Frederick Wicks, who in the 1870s became proprietor of the Glasgow Daily News, was in 1878  the inventor of the Wicks Rotary Typecasting Machine. It is recorded  that "for many years he had been working at a machine which would cast new type so quickly and so cheaply as to do away with the old system of distribution and substitute new type every day.
Frederick Wicks, who took over the Glasgow Daily News in the 1870s, developed the Wicks Rotary Typecasting Machine in 1878. Historically, it is noted that he had been experimenting with a machine capable of casting new type at an unprecedented pace and cost, thereby rendering the traditional distribution method obsolete.