One small step for faster news.
Today in Science History tells
us that it was on this date, in 1861, that
full pages of the New York Tribune were printed for the first time in the U.S.
using curved stereotype plates.
Stereotyping was, by the middle of the 19th century, an often used means of
shortening the production time of printed matter. After a plate had been typeset,
a time-consuming process, a stereotype of the same plate essentially halved the
time needed for a printing run. In addition, preparing a stereotype of a plate
meant that the original plate could be dismantled and the type put to additional
use before the printing run was finished. Flat plates were used for books, but
newspapers were printed on cylindrical plates, so the preparation of curved stereotype
plates was an important step in speeding up the production of newspapers. (A fascinating
review of the development of these processes can be found here.)
Wikipedia informs
us that both stereotype and cliche find their origins in printing.
A century and a half ago, and undoubtedly well before that as well, people already
wanted to get their news as quickly as possible.
Go to: Actually, I could have waited.