taching of the type-forms to the cylinders--and
was consequently not of any practical use.

The Earl of Stanhope, who, in 1798, invented the first iron frame and
"platen" press, with the improvement of levers in addition to screws
to give the impression, coupled with his object Nicholson's idea of an
inking roller or revolving cylinder. He spent large sums in trying to
find a substance that he could utilize for that purpose. He
investigated with the skins of many animals, domestic and wild, and
tanned and dressed in various ways. Different textures of cloth and
varieties of silk were used, but without success. The seam that was
necessary down the entire length of the roller was one great
impediment to success, and even if that could have been overcome, the
proper softness and pliability of surface for receiving and depositing
the ink evenly and smoothly on the type could not be obtained from any
of the processes experimented with; and Stanhope's improvement in
printing presses was still subject to the inconvenience of the ancient
ink-balls.

In 1807 a printer named Maxwell made a sheepskin roller which he
introduced into Philadelphia. It failed of success, and the printers
returned to the ink-balls. This Maxwell roller was reintroduced by
Fanshaw, a New York printer, in 1815, but the printers of that city
rejected it.

The inventors in England were still busily engaged in trying to solve
the problem of the cylinder press that Nicholson had more than
suggested in 1790, and the one great obstacle to success was the
absence of a proper substance for supplying the need of an inking
roller, the difficulty of the type and cylinder having been overcome
by the invention of the "turtle" form. In 1813 a man whose name one
historian gives as B. Foster, another as T. B. Foster, and to whom
another refers as "Forster, an ingenious printer, employed by S.
Hamilton, at Weymouth, England," one day visited the Staffordshire
pottery. In a coloring process in use there Forster, or Foster,
noticed a peculiar composition that covered the surface of the
potter's "dabber." It was moist, pliable, and elastic. The historians
do not say so, but we may well imagine that this "ingenious printer,"
seeing in that composition what he believed to be the long-sought
substance that would do away with the sheep pelt as an inking device,
with all that implied to the progress of the art of printing, must
have awaited with feelings of acute anxiety the