Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and ScienceFyfe, J. Hamilton (James Hamilton)
History
Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science
Fyfe, J. Hamilton (James Hamilton)
Inventions -- History; Inventors; Technology -- England -- 19th century
same operation is performed simultaneously by the ten cylinders--are
sucked in at one end and disgorged at the other printed on one side,
thus giving about 20,000 impressions in an hour.
Such is the latest marvel of the "noble craft and mystery" of printing;
but it is not to be supposed that the limits of production have even now
been reached. The greater the supply the greater has grown the demand;
the more people read, the more they want to read; and past experience
assures us that ingenuity and enterprise will not fail to expand and
multiply the powers of the press, so that the increasing appetite for
literature may be fully met.
* * * * *
We have briefly alluded to stereotyping; but some fuller notice seems
requisite of a process so valuable and important, without which, indeed,
the rapid multiplication of copies of a newspaper, even by a Hoe's
six-cylinder machine, would be impossible. If stereotyping had not been
invented, the printer would require to "set up" as many "forms" of type
as there are cylinders in the machine he uses; an expensive and
time-consuming operation which is now dispensed with, because he can
resort to "casts." There is yet another advantage gained by the process;
"casts" of the different sheets of a book can be preserved for any
length of time; and when additional copies or new editions are needed,
these "casts" can at once be sent to the machine, and the publisher is
saved the great expense of "re-setting."
The reader is well aware that while many books disappear with the day
which called them forth, so there are others for which the demand is
constant. This was found to be the case soon after the invention of
printing, and the plan then adopted was the expensive and cumbrous one
of setting up the whole of the book in request, and to keep the type
standing for future editions. The disadvantages of this plan were
obvious--a large outlay for type, the amount of space occupied by a
constantly increasing number of "forms," and the liability to injury
from the falling out of letters, from blows, and other accidents. As
early as the eighteenth century attempts seem to have been made to
remedy these inconveniences by cementing the types together at the
bottom with lead or solder to effect their greater preservation. Canius,
a French historian of printing, states that in June 1801 he received a
letter from certain booksellers of Leyden, with a copy of their
stereotype Bible, the plates for which were formed by soldering together
the bottom of common types with some melted substance to the thickness
of about three quires of writing-paper; and, it is added, "These plates
were made about the beginning of the last century by an artist named Van
du Mey."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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