Trick Photography
Spirit Photographs.
—When photography was young Sir John Herschel, the great astronomer, got up what he called magic photographs and these have been worked under the name of spirit photographs by half of the mediums in the business.
The idea is to show the victim of superstition his future wife or her future husband. To this end the medium shows a piece of perfectly blank paper about an inch square. She—sometimes it’s a he—then dips the bit of paper into a saucer of what seems to be ordinary, common every day water and with much dignity and mysticism presses it to the forehead of the aforesaid ninny who would fain know what the partner of his, or her joys and sorrows will look like. (What’s the use when they will know so well afterward?)
Be that as it may, when the medium removes the bit of paper from the simpleton’s forehead a photograph has really and truly appeared on it and—there you are! (Fifty cents, please.)
Now the trick is done like this and you can have some fun repeating it. Print some photos postage-stamp size of boys and girls on ordinary silver paper and fix them in hypo dissolved in water but don’t tone them; wash them well and then soak them in a saturated solution[64] of bichloride of mercury which will bleach out the picture and leave the paper perfectly white again; this done dry the paper and put it away until you want to use it.
[64] A saturated solution of bichloride of mercury is one in which all of the mercury has been dissolved in the water that it will dissolve at its present temperature and pressure.
When you do, make a strong solution of hypo, soak the picture in it for a minute or two, press it to your subject’s forehead and the picture will appear.
One Way to Catch Big Fish.
—Of course you know that when an object very near the camera is photographed it will look proportionately larger than when it is photographed a little way off from it. It is simply a case of exaggerated perspective.
Hence the camera is an apparatus very well adapted for camouflage as the French call faking. You can easily try it out by having a friend lean back in a chair and put his feet on the table. (If the table is of highly polished mahogany request him kindly to take off his spurs first.)
Stand your camera in front of him so that his feet will be nearest the lens and then take his picture. The result is that he will be about all boots and very little head.
Another and deeper dyed trick is to photograph a fellow—choose one who is noted for his whaling yarns—with a fish dangling at the end of a pole and line as shown at [A in Fig. 62]. This will make the fish loom up as big as the cod in a Scott’s Emulsion ad., and the boy will be the size of the lone fisherman as shown at [B]. It will be some time before the scales will drop from the eyes of the person who is sizing up the picture.
You want to use a small stop in your lens when you make a picture of this kind so that the definition will be as sharp in the foreground as it is in the background.
Fig. 62. one way to catch a cod
A. How it is done.
B. How it looks when done.
Taking Caricature Photographs.
—The word caricature (pronounced care´-i-ca-ture) means a portrait in which some part of it is distorted so that it produces a comical effect.
Now there are a lot of ways to make photographic caricatures but one of the best is to use what is called a special foreground. This foreground is a sheet of cardboard or a piece of muslin stretched on a frame about 1¹⁄₂ feet wide and 2¹⁄₂ feet long.
Draw on the cardboard or muslin any kind of a funny little body such as an anemic fellow in a bathing suit, or a lank athlete rowing in a tub, or a gilded youth riding a donkey; and finally cut out a place around his collar for the neck of the sitter. Seat your subject and have him hold the foreground as shown at [C in Fig. 62] so that his head comes just above the collar of the picture and then take a photograph of him.
Fig. 62c. how caricatures are made
If now the background—that is the ground back of the sitter—and the foreground—namely the one painted on the cardboard—are of the same shade you can trim the print so that it will look exactly as if your friend was in the Orient on his way to Mecca. (If you will keep this picture for 20 years the fellow who sat for it will gladly pay you a hundred dollars for it.)
CHAPTER VII
PRINTING AND ITS ALLIED ARTS
If there ever was a boy who did not want a printing press I have yet to meet him. Ever since the day when Gutenburg[65] invented movable types, and that was some 500 years ago, every boy—and not a few men—have wanted to set a few stickfuls of type and run off some impressions on a press, and many thousands of them have gratified that highly civilized ambition.
[65] Johanne Gutenburg was a German printer. He invented movable types about the year of 1450.
But you fellows of to-day have all the best of it, for you can buy a printing outfit complete for $1.50 on up to anything you want to pay for it. After all is said and done though, you can get more real enjoyment out of a small self-inking press than you can out of a larger one. Not only is there a lot of fun in printing cards, etc., for yourself but there is money in it too, if you go about it the right way, but that is another story.[66]
[66] To make money out of job-printing on a small scale read Money Making for Boys by the present author and published by Dodd, Mead and Co., New York City.
Kinds of Printing Presses.
