Thomas MacKellar

“ PHOTO-ENGRAVING. Photo-engravings are produced by means of photography. It is a fact worthy of note that experiments in photographic engraving gave rise to photography itself. The aim of Nicéphore Niepce, when he began his researches in 1813, was not only to fix the image obtained by the camera obscura on a plate of metal, but to convert this plate into an engraving which could be used on a printing-press. His early death prevented his perfecting the process to which he had devoted much time and study. ”

“ A mistake, sir. Both in type-founding and in stereotyping the Americans have driven the foreigner from the field,—and in the only legitimate way, too: simply by surpassing him.
In this nook below, our engraving is done. The drawing is made on the block by the designer, as you see: then patiently and skilfully the engraver cuts and digs out, till the lines and shapes and lights and shades are all revealed in the beautiful picture. Our work in this department gives so much satisfaction that we are seldom without orders. ”

“ David Bruce invented the planing-machine for equalizing the thickness of stereotype plates, which is now used in every stereotype foundry in the United States. The process of stereotyping is, however, entirely [22] different from that of ordinary type-founding, and it is, therefore, generally carried on as a separate business, or connected with the composing department of a printing-office. Twenty compositors and two proof-readers will furnish full employment for one moulder, one caster, and three finishers, who will, among them, complete, on an average, 50 pages of octavo per day. ”

“ It may appear to you, Mr. Typograph, to be an exceedingly simple thing to throw into the kettle certain amounts of lead and antimony, and copper and tin, and produce type-metal. Not so, good friend. It is not an easy matter to compose a metal that shall be hard, yet not brittle; ductile, yet tough; flowing freely, yet hardening quickly. All these conditions must be met. Break a bar in two, and examine the grain of our metal: is it not beautiful?
PUNCH.
MATRIX.
Now, sir, let us up-stairs and see how these bars are fitted for printers’ use. ”

“ The letter a, for instance, stamped in the matrix, sits directly opposite the aperture in the mould which meets the spout of the pump; and when a due proportion of a’s is cast, another matrix with b stamped in it takes its place; and so on throughout the alphabet. Slow work, you say, one at a time? Well, the world is peopled after that fashion; and it fills up fast enough. But just time this machine: it is making small, thin type. Count the type made in a minute. One hundred and seventy-five, you say. One hundred per minute will probably be the average of the ordinary sizes of printing type. ”

“ METAL HOUSE.
A WALK OVER OUR FOUNDRY. Mr. Typograph, how are you, sir? Glad to see you. How is business with you? Plenty to do, and customers paying up? You are so prompt in paying us, that we have no doubt you have a noble set of customers. You wish to add to your stock our new things? All right, sir. You have a fine office already, but you want to keep up with the times, and give your patrons the best the type-founder can invent? That’s the way, sir. The man on the lookout sees [40] the sun the earliest. Mr. Faithful, show our new things to Mr. Typograph, and take his order. ”

“ David Bruce, Jr. A very ingenious man, you say? That is true. Look at one carefully. The metal is kept fluid by a little furnace underneath, and is projected into the mould by a pump, the spout of which, you see, is in front of the metal-pot. The mould is movable, and at every revolution of the crank it comes up to the spout, receives a charge of metal, and flies back with a fully-formed type in its bosom; the upper half of the mould lifts, and out jumps a type as lively as a tadpole. ”

“ Bourgeois is a very useful and convenient size of letter. It is frequently used in double-column octavo pages. The name indicates that it originated in France; although type of this body is now called Gaillarde by French printers. Two lines of this letter are equivalent to one line of Great Primer, or four lines of Diamond.
Brevier was first used for printing the Breviaries, or Roman Catholic Church books, and hence its name. The Germans call it Petit, and Jungfer (maiden letter) . It is an admirable type, and cannot conveniently be dispensed with in any considerable printing-office. ”

“ TYPE-FOUNDING IN EUROPE. For a long period after the discovery of printing, it seems that type-founding, printing, and binding went under the general term of printing, and that printers cast the types used by them, and printed and bound the works executed in their establishments. Type-founding became a distinct calling early in the seventeenth century. ”

“ Perhaps there never existed on any subject a greater difference of opinion among men of learning than on the true mode of punctuation. Some sprinkle the page with commas almost as promiscuously as if from a pepper-box, and make the pause of a semicolon where the sense will bear only a comma; while others are extremely careless, and omit points even when they are needed to give the true sense of a passage at the first reading.
The lack of an established practice is much to be regretted. The loss of time to a compositor occasioned by altering points arbitrarily is a great hardship. ”

“ Phew! you exclaim, what warm work! Yes, sir; but from that fiery sea of lead soon emerges the pan, and its hissing heat is gradually overcome by the water in the trough into which the pan is lowered. Now, caster, break it out. There, Mr. Typograph, is the plate, fixed,—immovable,—stereotyped. The mould is ruined; but the plate is comparatively immortalized. It is rough yet, and, like an uncouth boy, needs polishing.
STEREOTYPE CASTING-ROOM.
This next room is the finishing-room. ”

“ This type is also employed in printing miniature volumes.
Diamond followed, as a matter of course; for human ingenuity, when provoked, seems determined to go to the utmost verge of possibility. This type is so minute that a pound of it will contain more than 3300 of the letter i; yet, to produce each letter of an alphabet, a steel punch has to be cut and a matrix made, in which the types are cast one by one, and, being set up in lines, are rubbed and dressed by the founder for the use of the compositor. ”

“ Matter for stereotyping is set with high spaces and quadrates. The forms must be small, containing about two pages of common octavo. A slug type-high is put above the top line and another below the foot line of each page, to protect the ends of the plates from injury when they are passed through the shaving-machine. Beveled slugs, in height equal to the shoulder of the type, are placed on both sides and between the pages, to form the flange by which the plate is to be clasped by the hooks of the printing-block. ”

