[26] Dobson, op. cit. (footnote 8), p. 174.
[27] George Kubler, A history of stereotyping, New York, 1941, p. 75.
[28] Dobson, op. cit. (footnote 8), p. 173.
Figure 11.—Tailpiece by Thomas Bewick (actual size), engraved after a drawing by John Bewick, from The Chase, by William Somervile, 1796. (Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.)
We will not pursue Bewick's career further. With habits of hard work deeply ingrained, he kept at his bench until his death in 1828, engraving an awesome quantity of cuts. But he never surpassed his work on the Birds, although his reputation grew in proportion to the spread of wood engraving throughout the world.
The medium became more and more detailed, and eventually rivaled photography in its minute variations of tone (see figs. 15 and 16). But printing wood engravings never was a problem again. Not only was wove paper always used in this connection, but it had become much cheaper through the invention of a machine for producing it in lengths. Nicholas Louis Robert, in France, had developed and exhibited such an apparatus in 1797, at the instigation of M. Didot. John Gamble in England, working with Henry and Charles Fourdrinier, engaged a fine mechanic, Bryan Donkin, to build a machine on improved principles. The first comparatively successful one was completed in 1803. It was periodically improved, and wove paper appeared in increasing quantities. Spicer[29] says: "Naturally these improvements and economies in the manufacture of paper were accompanied by a corresponding increase in output. Where, in 1806, a machine was capable of making 6 cwt. in twelve hours, in 1813 it could turn out double that quantity in the same time at one quarter the expense."
[29] A. D. Spicer, The paper trade, London, 1907, p. 63.
