(2)—intaglio processes, monotype, electrotype, steel-facing, blanketing, changes in machinery;
(3)—planographic processes, including woodburytype, stannotype, collotype or phototype, heliotype and photolithography. In relation to lithography there is further information in the biographical sketch of Senefelder, its inventor.
Press-Work
The article Printing (Vol. 22, p. 350) deals entirely with the subject of press-work, thus using printing in the narrower and more correct sense of the word. In length this article is equivalent to 25 pages of this Guide; and it contains 9 illustrations of presses. The article is by C. T. Jacobi, author of Printing, and The Printer’s Handbook of Trade Recipes. The article gives a history of the printing press, which was practically unchanged for a century and a half, until the Dutch map-maker Blaeu greatly simplified it. The first important metal press—earlier ones were of wood—was invented by Lord Stanhope nearly two hundred years later. It had greater power with smaller expenditure of labour, and its workings, as well as that of the Blaeu press, and of the Albion, which was used by William Morris at Kelmscott, may be readily understood from the illustrations in the article. Another hand press is the Columbian, invented in 1816 by a Philadelphian, George Clymer, and still in use for heavy hand work. Power presses began to be made at the end of the 18th century, but the presses invented by William Nicholson (1790) and Friedrich König (adopted by the London Times in 1814) printed only on one side at a time, as did the “double platen” machine of a little later date. The cylindrical eight feeder built by Augustus Applegath in 1848 for the London Times and the Hoe Type Revolving Machine are described in the section on the history of power presses, which closes with the story of Bullock’s machine (1865) for printing from a continuous web of paper.
Modern Presses
The closing section of the article on printing is devoted to a description of modern presses. It opens with a list of the principal types of presses still in use, which are classified under the following seven heads:—
(1)—iron hand-presses like the Albion or Columbian, for proof-pulling or limited editions;
(2)—small platen machines for job or commercial work;
(3)—single cylinder machines (“Wharfedales”) printing one side only;
(4)—perfecting machines, usually two cylinder, printing both sides, but with two distinct operations;