“ Nature immediately takes up her part of the work, and a brilliant coating of copper is deposited upon the mould. When sufficiently thick, it is taken out of the battery, and, as you may notice, presents on the wrong side the appearance of a printed sheet of copper. This sheet is then filled up on the back to the requisite degree of thickness, and fastened to a block, ready to be used with type on a common printing-press. ”

“ When the pan is filled, it is sunk to the bottom of the pot. The metal should be hot enough to light a piece of brown paper held in it. After being immersed eight or ten minutes, the pan is steadily drawn out by means of the crane, and swung over to the cooling-trough, into which it is lowered and placed upon a stone so as just to touch the water, in order that the metal at the bottom of the pan may cool first. The metal contracts while cooling, and the caster occasionally pours in a small quantity at the corners from a ladle, till it will take no more. ”

“ Ah, sir, if we were all inspected as severely as he criticises type, some of us, perhaps, would hardly pass muster. The immaculate types are next put up in pages of convenient size, and are ready for the purchaser.
Let us drop into the large machine-room. Does not every thing hum here! Is it not a beautiful sight to see the shafts and belts and pulleys whirling around as if they were all alive? Here we fit up our machines, make our moulds, repair damages to machinery, &c. ”

“ A compositor who studies propriety and neatness in his work will not allow an unnecessary division, even in a narrow measure, if he can avoid it by overrunning two or three lines of matter. In large type and narrow measures, the division of words cannot be avoided; but care should be taken that hyphens do not occur at the end of successive lines. In small type and wide measures, the hyphen may frequently be dispensed with, either by driving out or getting in the word, without interfering with the regularity of the spacing. ”

“ Lindley Murray gives the following judicious directions in regard to the use of capital letters:—
It was formerly the custom to begin every noun with a capital; but as this practice was troublesome, and gave the writing or printing a crowded and confused appearance, it has been discontinued. It is, however, very proper to begin with a capital,—
1. The first word of every book, chapter, letter, note, or any other piece of writing; and,
2. The first word after a period; and, if the two sentences are totally independent, after a note of interrogation or exclamation. ”

“ The mode of type-founding has within forty years undergone important changes, which must no doubt be considered improvements. First among them is the introduction of machine-casting, in which a pump forces the fluid metal into the mould and matrix, and gives a sharper outline to the letter than was formerly given by the most violent throw of the caster. ”

“ The old practice of casting a single type only at a time remains. The first idea of this machine originated with William M. Johnson, who obtained a patent for it in 1828. Elihu White put it into use in his type-foundry, and persevered in using and trying to improve it as long as he lived; but he did not succeed in removing the greatest fault, which was a hollowness in the body of the types cast by it, that inclined them to sink under the pressure of the printing-press. The first successful type-casting machine was invented by David Bruce, Jr., of New York, and was patented March 17, 1838. ”

“ This is a punch-cutter—a man of exquisite finger and unerring eye—sitting amid keen and delicate tools and accurate gauges. There are but few of this kind of men in the world. On the end of a piece of steel he is forming a letter. A touch here and a touch there, and frequent testing by gauges,—so he proceeds, till the letter is done; then another, and another, till the alphabet is complete ”

“ The principal agents used for making designs on stone are [28] called lithographic chalk and lithographic ink. They are composed of tallow, virgin wax, hard tallow soap, shellac, sometimes a little mastic or copal, and enough lampblack to impart a colour to the mass. These ingredients are put into an iron sauce-pan, and exposed to a strong fire till the mass is in a state of ignition. When the quantity is reduced one-half, the pan is carefully covered, or put into water to extinguish the flame and cool the mixture. After being well worked up, it is formed into small cakes or sticks. ”

“ But they were capital things in their time, sir, and we regard them with somewhat of an antiquary’s reverence.
Now we enter the casting-rooms. These tiny machines, small as they are, can throw out more type in one day than you would be likely to count in a month, even if you could call off one hundred a minute, and occupy ten hours a day. Snug little fellows, are they not? ”

“ A photograph, brush drawing, or any copy that is not made up of line or stipple, can be produced without the necessity of a line drawing by the aid of the half-tone process. There are several of these processes in operation in this country; and, although originally introduced in Germany by Miesenbach, it has been so improved by American inventors that the European work is far below the standard of the United States. The principal methods of half-tone in this country are worked secretly by the inventors, each having modifications and improvements of his own. ”

“ That no master-founder of letters shall employ any other person in any work belonging to the casting or founding of letters than freemen or apprentices to the trade, save only in pulling off the knots of metal hanging at the end of the letters when they are first cast ”

“ The gelatine is again scrubbed until the proper relief is obtained, after which it is allowed to dry for about twelve hours, when it becomes hard and is ready to be electrotyped.
The negatives for photo-etching are stripped and reversed in the same manner as for the wash-out process. The metal generally employed for this process is zinc, though copper is sometimes used for very fine work. The zinc is very highly polished, and a thin sensitizing solution is flowed over it and dried, after which it is exposed under the negative to the action of the light. ”

“ John Baine, a type-founder of Edinburgh, sent a relative to this country with tools for a foundry at the close of the Revolutionary War, and soon after came over himself. They carried on the business till 1790, when Mr. Baine died, and his kinsman returned to Scotland.
A Dutch founder, Adam G. Mappa, settled at New York about 1787, and cast Dutch and German faces, as well as Roman styles and several Oriental alphabets. Want of capital prevented his success, and many of his matrices passed into the possession of Binny & Ronaldson. ”