The American Printer: A Manual of Typography / Containing practical directions for managing all departments of a printing office, as well as complete instructions for apprentices; with several useful tables, numerous schemes for imposing forms in every variety, hints to authors, etc.

by Thomas MacKellar

STEREOTYPING.

Stereotyping is said to have been invented by J. Van der Mey, in Holland, about 1698. A quarto Bible and some other books were printed by him from plates, which were formed by soldering the bottoms of common type together. William Ged, of Edinburgh, discovered the present mode in 1725, and stereotyped parts of the Bible and Prayer-Book. He encountered malicious opposition, and the business was abandoned, the new method dying with the inventor. About 1745, Benjamin Mecom, a nephew of Dr. Franklin, cast plates for a number of the pages of the New Testament. Dr. Alexander Tilloch, of Glasgow, re-discovered the art in 1781. Stereotyping gradually spread, and soon effected a considerable reduction in the cost of books. The arguments that were advanced against its utility have a ridiculous look at the present day, when almost every important work is stereotyped or electrotyped.

Matter for stereotyping is set with high spaces and quadrates. The forms must be small, containing about two pages of common octavo. A slug type-high is put above the top line and another below the foot line of each page, to protect the ends of the plates from injury when they are passed through the shaving-machine. Beveled slugs, in height equal to the shoulder of the type, are placed on both sides and between the pages, to form the flange by which the plate is to be clasped by the hooks of the printing-block.

Before the form is sent into the foundry, the type must be carefully compared with the proof, to detect any errors which may have been left uncorrected. Care must be taken to lock up the form perfectly square and quite tight, to prevent the types from being pulled out when the mould is raised from the pages. It must be evenly planed down, and no ink or dirt or incrustations from the ley be allowed to remain on the surface.

The face of the type being clean and dry, and the bottoms free from particles of dirt, the form is laid on a clean moulding-stone, and brushed over with sweet-oil, which must be laid on as thinly as possible, care being taken that the entire surface of the types is covered. A moulding-frame, with a screw at each corner, (called a flask,) and fitting neatly to the form, is next placed around it.

The material for moulding is finely ground gypsum, nine parts of which are mixed with about seven parts of water, and well stirred up. A small quantity of the liquid mixture is poured over the pages, and gently pressed into the counter of the types with a small roller, for the purpose of expelling confined air; after which, the remainder of the gypsum is poured in, until the mould is somewhat higher than the upper edge of the flask. In a few minutes the mixture sets, and the upper side is smoothed over with a steel straight-edge. In about ten minutes the mould is gently raised by means of the screws at the corners of the flask; and, after being nicely trimmed at the sides, and nicked on the surface-edges to make openings for the metal to run in, it is placed on a shelf in an oven, and allowed to remain until the moisture has quite evaporated.

The casting-pans may be large enough to hold three or four moulds. The dried moulds are placed in a pan face downward, upon a movable iron plate called a floater. The cover of the casting-pan, which has a hole at each corner for the passage of the metal, is then clamped to it, and lifted by a movable crane and gently lowered into the metal-pot,—containing, it may be, a thousand pounds of liquid metal,—till the metal begins to flow slowly in at the corners. When the pan is filled, it is sunk to the bottom of the pot. The metal should be hot enough to light a piece of brown paper held in it. After being immersed eight or ten minutes, the pan is steadily drawn out by means of the crane, and swung over to the cooling-trough, into which it is lowered and placed upon a stone so as just to touch the water, in order that the metal at the bottom of the pan may cool first. The metal contracts while cooling, and the caster occasionally pours in a small quantity at the corners from a ladle, till it will take no more. It may be here remarked that some stereotypers do not dry the moulds, but immerse them in a green condition into the metal.

The plates are carefully removed from the solid mass which comes out of the pan, and the plaster is washed from the surface. If, after examination, the face is good and sharply set, the plates are passed over to a picker, who removes any slight defects arising from an imperfection of the mould. They are then trimmed and passed through the shaving-machine, till all are brought to an equal thickness. The flanges are neatly side-planed, and the plates are then boxed, ready for the printing-press.

In England, the plates are merely turned on the back, and consequently vary in thickness. This must be a source of continual expense and annoyance to the pressman. The flanges, besides, are very imperfectly made,—so imperfectly that they cannot be used on American printing-blocks; and English plates, when imported into this country, are therefore sent to a foundry here, to be brought to an equal thickness and to be properly side-planed. An order given some years ago by an English printer for a set of American printing-blocks was afterward countermanded, on account of the prejudice against the introduction of new things.

Several methods of stereotyping are now practised. Many of the leading newspapers of England and America are printed from stereotype plates cast in moulds made of prepared paper: this mode, however, yields very inferior plates, quite unfit for fine books.

Another method, styled the “mud-process,” is by spreading a thin coating of pulverized soapstone and gypsum over an iron plate, and a mould is then obtained by pressing the coated face against a page of type. Several of these mould-plates are then set on end in an iron box, separated from one another by a wire of the thickness of the stereotype desired, and hot metal is poured in. This is a very expeditious process, though not so good as the old method.

In 1804, before the introduction of stereotyping into this country, Mathew Carey, the well-known enterprising publisher in Philadelphia, had the Bible in quarto set up entire, and regularly imposed in chases, to print from at convenience, according to the demand for the volume. The type was cast by Binny & Ronaldson. Stereotyping would have saved much of the large outlay required to carry out the scheme, which, nevertheless, even under these circumstances, was doubtless highly remunerative. The weight of type must have amounted to 25,000 pounds, to say nothing of the number of chases and column-rules required.