Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/271

 It was, roughly, half a century ago that these many machines reigned in the dingy old corner of the Yard. After being lifted from the press, every printed book-sheet that was turned out was carried to the drying-room (the paper having been previously wetted), and after hanging on racks in a heated drying-room for several hours, removed to the warehouse, and sheet by sheet placed between glazed boards in the hydraulic press for several hours under a pressure of about two hundred tons in order that the impression marks might be taken out. This was, of course, a very considerable addition to the cost of printing. Under the present system it is entirely unnecessary.

In these days the various branches of the printing department are housed in the huge building which was reared in the 'seventies at the back of La Belle Sauvage Yard. The spacious, well-lighted composing-room is at the top, on the fifth floor. Not without reason it is called the conservatory in the summer, for the glass roof is apt to make the work trying when the sun-blinds are not drawn.

The composing frames of the case-room are arranged in a double row extending from one end of the building to the other, each set of frames being devoted to special kinds of work. This room contains about two hundred compositors. About the year 1900 the increasing number of publications of the firm necessitated the introduction of mechanical means of composition, and linotype machines were installed. Since then the installation has greatly increased, until at the present time eighteen linotype machines are constantly at work, some of them doing twenty-four hour turns. At this time of day it is hardly necessary to describe the linotype machine with its typewriter operating board, its harp-like type channels, and its pot of fuming molten metal, which is so rapidly converted into a line of type as to be welded into the solid line by a deft stroke before the metal hardens.