coin to make a printing plate. This was his final 
> later sometimes known 
5 
“compound plate printing, 
as ‘‘Congreve’s” or ‘‘Whiting’s process.”’ The process 
was patented in 1820.* By this time, however, the 
Bank Committee had already chosen Applegath and 
Cowper’s plan. 
Congreve’s compound plate was made by first 
cutting or stamping a design through a plate of fairly 
strong metal, such as brass or copper, to make a 
The stencil was then put on a flat surface 
and another more fusible metal was melted and 
This formed a second detachable 
stencil. 
poured over it. 
plate covering the back and filling the holes of the 
first. Next the face of the entire plate was engraved 
with lettering and mechanical patterns in a con- 
tinuous design over both metals. Commonly the 
stamped holes were in wormlike shapes as in Bran- 
ston’s specimen bank note (figures | and 2) or roughly 
circular (figures 3 and 4). The linear engraving on 
the surface was not governed by the pattern of the 
stencil: in both of these examples the engraving 
formed a more or less independent design laid over 
the two colors. For printing, the two interlocked 
plates were separated, inked in different colors, fitted 
A special 
machine was built to ink and print the plates.’ In 
together again and printed at one pull. 
his patent specification Congreve claimed that other 
materials such as wood or ivory could be used as well 
as metal, and that three, four or more colors could 
be combined and printed by the same machine with 
a slight adjustment. 
In 1819 Congreve introduced his compound coin 
to the public in a pamphlet, Principles upon which it 
appears that a more perfect system of currency may be formed. 
The pamphlet had three pages of illustrations. Two 
of these consisted of ordinary hand-colored engravings 
showing coins. The third illustrated the gold ingot, 
These 
two prints are particularly interesting as they predate 
Congreve’s patent for They 
must have been his first published compound prints 
though they were not mentioned as such in the text of 
the pamphlet. 
with two compound prints in blue and yellow. 
compound printing. 
Congreve himself still hardly recog- 
nized the promise that the process held: he argued 
in the pamphlet that no printed money could be 
4 British patent 4521 (December 1820). 
According to Timperley the credit for this machine went to 
an engineer, Wilks, of the firm of Donkin and Company. 
C. H. Timpertey, Dictionary of printers and printing (London, 
1839) p. 885. 
on 
quite as satisfactory or as inimitable as hard coin. 
He had claimed in the 1819 patent for the coin, how- 
ever, that his method of casting one metal within 
another might be useful for ornamenting furniture, 
and for printing. In the case of printing it would 
“tend to throw great difficulty in the way of forgery 
of bank-notes and other documents which it is 
desirable to protect.” © 
In these two first compound prints the colors, blue 
and yellow, were divided very simply into rectangular 
forms, unlike Congreve’s later more complex plates. 
The words ‘‘Bank of England” and “‘Ingot’’ were 
engraved with the letters crossing both parts. It is 
obvious, by applying the same procedure recom- 
mended by Congreve for testing his patent ingots, 
that these prints were made from compound plates 
and the colors printed simultaneously: the broken 
edges of the letters coincide exactly and the colors 
meet but do not overlap. 
Other renowned people besides Congreve made 
suggestions to the various committees. Among them 
was Rudolf Ackermann, an influential London pub- 
lisher who, with Charles Hullmandel, was largely 
responsible for the successful introduction of litho- 
graphy into England. Ackermann recommended the 
new lithography for bank-note printing, but the Bank 
Committee regarded it as a ‘“‘discovery as applied to 
the subject of forgery infinitely more to be dreaded 
than encouraged.” ’ Other suggestions were made 
by John Landseer, the first of a famous family of 
painters; Alexander Tilloch, a Scottish printer and 
pioneer of stereotyping; and Anthony Bessemer, 
father of the engineer Sir Henry Bessemer. ‘Thomas 
Hansard proposed a note printed entirely from type 
Hansard was the founder of the 
publication Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates which 
Thomas Bewick, the famous 
wood engraver, submitted some of his engravings. 
in minute sizes. 
continues to this day. 
Jacob Perkins, an outstanding American engineer, 
came over to London with his “‘siderography,” a 
process for mechanically duplicating engraved steel 
plates. The London firm of printing engineers, 
Applegath and Cowper, was responsible for several 
important innovations in presses and color printing. 
They proposed a method of printing in several colors 
6 British patent 4404 (November 1819). 
7 Quoted in A. D. Mackenzie’s The Bank of England note 
(Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 61. 
74 BULLETIN 252: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 
