THE ENGRAVING-ROOM.
The little party was now shown into a very long room, at one end of which was ranged a row of compartments like sentry-boxes. In each of these sat a silent engraver, bent over the small square of steel upon which he was cutting some part of the design for paper money or stamps. The plates from which the stamps were formerly printed are the property of the government, so that the old designs, with a slight modification, are still in use. This modification consists of a trefoil mark placed in the upper corner of the new stamps, which will serve to distinguish them from the old issues printed by the American Bank-note Company. The work of the engravers is necessarily so painstaking and slow that the original dies are considered too expensive to use in the printing-presses. Thus, after the engraver has completed a die, it is subjected to a hardening process, and the design multiplied indefinitely upon soft steel plates by what is known as the transfer-press. The children were shown a long row of these presses, as well as the great vaults where all the designs, dies, and plates are locked up after the day's work. From the silence of the engravers' department they were led into the din and clatter of the press-room below. Here they found the new steam-presses as well as old-fashioned hand-presses in operation, and were able to see every detail of the actual printing of stamps.
TAKING SHEETS OFF THE PRESSES.
The hand-presses are worked by a plate-printer and one assistant, the printer first inking and polishing the engraved plate over a series of small gas-jets, after which it is placed on the press. His assistant now lays a dampened sheet of paper upon the plate, the printer gives the press a turn, and a sheet of bright new stamps is drawn out at the other side. This work is done quickly and accurately, but it is a very slow process compared with that of the steam-presses, which turn out sheets of four hundred stamps each at the rate of one hundred thousand stamps an hour. The steam-presses carry four plates on an endless chain around the sides of a large square, in the circuit of which the plates are automatically heated to the proper temperature, inked, wiped off, and printed. The blank paper is laid on the plates by one assistant, while a second helper takes out the printed sheet. The printer in charge of the press has the most difficult part of the work, which consists in polishing the plate with his bare palms after it has been mechanically inked. This must be done so delicately as to leave neither too much nor too little ink upon the plate, but only just enough to give a clean, fine impression.
The presses clattered and clanked, and the children watched with breathless interest while a great stack of the dampened paper disappeared rapidly, sheet by sheet, through the press, reappearing again to be stacked in a second neat pile in the form of thousands upon thousands of new red two-cent stamps.
Besides the ordinary issues, the young investigators were much interested in seeing the printing of revenue stamps, of the long-strip stamps for cigar-boxes, and other tobacco stamps, and particularly the new two-cent stamps for playing-cards.
Having watched to their entire satisfaction the various movements of the great presses, the children began to feel that the object of their visit had been realized, and that there was nothing more to see. They were therefore somewhat surprised to learn that the printing of the stamps is merely the beginning of the work upon them, and that a number of very important things must happen to these small squares of red, blue, brown, and purple before they are ready to be sold through the little window in the post-office. After they are printed the sheets must be dried and pressed out, gummed, dried and pressed again, the sheets perforated and cut apart, trimmed, and, in addition, carefully counted before and after each of these operations.
In the early days of postage-stamps, and for several years after they first came into use, two serious difficulties presented themselves—i.e., the gumming and separating of the stamps. For a time a thick muddy mucilage was used, which curled up the sheets in a very inconvenient way. Then, again, before the ingenious device of perforation was hit upon, it was necessary to cut the stamps apart with a pair of scissors. Imagine a post-master in these busy days supplying his customers by the scissors method!