THE TECHNOLOGIST. [July 1, 1864. 



536 MANUFACTURE OF PAPER-HANGINGS. 



tion being at the rate of forty-two yards a minute. Counting thus, 

 one machine should be capable of turning out 1,500 pieces of twelve 

 yards each in a day. An incomplete pattern is sometimes filled by the 

 hand after the paper has left the machine and been dried. 



The finished paper, as it passes from the printing machine, is bar- 

 rowed forward to where it is hoisted to an upper floor, when it is 

 reeled in the form in which it appears on sale in the warehouse. 

 There are here three reeling machines, superintended by young women. 

 The apparatus feeds itself, leading the paper through the long wooden 

 troughs, and accurately registers the twelve-yard lengths, and rolls them 

 up into a firm and compact shape. The finished goods are tem- 

 porarily stored up before removal in an ingeniously contrived 

 system of shelving of huge dimensions in the ends of one of the 

 floors of the works. 



We witnessed the operation of a twelve-colour machine, which 

 demanded for this one pattern as many rollers, and the reader may 

 therefore conjecture the number of such that must be xecpiired when 

 there are more than a hundred patterns on the spot to be worked by 

 the machinery. Great care is taken to keep the rollers in good order, 

 and disposed in sets, and subject to a dry and equable temperature, in 

 •their place of deposit. The roller is a cylinder of lime-tree or plane- 

 tree, having through its axis a strong iron spindle, which adapts to the 

 construction of the printing machine. The pattern is first drawn upon 

 paper, and then transferred to the roller, and its. construction lines 

 are inserted into the wood either in brass or composition metal. The 

 superfluous wood is worked away into relief after the roller has been 

 worked in the lathe into a true cylinder. For the more elaborate 

 patterns, casts in an alloy of bismuth, tin, and lead are taken, and these 

 casts from being flat are bent by machine action into the curvature of 

 the roller, and then applied to it. The beautiful operations of pre- 

 paring the matrix and of effecting the cast were well explained to us 

 by an intelligent workman, who has our warmest thanks for his courtesy, 

 but we cannot afford space for the statement of either. 



The blocks for printing are made of three boards glued together to 

 a thickness of about %\ inches. The middle board is made to cross the 

 grain of the two outsides of it so as to prevent the block from warping. 

 As many blocks are required as there are colours and shades of colour 

 in the pattern, and so also as regards the number of rollers. To make 

 the figure of a rose, for example, three several reds must be applied 

 in succession, the one deeper than the other, a white for the clear 

 spaces, two and sometimes three greens for the leaves, and two wood 

 colours for the stems, altogether from nine to twelve for a rose. We 

 have heard of a French design brought out by M. Zuber, where 3,000 

 blocks were required for one pattern. Each block carries small pin 

 points fixed at its corners to guide the workman in the insertion of the 

 figure exactly in its place. Here again it may be easily conjectured 



