Paul and the Printing Press

by Sara Ware Bassett

Mr. Hawley paused.

"In addition to this department," he presently continued, "is the room where the plates for the color section of the paper are prepared. After the drawing for the pictures is made, it is outlined on a block of metal and afterward cut out, so that the design remains in relief; then the impression is taken with colored inks, a separate printing being made for each color in turn, except where the colors are permitted to fuse before they dry in order to produce a secondary tone. You doubtless have seen the lithograph process and know how the first printing colors all the parts of the picture that are red, for example; the next impression prints the blue parts; and the third those that are green."

"Yes, I've seen posters printed."

"Then you know how the work is done."

"And it is for printing this colored supplement that the color-decks at each end of the big press are used?"

"Precisely. We often run these colored sections of the Sunday edition off some weeks in advance, as they are independent parts of the paper and need not necessarily be turned out at the last moment as the news sections must."

"I see."

"We also have our designing rooms for the drawing of fashion pictures, and the illustrations to accompany advertisements. All that is a department in itself, and a most interesting branch of the work. These cuts are prepared on sheets of metal and are cast and printed as the rest of the paper is; they are set into the forms and stereotyped by the same method as the printed matter. When we want reproductions from photographs we have a photo-engraving department where by means of a very powerful electric light we can reproduce pictures of all sorts; pen-drawings, facsimiles of old prints, photographs, and every variety of picture imaginable. These are developed on a sheet of metal instead of on a glass plate and then reproduced."

"That is the way you get the fine picture sheets that you enjoy so much, Paul," put in Mr. Wright.

"The photo-engraving took the place of the woodcut," Mr. Hawley explained. "The process has been constantly improved until now we are able to get wonderfully artistic results."