Zinc etching is adapted to the direct reproduction of a pen and ink drawing composed of lines, dots, or solid black areas. On the finished metal plate these lines, dots, and solid areas form the printing surface, and the spaces between them, which have been etched away, represent the white or blank parts of the picture. The process is cheap and is almost universally used for reproducing small drawings designed for text illustrations. It is also well adapted to the reproduction of maps and diagrams measuring in print not more than about 10 by 14 inches. One of the chief advantages of this and of all other direct (photographic) processes of engraving is that they reproduce a drawing in facsimile, whereas the "personal equation" must enter into all engravings made by an indirect method--that is, by hand--such as wood engraving, wax engraving, and engraving on stone or copper, which make it necessary to compare every detail of the proof with every detail of the drawing before the engraving can be approved. The pen drawing to be reproduced, which should preferably be considerably larger than the completed engraving, is first photographed to the proper size or scale on an ordinary negative film. The film is then stripped from the negative and reversed in order that the etched plate may print the design as in the original and that the film may be grouped with other films on one large glass and all printed at the same time. The negative (whether a single film or several) is then placed in a specially constructed printing frame in contact under pressure with a sensitized zinc plate and exposed to light. After the zinc plate has been removed from the printing frame (in the dark room) the plate is rolled with printer's transfer ink, which resists acid, and placed in a shallow tray containing water, in which it is rocked for several minutes, and then taken out and rubbed gently with cotton. The parts of the coating of the plate that were acted on by light have become insoluble and will therefore be unaffected by the water, but the parts of the coating not acted on by light and therefore not hardened will be removed by the washing, which will expose the metal and leave the parts acted on by light--the picture--in black lines, dots, etc. The plate is then dusted with "topping powder," a resinous substance which adheres only to the parts carrying the ink. The plate is then heated so that the resin and the ink that remain fuse together and form, when cooled, a resistant surface which will not be affected by the acid to be used later in etching the unprotected parts of the plate.