763 



PRINTING. 



HUNTING. 



r.-.i 



of cases is usually occupied by the Roman letters, the other by the 

 Italic. The upper-case is divided into 98 partitions, all of equal size ; 

 and these partitions contain two sets of capital letters, one denominated 

 " full capitals," the other " small " ; one set of figures ; the accented 

 rowels ; and the marks of reference for notes. The lower-case is 

 divided into partitions of four different sizes, some at the top and ends 

 being a little smaller than the divisions of the upper-case, others nearer 

 the centre being equal to two of the small divisions, others equal to 

 four, and one equal to six. In all, there are 53 divisions in the lower- 

 case. The inequality in the size of the cells of the lower-ease is to 

 provide for the great differences as to the quantity required of each 

 letter. 



The proportion in which a particular letter is required renders it 

 necessary that the cells of the lower-case should be arranged, not as 

 the letters follow each other alphabetically, but that those in most 

 frequent use should be nearest the hand of the compositor. The point 

 at which he stands is not far removed from the centre of the lower- 

 case, and within a range of about six inches on every side lie the c, d, 

 e, i, s, m, n, h, o, p. u, t, a, and r, the letters in most frequent use. 

 The spaces, which he wants for the division of every word, lie close at 

 his hand at the bottom of the central division of the lower-case. It 

 must be quite obvious that the man who contrived this arrangement 

 saved a vast deal of time to the compositor. 



As dulriotitiny is a part of the compositor's business for which 

 nothing is paid direct (the payment for that labour being included in 

 the price of composition), it is necessary, before he can compose, that 

 he should put type into his cases, as no one will have done this for 

 him. This operation is a most beautiful process in the hands of an 

 expert compositor ; and probably no act which is partly mental and 

 partly mechanical offers a more remarkable example of the dexterity to 

 be acquired by long practice. The workman, having prepared a quan- 

 tity of type which has been already printed from, either in a form or 

 page (terms which will be described under making-up, &c.), loosens the 

 lines sufficiently to allow them to be washed free from dirt. While 

 the types are yet moist, in which state they adhere sufficiently to pre- 

 vent them with care from falling asunder, he lifts a portion of the type 

 as it has been arranged in lines upon a slip of brass rule. This he 

 rests upon the middle finger of his left hand, supporting one side with 

 his thumb, towards which he somewhat inclines the whole handful. 

 In each letter there is a nick or nicks, to indicate the bottom edge of 

 the letter. Keeping the face towards him, and the nick uppermost, he 

 takes up one or two words between the fore-finger and thumb of his 

 right hand, and drops the letters, each into its proper place, with almost 

 inconceivable rapidity. His mind has to follow the order of the letters 

 in the words, and to select the box into which each is to be dropped, 

 while his fingers have to separate one letter from another, taking care 

 that only one letter is dropped at a time. This is a complicated act ; 

 and yet a good compositor will distribute three or four times as fast as 

 he composes that is, he will, if necessary, return to their proper places 

 50,000 letters a day. The letters being inverted in printing, are not 

 read as they are read in a book, and thus " to know his p's from his 

 q'g "ISA difficulty to a beginner. 



Standing before the pair of cases which contain the Roman letter, he 

 holds in his left hand what is called a n,,. k. This is a little 



iron or brass frame, one side of which is moveable, so that it may be 

 adjusted to the required width of the page or column which the work- 

 man hag to set up. It is made perfectly true and square ; for without 

 such accuracy the lines would be of unequal length. It is adapted to 

 contain not more than about seventeen lines of the type of the present 

 work. 



Composing-Stick. 



The copy from which the compositor works rests upon the least-used 

 part of the upper-case. The practised compositor takes in a line or 

 two at a glance, always provided the author writes an intelligible hand 

 which virtue is by no means universal. One by one, then, the 

 compositor puts the letters of each word and sentence into his stick, 

 securing each letter with the thumb of his left hand, which is there- 

 fore continually travelling on from the beginning to the end of a line ; 

 the letters being arranged on a thin slip of polished brass of the same 

 height as the type, called a s-tlmg-rult, and which is shifted from 

 behind each line to the front when completed, the roughness of the 

 types being thus avoided. His right hand goes mechanically to the 

 box which he requires ; but his eye is ready to accompany its move- 

 ments. In each letter, as we have stated, there is a nick or nicks, to 

 indicate the bottom edge of the letter ; and the nick must be placed 

 outwards in his composing-stick. Farther, the letter must also be 

 placed with the face upwards, so that two right positions must be 

 combined in the arrangement of the types. If the compositor were to 

 pick up the letter at random, he would most probably hare to turn it 



ARTS AHD SCI. DIV. VOL. VI. 



