This was better fun than typesetting.

Before you was a long roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one.

After that you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of type on the press bed.
Dave Cowan, across the press, the sleeves of his pink-striped shirt rolled to his elbows, then let down a frame in which he had fixed a virgin sheet of paper, ran the bed of the press back under a weighted shelf, and pulled a mighty lever to make the imprint.

Wilbur had heard the phrase "power of the press." He conceived that this was what the phrase meant--this pulling of the lever.

Surmounting the framework of the press was a bronze eagle with wings out-spread for flight.