PRODUCING NEWSPAPERS BY ELECTRICITY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 123, 3 September 1875, Page 14

PRODUCING NEWSPAPERS BY ELECTRICITY.

■n- I It has been hinted from time to time that one of our wealthy London journals has " under consideration " the practicability of printing its sheets in several of the great towns simultaneously, in order to secure a distribution of its copies as early as tho various local journals which are so fast depreciating the circulation and once paramount influence of their London contemporaries. How can this staggering feat be accomplished ? The leading journal had its attention ' drawn, some weeks ago to an electric machine in operation at the London Stock Exchange, by v/hich the fluctuating quotations are telegraphed to a number of City offices, where an instrument, composed of movable figures, and a dial plate, is made to record changes from hour to hour. If an electric current can be made to manipulate movable figures, it was conceived that a system of mechanical type setting might be carried on simultaneously in a number of distant places, the operation being directed from a central office in London; the news being there collected from all parts of the world, and that the " copy " might be put in type at several provincial offices simultaneously by operating on an electric keyboard, or a number of keyboards,.- controlled in the central office. The idea, like so many other inventions, i& not new. Mr. Mackay, of the ' Warrington Guardian/ it is known, worked upon the same line of invention eight years ago and simultaneously typesetting by machinery was by him carried to a practicable issue, though he found that his invention did not result in profit. He worked a number of type-setting machines by operating on one keyboard, and proposed to set up newspaper columns for any number of papers by this simultaneous process, the only difference being that the various machines could not be placed in distant places. In other work, he did not connect them with electricity. The facts remains that he actually worked some ten or twelve machines on this principle of connected action, which derived its directing power from one keyboard. There is no moral doubt that the same thing can be done on a wider scale by electric agency. But if done, would 4he game be worth the candle ? The ' Times/ or rather the manager oi' its mechanical department, is putting the thing to a private test in order to ascertain its mechanical practicabilities. If that can be made clear, the directors are not likely to be deterred by financial timidity from the next step in the unparalleled adventure. What a world of journalistic development the prospect opens to prescient eyes !