"
They went over to the part of the great room where there were many tables,
on each a metal frame about the size of a page of the newspaper. Some of
the frames were filled with type, others were partly empty. And men were
lifting into them the galleys of type under the direction of the Night
Editor and his staff. As soon as a frame was filled two men began to even
the ends of the columns and then to screw up an inside framework which held
the type firmly in place. Then a man laid a great sheet of what looked like
blotting-paper upon the page of type and pounded it down with a mallet and
scraped it with a stiff brush.
"That is the matrix," said Howard. "See him putting it on the elevator."
They looked down the shaft. "It has dropped to the sub-basement," said
Howard, "two hundred and fifty feet below us. They are already bending it
into a casting-box of the shape of the cylinders on the presses; metal will
be poured in and when it is cool, you will have the metal form, the metal
impression of the page. It will be fastened upon the press to print from."
They walked back through the room which was now in almost lunatic
confusion--forms being locked; galleys being lifted in; editors,
compositors, boys, rushing to and fro in a fury of activity.
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