—There are two kinds of printing presses made and these are (1) hand inked presses, and (2) self-inking presses.
You can make a printing press out of wood but to do a good job you must have a press built of iron and properly machined, that is finished up, for to do good printing a good outfit is needed to begin with.
Small hand inked and self-inking presses are sold in the toy departments of nearly all stores at prices ranging from $1.50 to $5.00 and this will include a font of type. Many of these little presses are made which use type about half the length of regular type and if you get a press of this kind you will never know the real joy of printing.
The Parts of a Self-Inking Press.
—The Excelsior is the name of a small self-inking printing press that has been on the market for 50 years and it is a good one. The description of it which follows will fit any other model self-inking press just as well, for they are all built on the same principle.
There are seven chief parts to this press and these are (1) the body; (2) the type bed; (3) the platen; (4) the ink-roller carriage; (5) the ink table; (6) the chase, and (7) the handle, all of which are shown in [Fig. 63].
The body of the press serves to support all the other parts. The bed, as you will see, is really a part of the body casting and the feet of the type rest against it. For this reason it must be perfectly smooth and even, and it is planed off, that is machined, to make it so.
The platen is pivoted to the middle of the body and it swings up to and parallel with the bed and away from and out at an angle to it. The card, or sheet of paper to be printed is laid on the platen and is brought up and into contact with the type which rests on the bed. A pair of grippers are hinged to the platen to hold the paper in place while it is being printed but releases it when the platen moves back.
Fig. 63. a model self-inking printing press
The ink-roller carriage is connected by levers to the platen and when the latter moves to and fro the rollers run over the type to ink it; the rollers get their ink from the ink table and this is a disk which revolves and on which the ink is spread; the ink table is made to revolve a little at a time so that the rollers will pass over every part of it in every direction and so distribute the ink evenly.
The type when set is locked in an iron frame called a chase and this fits on the bed; and finally all the movable parts are coupled to the handle and when this is moved up and down it makes them perform their various functions.
How the Press Works.
—Let’s suppose now, that you have the type set in the chase and the chase is fixed in the press; that you have put some ink on the ink-table and a card or a sheet of paper on the platen.
Now when you press down on the handle it moves the platen up, the grippers hold the card, or sheet of paper to it, the arms pivoted to the platen pull the ink rollers up and over the type and on to the ink table which turns through a small arc, that is, part of a circle, by a ratchet so that it keeps a fresh surface exposed to the ink rollers all the time.
When the card, or paper makes contact with the type you pull the handle up; this swings the platen back; the grippers relax their pressure; the ink-rollers move down over the face of the type; you take out the printed card or sheet with your left hand and put in a blank one with your right hand, when you are ready to make another impression.
It may surprise you to know that any one can print from 500 to 600 cards an hour and if you are expert you can run off from 1,000 to 2,000 cards per hour.
Sizes and Prices of Presses.
—The Excelsior press comes in three sizes and the price depends on the size of the chase. (1) A press having a chase 3 × 5 inches costs $5.00 and this is large enough to print cards, labels, envelopes, etc.; (2) a 5 × 8 press costs $18.00 and this one will do nice jobs up to postal card size; and (3) a 6 × 10 press costs $25.00 and is large enough to print bill-heads, letter-heads and circulars, or you can print a little newspaper on it.
The Outfit You Need.
—Your outfit will, of course, depend largely on the size of press you have.
Outfit for a 3 × 5 Press.
—A couple of dollars will buy all the fixtures you need and these consist of (a) a font of type, (b) some leads, (c) a type case, (d) an assortment of furniture, and (e) a can of black ink.
A font of type means enough of a kind having the same face and body and the right amount of each letter to set up an ordinary job. You will find more about type under the next heading called [Type and Typesetting]. Leads are thin strips of type metal less than type-high which are used to separate the lines of type; and a type case is a shallow wooden tray divided into little compartments called boxes in which the letters of a font of type are kept apart.
Outfit for a 5 × 8 Press.
—The fixtures of a press of this size include all of those named above and (a) three fonts of type, (b) type cases for them; (c) a set of gage pins, and (d) a pair of tweezers, or a bodkin. The gage-pins are pinned into the paper backing on the platen to keep the card or sheet from slipping and to hold it in its proper place. The tweezers, or bodkin, which is a large needle, is used for picking out type from a form when you are correcting it.
Outfit for an 8 × 10 Press.
