The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.
Beach, Moses Yale
1800–1868, American journalist, b. Wallingford, Conn. As a young man he invented a rag-cutting machine and a gunpowder engine. In 1838 he bought the New York Sun from his brother-in-law, Benjamin Day, for whom he had been working as production manager. The Sun’s chief competitor in the penny-paper field was the New York Herald, edited by James Gordon Bennett. The two rival papers used ingenious means to get news fast—the Sun even kept carrier pigeons in a special house atop its building. Costs, especially during the Mexican War, mounted so much that at a conference in Beach’s office the editors of a number of New York newspapers established the New York Associated Press to cooperate in securing the news. Beach is credited with the first European edition of an American paper, the weekly American Sun (1848), and with starting the newspaper syndicated article. In 1848 he turned the New York Sun over to his sons, Moses Sperry Beach and Alfred E. Beach.
