(FORTUNE Magazine) – THE FARGO, North Dakota, Forum has begun publishing what may be the cleanest newspaper in the U.S. It is accomplishing this not by censorship but by using a new smudgeless ink concocted by a small Ohio research outfit, Dayton Tinker Corp. If other publications follow the Forum's lead, a private company set up < to make the stuff may bring in a gusher in the estimated $200-million-a-year U.S. market for newspaper ink. Readers should profit as well. They will be free at last of one of life's petty annoyances -- newspapers that rub off on fingers, clothes, and linen tablecloths. Rodger Gamblin, 53, Dayton Tinker's president and the inventor of the secretformula ink, relies on special dyes to replace conventional pigments. He has brewed up a patented solution that makes the dyes soluble in oil, the basic medium in printer's ink, and also quickly absorbable by the fibers in newsprint. Pressed on paper, the dye immediately solidifies, minimizing show- through on the reverse side.

PIGMENTS, by contrast, don't dissolve in the oil in which they are mixed and never completely dry on the newsprint. Newspapers have stayed with pigments because the technology is tested, the ingredients are safe, and pigment inks are cheap -- about 39 cents a pound vs. 49 cents for Gamblin's product. ''We'll go to a new supplier if there is a half-cent-a-pound difference in price,'' says Robert Gibson, assistant production manager for the Washington Post.

Gamblin claims his ingredients are natural and noncarcinogenic, and that once the ink is in full production it will be no more expensive than pigment ink. He has established Saranda Corp., with a plant in Newark, Ohio, to produce about 30,000 gallons of dye-based ink a day, enough to supply a quarter of U.S. newspapers. In making his pitch to cost-conscious publishers, Gamblin stresses that his ink requires neither new equipment in the pressroom nor special training for operators. A $250,000 grant from Ohio's Thomas Edison Program -- it funds efforts at technological innovation -- has enabled Gamblin to give some newspapers free samples. One enthusiastic recipient, F. James McVeigh, press plate manager at the Fort Wayne, Indiana, News-Sentinel and Journal-Gazette, says the mixture produced a lower ink buildup on press rollers than pigment, suggesting the possibility of reduced maintenance costs. The new ink has run into some problems as well. In early tests the Washington Post found the mixture too sticky. Probably the biggest threat to the product, though, is that big makers of pigment inks, such as Flint Ink of Detroit, might jump in with no-smudge products if demand for the new ink takes off. The daily paper will still be black and white and read all over. But it will not be all over you.