Knowledge is power : $b A view of the productive forces of modern society and the results of labor, capital and skill.Knight, Charles
Philosophy
Knowledge is power : $b A view of the productive forces of modern society and the results of labor, capital and skill.
Knight, Charles
Industrial arts; Industries
It is in the state in which, if the machinery were to
stop here, as it did upon its first invention, it would require (having
been wound upon a reel) to be parted and dried as hand-made paper is.
But in a few seconds more it is subjected to a process by which all this
labour and time is saved. From the last pair of cloth-pressing rollers,
the paper is received upon a small roller which is guided over the
polished surface of a large heated cylinder. The soft pulp tissue now
begins to smoke; but the heat is proportioned to its increasing power of
resistance. From the first cylinder, or drum, it is received upon a
second, considerably larger, and much hotter. As it rolls over this
polished surface, we see all the roughness of its appearance, when in
the cloth region, gradually vanishing. At length, having passed over a
third cylinder, still hotter than the second, and having been subjected
to the pressure of a blanket, which confines it on one side, while the
cylinder smooths it on the other, it is caught upon the last roller,
which hands it over to the reel. The last process of the machine is to
cut the roll of paper into sheets.
[Illustration: Various processes of Bookbinding.]
In consequence of the cheaper production of the press, and the
consequent extension of the demand for books, bookbinding has become a
large manufacture, carried on with many scientific applications. We have
rolling-machines, to make the book solid; cutting-machines, to supersede
the hand-labour of the little instrument called a plough; embossing
machines, to produce elaborate raised patterns on leather or cloth;
embossing presses, to give the gilt ornament and lettering. These
contrivances, and other similar inventions, have not only cheapened
books, but have enabled the publisher to give them a permanent instead
of a temporary cover, ornamental as well as useful. There are eleven
thousand bookbinders now employed, of which one-third are females. The
number employed has been quadrupled by these inventions. In 1830, the
journeymen bookbinders of London opposed the introduction of the
rolling-machine. Books were formerly beat with large hammers upon a
stone, to give them solidity. The workmen were relieved from the
drudgery of the beating-hammer by the easy operation of the
rolling-machine. They soon discovered the weak foundation of their
objection to an instrument which, in truth, had a tendency, above all
other things, to elevate their trade, and to make that an art which in
one division of it was a mere labour. If the painter were compelled to
grind his own colours and make his own frames, he would no longer follow
an art, but a trade; and he would receive the wages of a labourer
instead of the wages of an artist, not only so far as related to the
grinding and frame-making, but as affecting all his occupations, by the
drudgery attending a portion of them.
[Illustration: Papyrus.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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