—This outfit should have all the fixtures of both of those described above and you will need not less than four fonts of type, while a composing stick, which is a little metal tray to hold the type in as you set it, is a necessity. These fixtures are shown in [Fig. 64].
 |  |  | ||||
| PAPER GUAGE | ||||||
| D—A BOUGHT GUAGE PIN |  | A—WOOD FURNITURE | B—A LEAD | |||
 | ||||||
 | A BODKIN | |||||
| C—A COMMON PIN BENT FOR A GUAGE PIN |  | E—REGULAR PRINTER’S TWEEZERS WITH COARSE SERRATED FLAT POINTS |  | |||
| A COMPOSING STICK | ||||||
Fig. 64. an outfit for a model press
About Type and Setting Type.
—Relative Number of Type Letters.
—In looking over type catalogues you will see that the fonts are listed as 4A, or 8A-10A, etc. Now this means that in the 4A font there are 4 capital A letters and that all of the other letters are in proportion to the A’s that are likely to be used, thus:
A 4A FONT
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | |
| No. of letters to font | 4 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
With an 8A-10a font there are of course twice as many of each capital letter as in a 4A font while of the lower case letters, which means the small ones, there are 10 a’s and the number of the others are in proportion to their use, thus:
AN 8A-10a FONT
| a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z | |
| No. of letters to font | 10 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 18 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 2 | 3 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 3 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 2 |
Styles of Type.
—For card work you want a plain block letter font like that shown at [A], a script like [B], or an old English like that shown at [C].
For envelopes, bill, letter head and other job work three fonts of engraved plate style as shown at [D, E and F] will give good results.
| 23A | $1.00 | |
| A | THEODORE ROOSEVELT | 1234567890 |
| 8A 24a | $4.50 | |
| B | Miss Alice Verlet | 123456789 |
| 11A 34a | $2.50 | |
| C | Lieut. John Hodder Stuart | 123456789 |
| 22A | $1.00 | |
| D | ENGRAVED CARD STYLE IS PREFERRED | 52468 |
| 16A | $1.05 | |
| E | HANDSOME ENGRAVED EFFECTS | 123 |
| A16 | $1.25 | |
| F | ENGRAVED PLATE STYLE | 140 |
For circulars you should have several fonts of different styles of type as shown at [G, H, I, J and K].
| 18A 36a | $2.90 | |
| G | CLEAR CUT Faces Popular | 123 |
| 15A | $1.95 | |
| H | EXCELSIOR PRESSES | 12345 |
| A | $2.10 | |
| I | GRAINO | 1 |
| 10A 15a | $5.35 | |
| J | GOOD for many places | 3 |
| 11a 20a | $3.00 | |
| K | Good and Clear for poster and circular printing. A fine addition to any printing office.12345678 | |
And finally should you intend to print a cook-book, a town directory or a newspaper you will need a half, or a full font of 12 point plain pica Roman, as it is called, and which is shown at [L].
| L | 12 Point No. 1, 25 lbs. $12.00. (Half font, 12¹⁄₂ lbs., $6.50) PLAIN Pica Roman, a FACE for many uses. Books, circulars and jobbing. Very clear and easy to read. Cast from nickel metal and most durable known. £ $ L z 1234567890 |
The Parts of a Type.
—Before explaining how to set type, make ready and print, there are a few little things about letters and about type which are good to know.
First let’s take, by way of illustration, the letter H H. Now you will observe that the first H is plain and the second one is embellished by fine lines at the top and bottom and these embellishments are called ser′-ifs.
As simple a bit of metal as a type has more parts to it than you can shake a stick at, but you ought to learn them by heart. Named, these parts are (a) the body of the type; (b) the front; (c) the back; (d) the face or letter; (e) the nicks; (f) the feet; (g) the groove; (h) the shoulder; (i) the bevel, and (k) the pin marks, and all of these are pointed out in [Fig. 65].
Fig. 65. the parts of a type
It very often happens in italics and script type that a part of a letter will stand out beyond the body and this little extension is called the kern. The nick in the type is to help the type-setter, or compositor as he is called, to set the type the right way in the stick, that is you always set the type with the nicks down and toward you.
The pin-mark is made by a sharp instrument which removes it from the mold. Finally a c e m n o r s u v w x z are called short letters; j is a long letter in that it takes up the full breadth of the face; b d f h i l t are upstroke, or ascending letters, while g p q are downstroke or descending letters.
The Sizes of Type.
—Type is made in standard sizes and not so very long ago each size was known by a name. Then a change was made and the point system,[67] as it is called, came into general use. The sizes under the old and the new systems are given in the following table and it will enable you to know type sizes both by name and by point.
