The Preparation of Illustrations for Reports of the United States Geological Survey: With Brief Descriptions of Processes of ReproductionRidgway, John L.
Science
The Preparation of Illustrations for Reports of the United States Geological Survey: With Brief Descriptions of Processes of Reproduction
Ridgway, John L.
Illustration of books
charged with printing ink. These operations wash away the tusche and
the crayon that have been decomposed by the acid and expose the design
faintly in white at first, but it gradually grows darker as it becomes
charged with printing ink from the rag. The stone is next "rolled up"
or inked. The slightly moistened surface repels the ink and the design
takes it up, so that when the stone is run through the press the
design is carried to the paper.
Lithographic prints from stones prepared in this way are made on a
flat-bed press. The stone is carried forward to print and on its
return is dampened and inked, an operation slower than that of rotary
printing.
Corrections and changes are made on the stone by carefully scraping or
polishing away the parts to be corrected and making the changes with a
crayon or pen, but the design can not ordinarily be corrected twice in
the same place, as the scraping or polishing removes a part of the
surface of the stone and thus lessens the pressure at that place, and
the impression there may be imperfect or may completely fail.
This form of lithography is seldom used for Survey illustrations but
was formerly much used and is well adapted to the reproduction of
drawings of fossils, particularly of remains of dinosaurs and other
types of large extinct animals. Examples may be seen in Monographs 8
and 10 and in other early reports of the Geological Survey. The
drawings for these illustrations were made directly on stone.
A drawing made on one stone may be transferred in duplicate or in any
desired number to another stone, or to a properly grained sheet of
zinc and aluminum, from which impressions may be printed on a
lithographic press. Both these metals are also used for lithographic
printing on rotary presses, the zinc or aluminum plate being bent and
secured around a cylinder which rotates continuously in one direction.
As one impression is made at each revolution of the cylinder the
printing is rapid; but the best printing from a metal plate is
inferior to the best printing from a lithographic stone.
PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY.
Photolithography, like other lithographic processes, has been improved
greatly during the last few years--not particularly in results but in
methods--by the introduction of metal plates, the rubber blanket
offset, the Ben Day films, and many mechanical and chemical devices,
so that a brief description of it will not explain the process except
in a most general way. As photolithography is a direct process and is
relatively cheap it is the one most used for reproducing large maps
and other line drawings that have been carefully prepared. Zinc and
aluminum plates are now much used in photolithography, for a direct
contact photographic print can be made on them, they can be printed
flat or bent for use on a rotary press, and they can be stored for
future use more economically than stones.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account