PRINTING BEFORE THE FLOOD

Inangahua Times, Volume III, Issue 91, 19 March 1877, Page 2

PRINTING BEFORE THE FLOOD

A great deal haa been said as to the inventor of the art of printing, the period when the invention first saw the light, and the locality where it was born. Two out of three of these points need not, however, excite discussion. It is a good while since the remark that •' there is nothing new under the sun " was made, but anterior to thai period —some four thousand years ago —the first printing machine existed in Babylon! If proof be required of tbia rather startling assertion it may be easily found, for it exists no further off than Trinity College, Cambridge. In that place there is preserved a solid cylindrical figure about seren inches in diameter at each end. On the surface of this miniature cask-like cylinder minute and finely-wrought characters are engraved, and these are arranged in vertical lines. It is, therefore, a striking example of the ingenuity of the Ancients, and shows their method of preserving and multiplying national or family records. It is quite evident from the indented lettering of the Babylonian printing machine —for such it really is —that some means of applying pressure to it was io use among the Ninevite " typos." This being so. the primitive appliance at Cambridge must be said to embody the identical principal of the newspaper machines of the present day. —Echo.