paper. It takes its name from the stopping of its cylinders, and is "fed" by hand.
The Tit-Bits machines, which, like the others, are manufactured by Messrs. R. Hoe and Co., are in number two, and larger than those we have seen. In addition to printing, they cut, fold, and paste the pages, turning the papers out complete, except for the edge-trimming. Here you see a machine which takes in, at two separate sides, rolls of white and green paper respectively, and turns out at a third side complete cut, covered, and pasted copies of Tit-Bits at the rate of something like seven a second. We have seen how the stereotyped plates are prepared. These, when fixed upon the cylinders, are inked by a system of twenty-four rollers to each cylinder. The paper, damped, is controlled in its passage to the cylinder by an automatic brake, which keeps it to its proper timed pace. The cover is printed in what is, as a matter of fact, a smaller machine under cover of the larger one, and joins the white paper at the place where the covering takes place. As the paper runs through the machine it is pasted in the proper places from a paste-trough, wherein revolves a cylinder, from the surface of which the paste is taken and applied by a knife. The folding is effected by the paper passing over a series of triangular metal frames, apex downward. As the paper passes over the smooth surface of the frame it narrows towards the apex, and the paper doubles in the crease thus formed. The cover is attached in the same way that the inner leaves are pasted together, and so, from each of these two large machines—each a double machine in itself—hundreds of complete copies of the paper fall every minute, numbered on the indicator at the side. In another part of the room is observed the apparatus upon which the paper is re-wound and at the same time wetted, ready to receive the impression. Above, a balcony stretches along the wall, from which visiting members of the public may watch the operations below.
The Publishing Office.
After this there is only the publishing office, and the copy of Tit-Bits or The Strand Magazine is launched upon the outer world. This office, on the ground-floor, is a great L-shaped room, or two rooms, as you please, one part extending along the Exeter Street front, and the other reaching away forward to Southampton Street. Between forty and fifty persons are employed in this department, under the direction of Mr. Harrison, the publisher, who, in the preceding illustration, is to be seen standing by the window with his hand on the table. From this place go, each Thursday, the many hundreds of thousands of copies of Tit Bits which find their way into every corner of the world; and from here, on an ordinary month, issue out 114 tons of The Strand Magazine.
The building was erected by Messrs. Colls and Sons, of 5, Coleman Street, the architect being Mr. J. T. Woodard, of Bedford Street, Strand.
