To-day╒s issue of the ╥Manchester Guardian╙ is the 20,000th.
The ╥Guardian╙ made its first appearance on the 5th of May, 1821, in the form of a weekly paper of four sheets, which cost 7d and bore a stamp duty of 4d. The press of the time had not awakened to the desirability of tempting its readers with varieties of headline and type, and the news columns of the early issues are almost void of typographical emphasis, save where news or comment of more than usual importance merited some extra spacing. The monotony of small type in the literary matter seems singularly unalluring to the modern reader, but the germs of present-day methods are to be seen in the advertisement columns of even the earliest numbers, where illustrations of such indispensable articles as saws and umbrellas brighten the soberly and carefully worded announcements of the advertisers.
