Elizabeth M. Harris 
Sir William Congreve 
and his 
Compound-Plate Printing 
The chronic problem of counterfett bank notes in England in 
the early 19th century led the Bank of England to sponsor a 
public competition for a printing process that would deter forgers. 
Among those answering the appeal was Sir William Congreve, a 
colorful and controversial figure, who was a governor of the Bank 
and an engineer by profession. During his temporary excursion 
into the printing trade he developed a process which he felt could 
not be imitated. This became known as °‘compound-plate 
printing.’ The process was never accepted by the Bank, but it 
was used with success for many years by one of London's private 
printing firms and by Somerset House, a government office. 
The illustrations used in this paper are reproduced from photo- 
graphs in the collection of the University of Reading, and were 
kindly made avatlable by Dr. Michael Twyman of the Depart- 
ment of Fine Arts. 
Tue Autnor: Elizabeth M. Harris received her doctorate at 
the University of Reading, England, and is consultant to the 
division of graphic arts in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum 
of History and Technology. 
mechanics. 
Among his contemporaries Congreve was 
Sir William Congreve (1772-1828) was a soldier, 
engineer and inventor. Most of his inventions had to 
do with ships and fighting machines, and he is chiefly 
remembered now for a military rocket which he in- 
vented in 1808 and used successfully in several battles 
of the Napoleonic Wars. He was interested in 
mechanical problems of all kinds, and his fertile 
imagination occasionally went beyond the laws of 
notorious as a tireless inventor of perpetual-motion 
machines. Journals were apt to treat his public 
activities with amused forbearance and his inventions 
with caution, for some seemed no more than re- 
arrangements of the work ofother inventors. Congreve 
filed eighteen British patents between 1808 and 1827. 
Congreve’s connection with the printing trade was 
PAPER 71: SIR WILLIAM CONGREVE AND HIS COMPOUND-PLATE PRINTING 71 