[67] This is the standard system of sizes for type bodies. It is so called because it is measured in decimal points or fractions of an inch; that is, 1 point is .0138 inch, so that nonpareil, as it used to be called, is now 6 point and bourgeois is 9 point, etc.
TABLE OF TYPE SIZES
| OLD NAMES OF SIZES | NEW POINT SIZES | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Pearl | 5 | point | |
| Agate | 5 | ¹⁄₂ | “ |
| Nonpareil | 6 | “ | |
| Minion | 7 | “ | |
| Brevier | 8 | “ | |
| Bourgeois | 9 | “ | |
| Long Primer | 10 | “ | |
| Small Pica | 11 | “ | |
| Pica | 12 | “ | |
| English | 14 | “ | |
| Great Primer | 18 | “ | |
Your Type Cases.
—There are two kinds of type cases and these are made to hold (1) the capital, or upper case letters, and (2) the small or lower case letters.
The reason the capitals are called upper case letters is because the case that holds them is set higher on the composing stand than the case which holds the small letters; this brings the small letters nearer to the hand of the compositor and as they are used more than the caps he can set the type faster. The arrangement of the cases is shown at [A in Fig. 66].
Fig. 66a. how the type cases are arranged
There are several schemes of type-cases but I shall only describe three of them. The first is a small type case 12¹⁄₂ inches square with 48 boxes in it and you can buy one for 35 cents. It is good enough for any one who doesn’t want to go to the bother of learning the regular case. A plan view of the lay of a regular upper and a lower case is shown at [B] and [C]. You will see that the e box in the lower case is larger than any other and this is because there are more e’s used in setting up a job than any other one letter. And you will also observe that the letters are distributed and the boxes spaced in a very uneven way, but this arrangement brings the letters that are used the most into the easiest places to reach.
Fig. 66b. the upper case
Fig. 66c. the lower case
Setting the Type.
—Where you have more than one line to set you should by all means use a composing stick and a small one will cost you a dollar. It should be held in the left hand as shown in [Fig. 67], that is, with the open side from you and the slide to the left.
Now read a few lines of your copy, pick the first letter from its box and set it in the left hand corner of the stick with the nick in the type toward your thumb. Take the next letter from its box and let it slide into the composing stick against the first letter and so on from left to right until you have the first word set up.
Fig. 67. how to hold a composing stick
Now put in a medium sized space, which is made just like a type but only shoulder high and without any letter on it, and begin to set the next word. If when you get to the end of the line there is a space left but not enough to start another word, put a thin space between the words to lengthen out the line, or justify it as it is called.
When you have set the line put a lead, that is a thin strip of typemetal which comes to the shoulder of the type, against it and start a new line and so on until you have the stick half full of type.
The type must now be taken out of the stick and placed on a smooth surface, such as a piece of slate or a stone called an imposing stone, and to do this without dropping some or all of the type and making pi of it, takes practice. To do it like a journeyman, put a lead at the top and bottom of the type, set the stick on the stone, grip the top and bottom with your fore fingers and thumbs and the sides with your other fingers, hold it tight and you can then easily lift it out and into the chase as shown in [Fig. 68].
Fig. 68. putting a stick of type in the chase
A good way for you to do it at first is to wet the type after you have it set in the composing stick when it will hold together without much trouble. When you can manage half-a-stick full of type you can then try a stick full.
Making Ready.
—After you have the type, which is to make up the form, set in the chase on the imposing stone, or table, fill in the top and bottom spaces with long pieces of wood furniture and the ends with hollow metal furniture and then lock up the form, that is screw or otherwise fix it in the chase.
Now there are two kinds of chases used with small presses and these are (1) screw chases and (2) plain chases. A screw chase has a couple of screws fitted into the top of it so that after the type and furniture are in the chase you only need to tighten up the screws to hold the form in place.
Fig. 69. tools for locking up a chase
When a plain chase is used, quoins, that is wedges made of wood, as shown in [Fig. 69]—you can get a dozen hickory ones for a nickel—must be set in between the furniture and the chase and these are forced together with a mallet and a shooting stick, so that the type is held firmly in place.
The next thing to do is to plane the form, that is, you take a block of wood one side of which is covered with a piece of felt. Lay this on the type and tap it gently with the mallet to get all of the type even on top. You can make a planer or buy one for a quarter ready made.
This done, fit the chase in the press and put three or four sheets of paper on the platen by means of the pivoted bands on the edge of the latter. Ink the type and run off a few impressions; but be careful that the grippers are set so that they will just catch the edges of the sheet but will not strike the type form.
