The Preparation of Illustrations for Reports of the United States Geological Survey / With Brief Descriptions of Processes of Reproduction

by John L. Ridgway

The price of a wax engraving depends entirely on the size of the cut, the amount of work involved, and the character of the original copy, but it should not exceed very much the cost of a carefully prepared pen drawing plus the cost of a zinc etching made from it. Cuts engraved by the wax process, like zinc and half-tone plates, are delivered to the purchaser. If colored work is ordered, however, the printed sheets, not the cuts, are delivered.

WOOD ENGRAVING.

Wood engraving was once the universal method of producing cuts for illustrations that were designed to be printed on an ordinary press. It is said to be the oldest of all methods of engraving illustrations. The engraving is made on a block of boxwood, a very dense, hard wood of a light-yellow color. The block is cut type-high across the grain, and the engraving surface is made perfectly smooth by nibbing it with pumice or other stone. When a cut is to be larger than 3 or 4 inches square the wood block is made up of pieces securely dovetailed or joined together to prevent splitting and warping. A woodcut is not used for printing but is electrotyped and the electrotype is used in the press.

Originally the smoothed surface of the wood block was coated with prepared chalk or Chinese whits, and on this coating a finished drawing was made with a brush and pencil by an illustrator. According to more recent practice the surface of the wood is covered with a sensitized coating, on which the drawing or design to be engraved is photographed. The engraver then, with various kinds of gravers and other tools, cuts out the parts of the picture that are to be represented by white paper and leaves the lines, dots, and black areas as a printing surface, thus translating the shades and tints of the picture into a system of lines and dots which exactly duplicate, in effect, the details and tones of the original design. In order to produce a line effect of an area in which the tone is intermediate between whits and black the engraver must space his lines so that one-half the area will remain as printing surface and the other half as white spaces, and he must give character and direction to his lines, so that, if he is skillful, he can reproduce not only the delicate tones but the texture and details of the original picture. Many wood engravers became noted for their artistic rendering of magazine illustrations, of famous paintings, and of other works of art.

The Survey began to abandon this method of engraving in 1884, when the Sixth Annual Report was in press, substituting for it the cheaper photomechanical processes, zinc etching and half-tone engraving, and entirely abandoned its use in 1892.

Many good examples of wood engraving may be found in the early monographs and annual reports of the Geological Survey. Monograph 2 contains numerous examples.

PHOTOGELATIN PROCESSES.

Bichromatized gelatin is used in several photomechanical processes of reproducing illustrations, but in the photogelatin processes the gelatin not only receives the image by exposure to light through a negative but becomes a printing surface on a plate from which prints are made somewhat as in lithography. The several photogelatin processes are much the same as the original collotype process and are best known by the names collotype, heliotype, albertype, artotype, and the German name lichtdruck.

In working these processes a thick plate of glass, after certain preliminary treatment, is coated with sensitized gelatin. The plate is then placed in a drying room or oven having a temperature of 120° F., baked until it is thoroughly dry, and allowed to cool gradually. The subject to be reproduced is then photographed in the usual manner, and unless a prism or mirror box has been used the negative is stripped and reversed in order to make the print reproduce the original in proper position. From the negative a contact print is made on the gelatin-coated plate, the parts or molecules of gelatin being hardened in proportion to the amount of light that affects them. After the contact print has been made the gelatin plate is thoroughly washed in cold water, in order to dissolve and wash out the bichromate and stop any further action of light on the plate, and is then thoroughly dried. Before prints are made from the gelatin-coated plate water is flowed on it and penetrates different parts of the gelatin according to their hardness. The darkest parts of the picture will correspond to the hardest and densest parts of the gelatin, which will not absorb water; the lighter parts will take up more water. The surface water is then removed with a rubber straight edge and an absorbent roller and the plate is ready for inking. The ink, being greasy, has no affinity for water, and when it is rolled over the plate it adheres only to the dry parts of the gelatin, and in the press is carried to the paper in all the lights and shades of the illustration. The plate is kept moist in printing.

The paper used for printing from photogelatin plates must be free from chemicals that will affect the gelatin. A nearly pure rag paper is generally used.