A revolving cylinder replaces the flatbed; newspapers can now print by the thousands

Newspapers in 1847 were still bottlenecked by flatbed presses that pressed one sheet at a time against a flat plate of type. Richard March Hoe, who became head of his father's New York printing press manufactory R. Hoe & Company after his father's death in 1833, patented a machine that wrapped the type around a revolving cylinder instead. The design could print much faster than the old flatbed press, and Baltimore's Arunah Shepherdson Abell, publisher of The Sun, was among the first to buy it and put it into use. Daily papers could suddenly print at a volume no flatbed press could match…