Mechanual Processes of Engraving, 445 
the fidelity with which it preserved the artists’ drawing, but 
it never became popular, and is now, like some other 
similar processes, almost forgotten. Economy and rapidity 
of production it undoubtedly secured; it rendered fine 
lines with great sharpness and delicacy, but there was 
commonly a scratchiness and poorness about them which 
ensured their non-appreciation. Glyphographic engravings 
were simply etchings in relief, and were consequently unfit 
for the mode of printing by which wood-cut impressions 
are ordinarily obtained, demanding greater care and time 
in their printing than could generally be afforded. I have 
a little collection of specimens here which will illustrate 
my meaning. The process, a very simple one, was as 
follows :— 
A piece of ordinary copper-plate, such as engravers on 
copper used, was stained black on one side, and a thin, 
smooth layer of an opaque, white substance, such as wax, 
was spread over it. A variety of etching points were used 
to make the drawing, and these cutting through the lines 
to the black surface, caused the marks made to be dis- 
tinctly visible. This done, the plate was returned to the 
inventor, by whom the etching process was continued 
chemically, and an electrotype produced in the usual way 
from the intaglio. There were many reasons why this 
process should prove unsatisfactory; but as time is short and 
the process commercially extinct, I need not refer to them. 
At the great International Exhibition of 1851, I noticed 
another process of chemical mechanical engraving. The 
name this was known by was the Chemitype, and we 
owe its introduction to a native of Copenhagen, whose 
name I do not at present remember. This process was 
then described, not very clearly, as one in which a zinc 
plate was covered with an etching ground, on which 
the draughtsman made his drawing with an etching needle. 
The surface was next coated with a negative metal, readily 
fusible, and the plate was in some way scraped, so that the 
metal which penetrated the lines in the etching remained. 
By the action of an acid, the etching action was again set 
up, and the hollow parts became raised in the untouched 
metal, and so an engraving in relief was obtained. Some 
very passible specimens of prints, obtained by this process, 
were exhibited in the Austrian department. About the 
same time, a process called Galvanography attracted con- 
siderable attention. In this the artist sketched with a 
brush on a prepared copper plate, and the galvanic process 
