SEVERAL MECHANICAL INVENTIONS. 165 



remedy, or at least to check, an evil so extensive and so 

 disgraceful to the Bank, as being the source of the paper 

 circulation of the whole kingdom. If any excuse can be 

 offered for such neglect, it may be said that, amidst the 

 vicissitudes of the pending war, and the embarrassments 

 consequent on the transition from war to peace, which for 

 many years caused great disturbances in the circulating 

 medium and in the general interests of commerce and in- 

 dustry, it was difficult to awaken and concentrate public 

 attention upon this great scandal, of relying solely upon 

 the gallows for preventing forgeries. 



From such considerations it will be obvious that my 

 feeble voice (with those of others who had proposed dif- 

 ferent plans for the prevention of forgery) could not avail, 

 even for getting any trials made to test the efficacy of 

 " Perkins's transferring process,^' and I therefore gave it 

 up as a hopeless task, and submitted to the dead loss of the 

 money already expended for the patent, and on the ex- 

 periments I had made to establish the practical working of 

 the transferring process, and its general application for 

 cheaply multiplying elaborate engravings. 



It has been above shown that Mr. Perkinses invention 

 was not for engraving on steel plates for printing, nor for 

 engraving on steel at all, but rather for engraving on iron of 

 homogeneous structure. It was found that all wrought iron 

 is more or less fibrous, which rendered it unfit to receive 

 delicate engraved work, hence it was necessary to employ 

 cast steel, which being decarbonated to a proper depth, 

 gave a uniform surface of pure iron. On this surface the 

 letters and designs were then engraved, and the surfaces 

 were reconverted into steel for use ; that is, to be employed 

 as dies for transferring, or for printing direct from them, 

 as before mentioned. 



This restatement of the nature of the invention seems 

 called for, since it appears that many persons have supposed 



