The next step in developing the electrotyping process, after Spencer had demonstrated the practical application of the electro-chemical deposition of a copper shell on a mold, was made by a Mr. Robert Murray. Mr. Murray was the first to use plumbago, or black-lead, to give the surface of non-metallic bodies electro-conductive properties. He discovered that he could coat a mold of bees-wax with black-lead and deposit thereon a copper shell. This was in 1840.
In the same year Smee’s battery was invented. This was a marked improvement and was a most important step towards making electrotyping a commercial possibility.
Thus in 1840, four hundred years after the probable date of the invention of printing from individual movable cast-metal type, and over forty years after the foundation of electrotyping was laid by Volta, electrotyping, as a practical method of reproducing a commercial typographical printing surface, came into existence.
Mr. E. Palmer, in England, using Spencer’s method, was the first to receive a patent for producing a metallic printing plate with the printing surfaces in relief. This patent is dated 1841. Palmer followed this in the succeeding year by a further patent for engraving through a wax-coated matrix-plate to form the printing surfaces in the positive electrotype taken from it. This process was termed by Palmer, “Glyphography.”
The “whites” or low spots in Palmer’s Glyphographs were “built-up” in the wax mold through adding wax by hand, assisted by various ingeniously constructed tools which were heated. After “building-up,” the wax was black-leaded and the copper deposition on the surface of the wax mold was obtained. This copper deposit, or shell, was then tinned on the back, backed up with lead, mounted on wood, and trimmed type-high. These processes are the essentials used today in electrotyping.
One of the earliest works illustrated by the Palmer process is “The History and Antiquities of Brentford, Ealing, and Chiswick,” by T. Faulkner, published in 1845, and the word “Glyphography” occurs at the foot of many illustrations contained in it.
In 1839 the first attempt was made at commercial electrotyping in America. In that year, Joseph A. Adams, a wood-engraver connected with Harper & Bros. in New York, experimented along lines similar to those Spencer had pursued, but using a wood-cut from which to mold. His electrotypes were made by taking an impression from the wood-cut in an alloy of soft metal of which bismuth was probably the chief ingredient, and immersing the metal mold in an ordinary Voltaic battery for the deposition of the copper shell. In making the impression, however, the wood-cut was destroyed so, that this method of making an electrotype was not commercially practical.
The year following Adams took advantage of Smee’s battery and made an electrotype which was used in Mape’s Magazine in 1841. He also employed this process for making illustrations for Harper’s Family Bible, issued between 1842 and 1844.
The first successful commercial electrotyper in America was John W. Wilcox, of Boston. A wood carver named Chandler, told Mr. Wilcox that if he could repeat what Adams of New York had done with a wood-cut in 1839 that he, Chandler, would lend him the necessary wood-cuts for experimental purposes. In less than sixty days in 1846, Mr. Wilcox had put into practical use every essential principle known for the next twenty-five years in electrotyping.