PRINTING 



6335 



PRINTING 



the " thicks " and " thins " of the 

 letters, an example widely imi- 

 tated on the Continent, as by 

 Bodoni and Didot, with results de- 

 plored by all artists. Basker- 

 ville's contemporary, William Gas- 

 Ion, the typefounder, did much to 

 retrieve this error of judgement, 

 and his beautiful fount survives in 

 honour to the present day. 



While England can claim no 

 considerable share in the early de- 

 velopment of printing, she has 

 made amends in the modern re- 

 vival through the work of the 

 Kelmscott Press and the other 

 famous private presses, the Vale, 

 the Doves, and the Ashendene. Of 

 the commercial presses, the fine 

 work done by the Chiswick Press, 

 largely under Morris's inspiration, 

 and more recently of the Arden 

 Press, has to be noted. 



Early Newspaper Printing 



With regard to the history of 

 newspapers, two dates are of tech- 

 nical interest : 1622, the date of the 

 issue of the first weekly paper, The 

 Weekly Newes ; and 1702, when 

 The Daily Courant appeared. Both 

 were produced by a process which 

 essentially differed in nothing from 

 the press used by Caxton. Forty 

 small sheets an hour, printed on 

 one side, would be about the out- 

 put of each press in those days. A 

 modern newspaper press will pro- 

 duce 60,000 copies an hour duly 

 printed, folded, and counted into 

 quires or bundles of 26. 



PRINTING PROCESSES. Printing 

 may be defined as a process for 

 multiplying copies of an original 

 by inking a prepared surface and 

 transferring the impression to 

 paper or other material. There are 

 three processes, determined by the 

 nature of the printing surface : 



(1) Relief or surface printing, for 

 which a general term is found in 

 letterpress printing. In this, as the 

 various terms imply, the printing 

 surface is raised. The most 

 familiar example is the ordinary 

 rubber stamp, which, being inked 

 from a pad, is then impressed upop 

 the paper. By far the greater 

 volume of printing is produced by 

 this process. It is indeed the 

 normal method of book and news- 

 paper production. 



(2) The intaglio process. Here the 

 ink is forced into excised lines or 

 hollows cut or etched in the plate, 

 which is then carefully wiped. The 

 paper is then pressed down into the 

 plate and so takes up the ink. A 

 much greater amount of a stiffer ink 

 can be absorbed in this way. A 

 common example is the copper- 

 plate visiting card, on which the 

 finger can detect a perceptible 

 raised lettering as contrasted, say, 

 with the letterpress effect of a page 



of this Encyclopedia. The finest 

 indentations ^or scratches on a 

 copper plate are capable of taking 

 and transferring the ink ; hence 

 the wide range of tones in this 

 beautiful' process, by which are 

 produced all the finer etchings, 

 steel engravings, mezzotints, and 

 photogravures ; while a mechani- 

 cal development of it produces the 

 many rotary-machine printed pho- 

 togravures now obtainable. 



(3) Flat surface, planographic, or 

 lithographic printing. The litho- 

 graphic method depends upon an 

 entirely different principle, the ab- 

 sorption of water and the rejection 

 of oil, or the mutual repulsion of 

 grease and water by certain porous 

 material ; stone, in particular a 

 fine stone from Central European 

 quarries, synthetic stone made 

 from cement, zinc, and now quite 

 commonly aluminium, are used. 

 The design is made upon the print- 

 ing surface in a greasy ink ; the 

 surface is next carefully washed ; 

 the stone is then inked ; the 

 watered, or blank parts, repelling 

 the ink and only the design, or 

 greasy parts, taking the ink. The 

 copy is then printed and the water- 

 ing and inking processes repeated. 



(4) There are, besides, variations 

 of these main processes, e.g. the 

 offset process, whereby the im- 

 pression from lettering or illustra- 

 tions is transferred to a cylinder of 

 rubber, or other resilient material, 

 which again transfers the impres- 

 sion to paper ; and (5) the electric 

 contact process, not yet commerci- 

 ally practicable, whereby the im- 

 pression is obtained on a chemic- 

 ally prepared paper by passing the 

 current through the metal of the 

 type, without the use of ink. 



LETTERPRESS PRINTING. The 

 main material consists of movable 

 types and blocks or plates, or stereo- 

 type and electrotype moulded from 

 them, the printing surface being in 

 relief or raised. 



Hand and Machine Setting 



The arrangement of type and 

 the general preparation of the print- 

 ing surface before it goes to the 

 machine is included under the head- 

 ing of composition. Composition is 

 of two kinds, hand setting and 

 machine setting. In the case of 

 hand-set work, the compositor 

 stands at a high desk, on which are 

 arranged, one above the other, two 

 cases divided into compartments 

 containing metal letters. The upper 

 case contains the capital letters; 

 the lower, nearer to the operator's 

 hand, contains the more frequently 

 used small letters. The position of 

 the letters in the cases is dictated 

 by the frequency with which they 

 are required. The cases contain, 

 besides letters with a printing 



surface, metal blanks, called 

 " spaces " and " quads," to place 

 between the words and at the 

 ends of short lines. The com- 

 positor, holding in his hand a 

 metal case, called a composing 

 stick, or setting stick, gauged to 

 the width of the panel of type 

 decided on for the page, picks 

 the letters one by one from his 

 cases, and sets them upside down 

 from left to right, his first line 

 of type being at the bottom of the 

 stick. If he needs extra space 

 between the lines of type, he in- 

 serts " leads." The type is trans- 

 ferred from the setting stick to 

 trays of metal, called galleys. 

 From these galleys rough proofs are 

 taken on long strips of paper called 

 galley proofs, which are sent to the 

 reader and author for correction. 

 (See Proof Correction.) 



Make-up of Pages 



When the matter in galley form 

 has been corrected, the compositor 

 makes up the pages. He arranges 

 or " imposes " them, together with 

 any engraved plates or blocks of 

 pictures, or plans which are to be 

 used, in an iron frame or " forme," 

 in such a way that they fold in 

 proper sequence, with accurate 

 allotment of marginal spaces. 

 These spaces are allowed for in the 

 forme by the insertion of metal 

 or wooden blocks, called " furni- 

 ture," and the artistic effect of 

 printed matter depends very 

 notably on the arrangement of the 

 margins. A rough working sum- 

 mary of the best practice is that 

 in the case of a book the double 

 page opening should be treated as 

 the unit of design ; that the head 

 margin should be less than either 

 the side, middle, or " gutter," and 

 tail, or foot, margins ; that the 

 gutter should be equal to each of 

 the side margins, and the foot or 

 tail margin substantially deeper 

 than the side margin. 



If two or more colours are to be 

 used in the printed page, this ac- 

 curate adjustment or "register" 

 is a matter of peculiar delicacy. 

 The forme when arranged is 

 " locked " with the " furniture," 

 " sidesticks," and little wedges 

 called " quoins," or equivalent 

 devices. The process of putting 

 back used type into the cases is 

 called distribution. 



With regard to machine compo- 

 sition, the types of machine in 

 most common use are the linotype, 

 the intertype, and the monotype ; 

 the first two generally used for 

 newspapers, the latter mainly for 

 book and magazine printing. (See 

 Linotype; Intertype; Monotype.) 



MACHINING. The process of print- 

 ing from the forme or a stereotype 

 or electrotype of the forme is called 



