August 16 Monday – In Elmira Sam wrote to James W. Paige about settling the “vexed question of how many ems per hour is good average work.” Sam suggested a contest at the Hartford Courant, prized paid by him for composing a paragraph of 500 ems. Sam estimated the best man might do the work in 30 minutes, with the rest of the compositors around 40 minutes [MTP]. Sam needed to know how much money a newspaper would save by buying the Paige typesetter.