-called endless roll needed for rapid newspaper printing, was introduced in the United States. It made paper of more uniform thickness, of larger size, and at lower price. Cotton rags were used until the supply diminished. In 1860 Henry Voeltner invented a method for grinding soft woods for conversion into paper pulp. His method has been improved by chipping the wood and treating it with suitable chemical agents, which have largely reduced its cost. Book papers that sold for 16 cents in 1850 are now sold for 5 cents or less, but the quality is not so good. See Paper.
The methods of book and news presswork have been seriously changed. Before 1870 the rough paper then in use had to be dampened before it was thought fit for press, and type work was impressed upon it against a thick woolen or rubber blanket, which produced thick and strong print. This elastic impression was fatal to engravings with close and shallow lines which were choked with ink, to the damage of proper light and shade. Then paper-makers began to provide paper with a smoother surface, and printers undertook to print this paper in its dry state. Soon after, the newly discovered art of photo-engraving, which became common in books and magazines, compelled the making of still smoother paper. To supply this demand, a thin fabric of paper was coated with whiting, which, after proper smoothing or calendering, had a surface as smooth as polished metal. To print photo-engravings on this paper the elastic impression resistance had to be abandoned, and an inelastic resistance of hard cardboard substituted. Under this treatment the delicacy of fine lines in an illustration could be properly preserved: the inelastic resistance improved the appearance of the illustration, but it did not improve the readability of the type work, and it did add to the cost of presswork.
The increasing circulation of magazines that were filled with illustrations compelled the abandonment of the flat-bed cylinder press about 1884. The rotary principle then and now employed in newspaper work had to be adopted, but with finer mechanism nicely adjusted. In 1886 R. Hoe & Co. made for the printing of the Century Magazine a rotary press that took on 64 large octavo pages and printed them in a satisfactory manner and with a speed not possible by any form of flat-bed cylinder.
Bibliography. The bibliography of printing is very voluminous, and only a few of the principal books treating of the art can be named here: Hansard, Typographia (London, 1825); De Vinne, The Invention of Printing (New York, 1878); id., Historic Printing Types (ib., 1886); id., Plain Types (ib., 1900); id., Correct Composition (ib., 1901); Faulman, Geschichte der Buchdruckerkunst (Vienna, 1882); Ringwalts, Encyclopædia of Printing (Philadelphia, 1871); Thomas, History of Printing in America (Worcester, Mass., 1810, and Albany, N. Y., 1874); Hoe, A Short History of the Printing Press (New York, 1902); Bigmore and Wyman, Bibliography of Printing (London, 1880-86); Dictionary of Printing and Bookmaking (New York, 1891-94); Waldow, Illustrirte Encyclopädie der graphischen Künste (Leipzig, 1880-84).
PRINTING-HOUSE SQUARE. (1) A London court, so called from the former office of the King's Printer, which occupied the site. On it stands the office of the Times. (2) The open square fronting on City Hall Park, New York, about which are grouped the buildings of most of the daily newspapers.
PRINTZ, Johan (c.1600-63). A Governor of New Sweden. He was born in Bottneryd, Sweden, about the year 1600. He served as a cavalry officer in the Thirty Years' War, and for having surrendered the Saxon town of Chemnitz was dismissed from the service, but in 1641 was restored to royal favor, was ennobled, and was appointed Governor of New Sweden. He reached Fort Christina in 1643, and desiring to control the trade of the river and be as close as possible to the Dutch at Fort Masson, he established a settlement on the island of Tinicum, a few miles below the site of Philadelphia, and built a fort and also a mansion called ‘Printz Hall.’ His administration was a vigorous one, and during it the colony increased in numbers and in prosperity. He caused other forts to be built at various places for the protection of the colony, carried on a large trade with the Indians, and successfully maintained himself against the English and the Dutch. He quitted the colony in 1653, and two years later it was conquered by the Dutch under Stuyvesant. When Printz reached Sweden he was made a general, and a few years later became Governor of Jönköping. Consult: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols., Boston and New York, 1889); and Brodhead, History of the State of New York (2 vols., New York, 1853-71).
PRIOR. See Monastery.
PRI′OR, Matthew (1664-1721). An English poet and diplomatist, born July 21, 1664, probably in Wimborne, Dorsetshire, where his father was a joiner. The family moved to London, and the young Prior was placed in Westminster School, where he formed a life-long friendship with Charles Montagu, afterwards Earl of Halifax. He graduated B.A. from Saint John's College, Cambridge (1686), and was elected fellow (1688); through the influence of the Earl of Dorset he was made secretary to Lord Dursley, Ambassador to The Hague, where he remained several years, enjoying the friendship of King William III.; secretary in the negotiations at
