One hundred years ago last week a confident, 31-year-old, side-whiskered New England printer named Arunah Shepherdson Abell breezed into Baltimore to start a daily newspaper which he called The Sun. Printer Abell's sheet differed from its six established daily competitors in policy printing news rather than political discussions and in price, which was 1¢ instead of 6¢ or more. Its motto was "LIGHT FOR ALL."
Arunah Abell and his partners, two other printers named Azariah Simmons and William M. Swain, had already founded the
1¢ Philadelphia Public Ledger. They got their idea from Benjamin Day's...