Industrial arts -- Biography; Inventors -- Biography
The art had, however, been born, and could not be kept down. It was
revived in France, in Germany, and in America. Fifty years after the
discovery of Ged, Tilloch and Foulis, of Glasgow, patented a similar
invention, without knowing anything of what Ged had done; and after
great labour and many experiments, they produced plates, the
impressions from which could not be distinguished from those taken
from the types from which they were cast. Some years afterwards, Lord
Stanhope, to whom the art of printing is much indebted, greatly
improved the art of stereotyping, though it was still quite
inapplicable to newspaper printing. The merit of this latter invention
is due to the enterprise of the present proprietor of The Times.
Mr. Walter began his experiments, aided by an ingenious Italian founder
named Dellagana, early in 1856. It was ascertained that when
papier-mache matrices were rapidly dried and placed in a mould,
separate columns might be cast in them with stereotype metal, type
high, planed flat, and finished with sufficient speed to get up the
duplicate of a forme of four pages fitted for printing. Steps were
taken to adapt these type-high columns to the Applegath Presses, then
worked with polygonal chases. When the Hoe machines were introduced,
instead of dealing with the separate columns, the papier-mache matrix
was taken from the whole page at one operation, by roller-presses
constructed for the purpose. The impression taken off in this manner
is as perfect as if it had been made in the finest wax. The matrix is
rapidly dried on heating surfaces, and then accurately adjusted in a
casting machine curved to the exact circumference of the main drum of
the printing press, and fitted with a terra-cotta top to secure a
casting of uniform thickness. On pouring stereotype metal into this
mould, a curved plate was obtained, which, after undergoing a certain
amount of trimming at two machines, could be taken to press and set to
work within twenty-five minutes from the time at which the process
began.
Besides the great advantages obtained from uniform sets of the plates,
which might be printed on different machines at the rate of 50,000
impressions an hour, or such additional number as might be required,
there is this other great advantage, that there is no wear and tear of
type in the curved chases by obstructive friction; and that the fount,
instead of wearing out in two years, might last for twenty; for the
plates, after doing their work for one day, are melted down into a new
impression for the next day's printing. At the same time, the original
type-page, safe from injury, can be made to yield any number of copies
that may be required by the exigencies of the circulation. It will be
sufficiently obvious that by the multiplication of stereotype plates
and printing machines, there is practically no limit to the number of
copies of a newspaper that may be printed within the time which the
process now usually occupies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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