Vickipedia

PA’GING-MACHINE. Several machines have been inside for paging books and numbering banknotes, cheques, railway-tickets, and other similar papers. The great object of these machines is to prevent the chance of error or fraud by making it impossible that a page, cheque, &c. can be abstracted or lost without detection. Messrs. Waterlow and Sons of London perfected an ingenious machine, by which pages of books, such as ledgers and other commercial books, and banknotes, &c., are numbered in regular succession. The numbers are engraved on metal rowels, usually of steel or brass. A series of these rowels are so arranged, that when the machine is worked, the numbers must be impressed on the paper in regular succession from 1 to 99,999; and it is impossible to produce a duplicate number until the whole series has been printed. The instrument is made to supply ink to the types, so that it may be locked in such a manner as to admit of being worked without the chance of its being tampered with.

An extremely ingenious modification of this machine has been perfected by M. Auguste Trouillet of Paris, under the name of ‘ Numerateur Mecaniqua,’ which is not only more simple, but admits of wider application; for it not only pages books and numbers notes, tickets, &c., but can also be used for numbering bales and other packages of merchandise. The instrument has six rowels, on each of which is a set of engraved numbers, so arranged, that their revolutions produce in regular succession the required numbers, by the action of a lever which moves horizontally, and supplies the type with ink as it moves backwards and forwards.