Patent insides

Aikens' idea was to print one side of a sheet with news and advertising and to provide these sheets at little or no cost to publishers of weekly newspapers, covering costs and generating profit from the advertising sold.

[6] Cramer, Aikens, & Cramer soon generated a lucrative business around its "patent insides," with Aikens creating what he called "Newspaper Unions," making use of preprints that he created at dedicated printing facilities in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Nashville, and Memphis.

Aikens' patent insides and ones produced by rivals rose in popularity in the 19th century.

The trade journal Printers' Ink estimated in 1894 that more than 7,000 weekly newspapers in the United States relied on patent insides produced by five companies.

The largest of these, George Josyln's Western Newspaper Union, supplied more than 14,000 clients in the mid-1920s, but shipped its last order in 1952.

Generic advertising of medical nostrums and other products typical of that appearing on a preprinted "patent inside" sheet. From Ashtabula Weekly Telegraph Sept. 10, 1880, pg. 7.