PRINTING. 



wrong fount, u. A word or letter to be deleted. 12. Alteration 

 of type. 13. A new paragraph. This should be avoided as much 

 as possible, as it causes great trouble and expense. 14. Insertion 

 of a sentence. 15. A space to be removed or diminished. 16. A 

 wrong word. This is struck out, and the proper one written 

 in the margin. 17. When letters or lines do not stand even. 

 18. Mark for a hyphen or rule. 19. No new paragraph. This 

 is also troublesome and expensive. 20 The manner in which 

 the apostrophe, inverted commas, the star and other references, 

 and superior letters and figures, are marked. 



Type-setting Machines. Type composing and 

 distributing machines have exercised the brains of 

 inventors since the year 1840 up to the present 

 time. In America alone, no less than forty-five 

 patents have been taken out for inventions of 

 this kind. The latest English machines, those 

 patented by Hattersley and Mackie, have been 

 used to a limited extent. A modification of 

 Hattersley's is in use by a printing firm in Edin- 

 burgh, who affirm that for some kinds of plain 

 setting it is more profitable than doing the 

 work by hand. For various reasons, however, 

 few printing-offices have yet adopted machine- 

 setting. 



It need scarcely be told that the size of books 

 greatly varies ; but the sizes are all reducible to a 

 standard determined by the number of leaves into 

 which a sheet of paper is folded. The largest size 

 is denominated folio, being simply a sheet folded 

 into, two leaves or folios ; and the next quarto, or 

 a sheet folded, as the name implies, into four 

 leaves. The most common size is octavo, each 

 sheet of which contains eight leaves, or sixteen 



Kges ; the next is duodecimo, containing twelve 

 ives, or twenty-four pages in the sheet ; and the 

 next eighteenmo, containing thirty-six pages in 

 a sheet. There are other sizes, such as twenty- 

 four mo, thirty-tivomo, and sixty-fourmo. 



STEREOTYPING. 



We may now offer a brief explanation of the 

 process of stereotyping, which has been of immense 

 service to literature. Stereotyping is the manu- 

 facturing of solid pages of types (Gr. stereos, solid), 

 and the invention is generally attributed to a Mr 

 William Ged, of Edinburgh, about the year 1725. 

 The process of fabricating plates is very simple. 

 The page of type being set, corrected, cleaned, 

 and fixed in a frame, is laid on a smooth iron 

 table, face upward ; a little fine oil is brushed over 

 it, to prevent the liquid stucco from adhering ; the 

 stucco, of the consistency of very thick cream, is now 

 poured over the face of the page, and straightened 

 over it in the process of hardening ; when hardened, 

 the cake of stucco is lifted off, and is seen to be a 

 perfect mould of the types. The cake is baked in 

 an oven, and then placed in an iron pan ; the 

 pan, which has inlets at the upper side, is carefully 

 dipped into molten metal, which soon runs into 

 the mould ; being lifted out and cooled, the pan 

 is opened and found to contain plates resembling 

 the page of type ; the mould is broken and of no 

 further use. When removed from the pan, the 

 plate is rough, and by means of rotatory cutting 

 and planing machines, it is reduced to a uniform 

 thickness. It is then carefully examined, and all 

 specks removed by a picker, or foundry-man ; 

 any letter which may be defective is dug out, 

 and the head of a corresponding type soldered 

 in. 



Such is the old and well-known stucco process 

 of stereotyping. It is still used when very fine 



work is required, as the stucco goes deep into the 

 interstices of the types, and gives a sharp and clear 

 impression. But for ordinary purposes it has been 

 almost entirely superseded by the papitr madu 

 j process ; and as the latter is the only method by 

 'which types can be arranged for printing on 

 moderately sized or small cylinders, such as are 

 used m the Walter and other machines, it 

 has recently been developed in an extraordinary 

 degree in connection with newspaper printing. 

 The process followed in the offices of the Timei 

 Scotsman, &c. to suit the Walter machine, may 

 be briefly described. The page of types, mounted 

 on a movable table, is run into the foundry ; it is 

 oiled with a roller covered with flannel soaked in 

 oil ; seven.] plies of thin, soft paper, carefully pasted 

 together, are placed in a wet state on the types, 

 covered with a blanket, and the whole, on an won 

 table, is passed between rollers, which, by immense 

 pressure, force the soft paper into the types. An 

 additional piece of paper is then pasted above the 

 mould to give greater strength. The page, with 

 the soft paper still on, is next put on a hot plate, 

 covered with several thicknesses of dry blankets, 

 and a press firmly screwed down on the top. In 

 two or three minutes, it is removed, and the 

 mould is taken off quite dry, trimmed at the edges, 

 rubbed over with a little French chalk, and bent, 

 face uppermost, inside a cylindrical casting-box, 

 the core of which is of the same diameter as the 

 cylinder of the printing-machine. The metal is 

 poured in at such a heat that it will run and no 

 more, and when the core is taken out, a complete 

 fac-simile of the page, in a semicircular form, is 

 seen adhering to it face outwards. A few taps of 

 a hammer make it drop off on to a travelling- 

 carriage, on which it is immediately trundled 

 away to another cylinder, where an ingeniously- 

 arranged movable circular-saw cuts off the 

 waste metal, or ' tail.' It is then dipped in water 

 to cool ; is fixed on another cylinder, where re- 

 volving cutters instantly trim the edges close to 

 the letters ; and any of the wide spaces which 

 may not be deep enough are cut out It is 

 then put into a hollow cylinder, a piece of card- 

 board being 'first put in to protect the lace ; a 

 circular cutter sweeps round the inside of the 

 plate, making the thickness quite uniform and 

 ready for printing. Such is the completeness of 

 the arrangements in the larger newspaper-offices, 

 that, in the space of twelve minutes from the 

 time a page of types is run in at the door, 

 duplicate casts of it can be delivered ready to 

 print. 



For book-work, where the plates lie on the bed 

 of the machine, and not on a cylinder, the pro- 

 cess is somewhat different The paper is beat 

 into the face of the types with a hard brush, 

 which takes a much deeper impression than the 

 roller. The casts are, of course, taken in a flat 

 box, and very great care is taken in trimming, 

 and replacing bad letters. The plates, dressed 

 in separate pages, about one-sixth of an inch in 

 thickness, are mounted on wooden blocks, and 

 fitted into the bed of the machine. 



The paper process has many advantages over 

 the stucco. It is cheaper and quicker. By keep- 

 ing the mould or matrix, a fresh cast can be 

 taken at any time, without re-setting the types, 

 as there is practically no limit to the number 

 of casts which can be taken from one mould. 



