Hour Examination Papers Help To Use Up 3500 Pounds Of Paper Each Week At University Press

Two tons of lead and 3500 pounds of paper a week are being used up each week by the Harvard University Press in its efforts to turn out its routine work and to prevent the disappointment of eager freshmen as the November hour exams draw near. Five casting machines and four cylinder presses are in continuous operation during the day.

Little do we realize how many precautions are taken to prevent those errors, which are the curse of first editions and examinations. Three times proofs are taken and corrected, and twice they are sent to the author for his correction before the work is printed. The first step in the process of publication is the keyboarding, in which the text of the copy is transferred to paper ribbons, which control the casting process. The "casters", entirely automatic, form the characters from molten lead. In the press building, are stored 14,000 differal" characters, the only sets of their in price from $.50 to $16.50. Among them are included one set each of inscription Greek characters and medieval "Uncical" characters, the only sets of their kind in America. Besides these, there are in store 2 sizes of Hebrew, 4 of Greek, 1 of German, and 1 of Georgian. At present work is being done in collaboration with the Harvard Yenching Society to make a set of Chinese characters.

Have you never wondered how many preparations must be made each year for the publication of the innumerable form letters, registration blanks, study cards, etc? All this work is done by the University Press. But it is tremendously simplified by the storing from year to year of the lead forms, so that in a great deal of the printing a date merely has to be changed or a sentence inserted. Any type of card or letter desired can be taken from the files at any time, locked in a form and sent to a job press for printing.

In the basement of the building (Randall Hall), which in its younger days was a college dining hall are several rooms which are now used for the storing of paper and type. Carefully wrapped in old newspaper, all the type for books written years ago by famous men of Harvard can be found ready to be set up again and published. Most of it has been undisturbed for years. One of the rooms, which is filled most of the time, will hold 140,000 pounds of paper. Beyond another doorway is the Loeb Classical Library, in which are stored for sale imported translations of the famous classical authors, a veritable heaven for the College Tutoring Bureau.

With 135 tons of lead ready to bear down at any time to the task of getting out the November exams of which about 19,000 copies will probably be required for Harvard and Radcliffe, we fear that the neglectful student had better relinquish any vague hopes that on the morning of the exams he will find any of them unprinted. We have heard stories about the student who, armed with a pair of white flannel pants, tried to get a copy of an exam beforehand by sitting on the form. Undoubtedly there are other such legends floating about the College.