Figure 12.—Wood Engraving by W. J. Linton, 1878 (Actual Size). The detail opposite is enlarged four times to show white line-technique.
Figure 13.—"Pintail Duck" by Thomas Bewick (actual size), from History of British birds, vol. 2, 1804. The detail opposite is enlarged three times.
At about the same time the all-iron Stanhope press began to be manufactured in quantity, and shortly the new inking roller invented by the indispensable Earl came into use to supplant the old inking balls. Later in the century (there is no need to go into specific detail here) calendered and coated papers were introduced, and wood engraving on these glossy papers became a medium that could reproduce wash drawings, crayon drawings, pencil drawings, and oil paintings so faithfully that all the original textures were apparent.[30] The engraver, concerned entirely with accurate reproduction, became little more than a mechanic who rendered pictures drawn on the blocks by an artist. In time, photographic processes came to be used for transferring pictures to the blocks and eventually, of course, photomechanical halftones replaced the wood engraver altogether.
[30] The electrotyping process, which came into prominence in 1839 through the experiments of Professor Jacobi in St. Petersburg and Jordan and Spencer in England, had made it possible to produce substitute plates of the highest fidelity. For fine work, these were much superior to stereotyping.
Figure 14.—Title-Page Illustration by Thomas Bewick, from History of British birds, vol. 1, 1797. (Actual size.)