On the Economy of Machinery and ManufacturesBabbage, Charles
ReligionComparative
On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures
Babbage, Charles
Machinery; Manufactures
88. Printing from perforated sheets of metal, or stencilling.
Very thin brass is sometimes perforated in the form of letters,
usually those of a name; this is placed on any substance which it
is required to mark, and a brush dipped in some paint is passed
over the brass. Those parts which are cut away admit the paint.
and thus a copy of the name appears on the substance below. This
method, which affords rather a coarse copy, is sometimes used for
paper with which rooms are covered, and more especially for the
borders. If a portion be required to match an old pattern, this
is, perhaps the most economical way of producing it.
89. Coloured impressions of leaves upon paper may be made by
a kind of surface printing. Such leaves are chosen as have
considerable inequalities: the elevated parts of these are
covered, by means of an inking ball, with a mixture of some
pigment ground up in linseed oil; the leaf is then placed between
two sheets of paper, and being gently pressed, the impression
from the elevated parts on each side appear on the corresponding
sheets of paper.
90. The beautiful red cotton handkerchiefs dyed at Glasgow
have their pattern given to them by a process similar to
stencilling, except that instead of printing from a pattern, the
reverse operation that of discharging a part of the colour from a
cloth already dyed--is performed. A number of handkerchiefs are
pressed with very great force between two plates of metal, which
are similarly perforated with round or lozenge-shaped holes,
according to the intended pattern. The upper plate of metal is
surrounded by a rim, and a fluid which has the property of
discharging the red dye is poured upon that plate. This liquid
passes through the holes in the metal, and also through the
calico; but, owing to the great pressure opposite all the parts
of the plates not cut away, it does not spread itself beyond the
pattern. After this, the handkerchiefs are washed, and the
pattern of each is a copy of the perforations in the metal-plate
used in the process.
Another mode by which a pattern is formed by discharging
colour from a previously dyed cloth, is to print on it a pattern
with paste; then, passing it into the dying-vat, it comes out
dyed of one uniform colour. But the paste has protected the fibres
of the cotton from the action of the dye or mordant; and when the
cloth so dyed is well washed, the paste is dissolved, and leaves
uncoloured all those parts of the cloth to which it was applied.
Printing from surface
91. This second department of printing is of more frequent
application in the arts than that which has just been considered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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