Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/305

Rh employed in this establishment; and, during the session of parliament, at least twelve reporters are constantly attending the Houses of Commons and Lords; each in his turn retiring, after about an hour's work, to translate into ordinary writing, the speech he has just heard and noted in short-hand. In the mean time fifty compositors are constantly at work, some of whom have already set up the beginning, whilst others are committing to type the yet undried manuscript of the continuation of a speech, whose middle portion is travelling to the office in the pocket of the hasty reporter, and whose eloquent conclusion is, perhaps, at that very moment, making the walls of St. Stephen's vibrate with the applause of its hearers. These congregated types, as fast as they are composed, are passed in portions to other hands; till at last the scattered fragments of the debate, forming,