If part of the impression does not come out plain, paste a piece of paper on the paper backing on the platen and, oppositely, if a part of the impression is too heavy a bit of the under sheet of paper backing must be cut away.
When the impression is even on the platen sheet paste a piece of cardboard below and another to the left hand side of it so that the card or the sheet of paper will lay on the platen in exactly the right place every time you feed it in.
Instead of cardboard you can use three bent pins to gage the sheet, or, still better, use regular steel gage pins (see [Fig. 64]), for these can be adjusted to a nicety.
Printing the Job.
—All that remains for you to do now is to put about as much ink as you can get on the point of the blade of a penknife on the ink table and then roll it out thin and even with a small hand roller.
Lay your stock on the table to the right of the press and feed in a card or a sheet at a time with your right hand and see to it that you get it in squarely against the gage pins; take away your hand and press the handle down with your left hand; raise it up, take the printed sheet out with your left hand, feed in another one and so on until the job is done.
How to Clean Type.
—As soon as you have printed a job take the chase from the press and before you unlock the form rub the face of the type with a rag dipped in benzine, or turpentine and when all the ink and smut is gone wipe it with a clean rag.
If the type gets clogged up with ink wash it out with a tooth-brush dipped in benzine and when the ink on the table and the rollers gets dirty or does not work well wash it off with benzine also. To do good printing everything must be immaculately clean.
About Distributing Type.
—After you have cleaned the type, unlock the form and then take a line o’ type at a time on a lead in your left hand; pick off two or three letters at once and drop each one into its respective box.
The Ink and Rollers.
—The Ink.
—While of course you will buy your ink all ready to use you may like to know how it is made. Here’s a recipe for a printing ink that is as old as the hills and as good as gold: Balsam of capivi 4¹⁄₂ ounces; lampblack 1¹⁄₂ ounces; indigo ⁵⁄₈ ounce; India red ³⁄₈ ounce, and turpentine dry soap 1¹⁄₂ ounces; mix these ingredients well in a mortar with a pestle; then mix the mass with boiled linseed oil to the right thickness.
When buying ink for job printing get one that is a quick drier and this costs from 50 cents to $1.50 a pound according to quality. You can also buy colored inks in red, white, blue, yellow, green, brown and purple in 4 ounce cans for 60 cents a can.
The Rollers.
—While it is cheaper and better to buy ink rollers ready made, if you want to try your hand at making them yourself get 1 pound Peter Cooper’s best glue; 1 quart best sugar house syrup, and 1 pint of glycerine.
Soak the glue in rain water until it is soft, drain off all the excess water, put it in a glue pot and set it on a slow fire until it is melted. Now put in the syrup, boil it for half an hour, stirring it the while, and skim off the scum that comes to the top.
About 5 minutes before you take it from the fire add the other things and then pour the mixture into the mold, which is simply a brass cylinder of the diameter and length you want the roller. The stock, as the spindle of the roller is called, is set exactly in the middle of the mold and the composition is poured into it.
Printing in Colors.
—Printing in two or more colors, or color printing, is not only interesting work to do, but profitable, since you can easily get orders for it. It is a little harder to do a good job with colored inks than it is with black ink, but if you will use plain type and good colored ink you will have small trouble in doing a creditable job.
Printing in Gold.
—When you want to print in gilt instead of in black you can do it either by printing in black ink first and then dusting bronze powder over it with a tuft of cotton, or print the job with gold size which makes the powder stick better. Dust the excess powder off with a bit of cotton when the letters will stand out in gold beautifully.
You can buy a 3 ounce can of gold size for a quarter and bronze powder can be had in 1 ounce cans in gold, silver, cardinal red and copper. All of the above materials can be bought of the Kelsey Press Company, Meriden, Conn., and you ought to send for one of their catalogues.
And Finally Your Stock Supply.
—You will need a supply of both visiting and business cards; paper for labels, handbills and newspapers—that is, if you intend to print one—and paper for bill-heads, statements, letter-heads and envelopes to match them.
Cards come in all sizes and colors and in any quantity however small; they are sold under the name of thin white, thin colored, heavy china, business bristol, fine bristol, extra fine bristol, satin enameled and linen finished bristol. Then there are cards with gold beveled and lace edges; fancy embossed, with round edges, and for mourning.
Paper can be bought that is gummed on one side for labels; linen and bond papers are used for correspondence; the cheapest kind of white and colored paper is good enough for handbills but you should use a good white stock for newspaper work. Before ordering stock of any kind the best way to do is to send for a full set of samples and then you will know just what you are buying.