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THE REPRODUCTION OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



THERE is hardly a more striking example of 

 nineteenth-century advance in the methods of 

 communicating ideas than that of modern 

 processes of reproducing pictures. Fifty years ago an 

 energetic wood-engraver, by working long hours every 

 day for a month, could produce an illustration the size 

 of one of the ordinary illustrations in the Sunday news- 

 paper. The same sized illustration can now be pro- 

 duced, with more fidelity to nature, in an hour. And 

 yet up to the time of the beginning of the last quarter 

 of the nineteenth century this process of wood-engrav- 

 ing was the only practical way of reproducing illustra- 

 tions for such publications as books, magazines, and 

 newspapers. There were other methods of reproduc- 

 ing pictures, to be sure, such as etchings, lithographs, 

 etc., but for the most part these cannot be used for 

 ordinary newspaper or book illustrations. The wood- 

 engraving was therefore the most important as it was 

 the oldest form of reproducing pictures. 



Just when or where wood-engraving made its first 

 appearance cannot be determined. The earliest ex- 

 amples of wood-engravings now extant date from about 

 the time of the invention of printing from movable 

 types. It is probable, therefore, that wood-engraving, 