in bis hand ; and as it is important to save every unnecessary move- 

 ment, his eye directs him to some one of the heap which lies in the 

 right position, both as regards the face being upwards and the nick being 

 outwards. This nick is one of those pretty contrivances for saving 

 labour which experience has introduced into every art, and which are 

 as valuable for diminishing the cost of production as the more elaborate 

 inventions of machinery. When he arrives at the end of his line, the 

 compositor has a task to perform in which the carefulness of the work- 

 man is greatly exhibited. The first letter and the last must be at tho 

 extremities of the line : there can be no spaces left in some instances, 

 and no crowding in others, as we see in the best manuscript. Each 

 metal type is of a constant thickness, as far as regards that particular 

 letter, though all the letters are not of the same thickness. The 

 adjustments, therefore, to complete the line with a word, or at any 

 rate with a syllable, must be made by varying the thickness of the 

 spaces between each word. A good compositor is distinguished by 

 uniformity of spacing : he will not allow the words to be very close 

 together in some instances, or with a large gap between them in others. 

 His duty is to equalise the spacing as much as he possibly can ; and 

 this is, in some cases, very troublesome. When the workman has 

 filled his slick, as it is called, that is, has set up as many lines as his 

 stick will conveniently hold, he lifts them out into what is termed a 

 galley, by grasping them with the fingers of each hand, the setting-rule 

 supporting them in front, and thus taking them up as if they were a 

 solid piece of metal. The facility with which some compositors can 

 lift about what is called a handful of moveable type, without deranging 

 a single letter, is very remarkable. This sort of skill can only be 

 attained by practice ; and one of the severest mortifications which the 

 printer's apprentice has to endure is, to toil for an hour or two in 

 picking up several thousand letters, and then to see the fabric destroyed 

 by his own clumsiness, leading him to mourn over his heap of broken 

 type technically called pye as a child mourns over his fallen house 

 of cards. 



Letter by letter, and word by word, is the composing-stick filled ; 

 and by the same progression the galley is filled by the contents of 

 successive sticks. 



In composing pages for a book, when the compositor has set up as 

 many lines as fill a page, he binds them tightly round with cord, and 

 places them under his frame ; this is making- up. We need scarcely 

 say that the sizes of books greatly vary ; but they are all reducible to 

 a standard determined by the number of leaves into which a sheet of 

 paper is folded. The most common size is called octaro, the size of 

 Macaulay's 'History of England,' and this contains 16 pages to the 

 sheet ; the next is duodecimo, the size of the ' British Almanac,' con- 

 taining 24 pages to a sheet ; and the next octodecimo, or eighteens, 

 containing 36 pages in a sheet. There are many other sizes, such as 

 the larger quarto, which is the size of the present work, and the smaller 

 twenty-fours. Much skill and ingenuity are employed in devising what 

 are called schemes of imposition. In regular and perfect sheets of a 

 work this is usually all settled, but in the endings of volumes the 

 chances are much against their forming complete sheets, and the 

 compositor has then to consider how he can best dispose the pages so 

 as to avoid waste of paper and expense in working at press. 



In every case, when a sheet is complete, the compositor arranges the 

 pages in proper order upon the imposing-stone, which is a large table 

 with a polished stone or iron top : he places around the whole a stout 

 iron frame, called a chase, and surrounds each page with pieces of wood 

 called furniture, so as to leave an equal margin to every page, and 

 finally wedges the whole tightly together with a wooden mallet in tho 

 chase. If the work is properly executed, the pages thus wedged up. 

 constituting one side of a sheet, termed a form, are perfectly tight and 

 compact ; and the form may be carried about with as much ease as if 

 it were composed of solid plates, instead of being formed of 40,000 or 

 50,000, or even 100,000 moveable pieces, weighing from a few pounds 

 to a couple of hundred-weight. In this state a proof is pulled ; that 

 is, a single impression is taken at the press. 



In newspapers, periodical works, anil many other works in which 

 much alteration is anticipated in subsequent stages from the author, 

 the type or matter, as it is technically called, is wedged in brass galleys, 

 in what are called slips, and after it has undergone the process of 

 correcting, it is then made up into pages and imposed, or arranged in 

 order to be worked on the paper. 



The inventive faculty has also been applied to methods for facilitating 

 the arrangement of the type, as well as for type founding. In the 

 Report on Printing, &c., of the Paris Exhibition of 1855, Mr. Knight 

 says : " During the last twenty years there have been various attempts 

 to produce a machine that will, to some extent, supersede that portion 

 of manual labour in printing which is called ' composition.' Without 

 attempting to describe the various contrivances by which a more rapid 

 method of arranging moveable types was to be effected than by the 

 ordinary method, it may be sufficient to say that by keys, like 

 those of a pianoforte, some force might be applied to remove a 

 single letter from its proper receptacle, and arrange it in a com- 

 bination of words and sentences There were several composing 



and distributing machines in the French Exhibition, but the most 

 remarkable one, and that which appears to me, as it appeared to 

 M. Didot and other competent judges, to approach nearer than any 

 other invention to the accomplishing of this long sought for objp^jt, is 



3 o 



