THE ANNUAL TRAVELLING OF PRINTERS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 782, 13 April 1877, Page 4

THE ANNUAL TRAVELLING OF PRINTERS.

A curious calculation, in regard to the amount of work done by printers, lias lately been made, giving the fol lowing results; A good typesetter sets up about 21,000 letters each day The distance travelled over by his hand, in reaching the cases of type, average one foot, per letter ; in taking and placing each letter his hand performs a journey averaging two feet per letter. Thus, the average distinco travelled by his hand each day, is 48.000 feet, or 10 kilometers (10) miles; so that, leaving out Sundays, the hand of a journeyman printer averages in the course of each year 5000 kilometers, or about 3125 miles. In comparison witi the vast amount of manual labor performed by the army of printers now doing their part, modest but indispensable, tow irds the destruction of man’s greatest enemies—ignorance and prejudice—the labor of the copyists of other days seems to be induced to very small proportions ; and yet their action in perpetuating and transmitting the intellectual achievements of those earlier days, has been of incalculable advantage to the world A cuiious and interesting relic of the pre printing epoch of this world’s mental development, carefully preserved in the National Library, is the most ancient manuscript, written on paper made of cotton, possessed by this country. This ■old relic dates from the year 1050, about a year after the first specimens ■of paper had been seen in Europe whither the precious substance had been brought from Japan.