Stereotype Printing.
About the year 1775, an attempt at stereotype printing
was made by Benjamin Mecom, printer, nephew of Dr.
Franklin.[25]
He cast the plates for a number of pages of the
New Testament; but never completed them. I shall have
occasion to mention Mecom, in the course of this work,
several times. He was skillful, but not successful. Stereotyping
is now very common in the United States, and is
well executed.
The ingenious Jacob Perkins, of Newburyport, Massachusetts,
invented a new kind of stereotype, for impressing
copper and other plates. From plates so impressed most
of the bank bills of Massachusetts and New Hampshire
were printed at rolling presses, and were called stereotyped
bills.
