The Building of a Book Part 8

Since then hundreds of rotary presses have been made for magazine and book printing, most of them equipped with attachments for folding the sheets as they are printed, and all having a high rate of speed. C.

B. Cottrell & Co. have made many rotary presses for magazine printing, most of which deliver the sheets flat, without folding, and most of them made to suit some predetermined size or sizes of sheets or pages.

In the evolution of the printing press there are three sharply defined stages: first, the flat impression surface and the flat printing surface, requiring the exertion of all of the impressing power upon the entire surfaces; second, the cylindrical impression surface and the flat printing surface, requiring the exertion of all of the impressing power upon only a narrow line or a small portion of the printing surface; third, a cylindrical impression surface and a cylindrical printing surface, still further reducing the area upon which all the impressing power is exerted.

Just as the second stage has, particularly for book-work, virtually superseded the first, so the third is destined to supersede the second. It is only an adaptation of the means to the ends. The mechanical principles of the rotary press are, in fact, simpler than those of the flat-bed cylinder press, and it may be said that so far as the purely mechanical part of the press is concerned, they have been fully developed, but much still remains to be done in other directions. The variety in the sizes of the pages of different books, the smallness of the editions, and the fact that the finer grades of paper, especially coated paper, cannot be obtained in roll form, are obstacles to be removed. As most book forms are electrotyped for flat-bed presses, and as it requires but little additional expense to curve the plates, this one item is not much of an obstacle to overcome. It is, however, still difficult to curve the plates perfectly, and the pressmen, even if they can produce excellent work from flat-bed presses, require considerable training if they have had no experience on rotary presses. All these difficulties are sure to be overcome in time.

PRINTING INK

By James A. Ullman.

The process of making printing ink consists of grinding a pigment, black, white, or colored, into a suitable varnish. The pigment is that const.i.tuent which makes the impression visible, while the varnish is the vehicle which carries the pigment during the operation of grinding and during its distribution on the press to the type, from the type to the paper, and ultimately binds it to the paper.

A complete factory for the production of printing ink consequently consists of three distinct plants,--one for the production of the varnishes, one for the manufacture of the pigments, and one for the grinding of the pigments into the varnishes.

Roughly speaking, the varnishes are divided into three cla.s.ses, the first and second of which are the varnishes proper, _i.e._ the resin and the linseed varnishes, while the third cla.s.s consists of dryers, etc., whose purpose is to influence the drying and consistency of the inks.

Taking up first the proper varnishes, we find that these are produced by the destructive distillation of resin in huge cast-iron stills. By this process, the solid resin of colophony is split up into water, various resinic acids or naphthas, and resin oils of various specific gravities and consistencies, all of which are separated from each other into separate containers which are ready to receive them. As one distillation is not sufficient to purify the resin oils from the water and acid, which would not only give the resulting ink an obnoxious odor but be detrimental to type, plates, etc., the distillation is repeated a number of times until the oils become perfectly pure. The grades of varnishes made from these resin oils are used for the cheaper cla.s.ses of printing inks, not only on account of their lower cost, but because they are more suitable for the cla.s.s of work for which such inks are used.

The linseed varnishes are made by boiling refined linseed oils at a very high temperature. The linseed oil loses its acrid elements by volatilization, and gradually becomes thick and viscous, the various "numbers" or consistencies of these varnishes being dependent upon the length of time during which the oil is subjected to the process, and to the temperature applied.

The dryers are made by adding to the linseed oil during the boiling, suitable oxidizing agents, such as compounds of lead or manganese, by means of which the oil is chemically affected, _i.e._ it is oxidized.

Such dryers, when added to printing ink, attracts the oxygen of the air and transfer it by catalytic action to the varnish of the ink, thus causing it to oxidize more rapidly, or to become, as it is commonly called, dry.

Having disposed of the manufacture of the varnishes and dryers, we now come to the manufacture of pigments. This is such a large field that it can be only cursorily covered within the limits of a short article.

The pigments are of many kinds and cla.s.ses. The blacks alone would form a large chapter by themselves; yet all of them consist of carbon, produced by the combustion of hydrocarbons of various kinds, and according to their origin they are the so-called carbon blacks, lamp blacks, spirit blacks, oil blacks, Frankfort blacks, etc., each of which has its distinct and peculiar properties and value for its specific purpose.

The other pigments fall naturally into two divisions,--chemical colors and the so-called "lakes." The chemical colors are in general of mineral origin, produced by the action of one chemical upon the other, or in some cases by physical or chemical action upon earths and ores.

In the first group, we have such colors as vermilions, white lead, chrome yellows, the ferrocyanide blues (Milori blues, bronze blues, Prussian blues, Chinese blues, Antwerp blues, Paris blues, Berlin blues), ultramarines, etc.; in the second group, such colors as cyanides, umbers, Indian red, and many others.

The lakes are princ.i.p.ally formed by the use of coal-tar derivatives, and are usually incorrectly grouped as anilines. They are produced by precipitating water-soluble dyes upon a suitable substratum or base.

Their shades, strength, brilliancy, permanency, and working qualities are dependent upon the nature of the dye itself, upon the nature and percentage of the substratum or base, and also upon the suitable selection and manipulation of the precipitating agents. This cla.s.s of colors is to-day by far the most important of all, since through great progress made in chemistry in recent years, it is possible to make them of the greatest possible strength and permanency, together with a brilliancy of shade which was for many years an ideal earnestly striven for, but apparently impossible to accomplish.

Having thus considered the products which are the princ.i.p.al raw materials of printing ink, we now come to the ink itself. Being provided with all the varnishes, pigments, dryers, etc., of suitable qualities and shades, it is necessary to combine them in proper proportions, after selecting such as will be mutually compatible, and to grind them to the utmost fineness. The machinery to accomplish this purpose consists, first, of mixers, in which the ingredients are thoroughly incorporated with each other. This being done, the resulting mixture or "pulp," as it is called, is ground upon mills formed of rollers or cylinders, which are set in close contact by means of screws and made to revolve by power. Between these rollers the pulp is pa.s.sed again and again, the number of times being dependent upon the consistency of the ink and the nature of the pigments, until it is ground or comminuted to the utmost fineness. The result is printing ink as it is known to the printer, varying in consistency, strength, intensity, permanency, brilliancy, drying, and other working qualities, according to the nature of the various varnishes, dryers, and pigments with which it is made.

THE PRINTER'S ROLLER

By Albert S. Burlingham.

Notwithstanding the fact that no one thing connected with the art of printing has done more toward the advancement of that art than the simple inking appliance familiarly and commonly known as "the printer's roller,"--without which, indeed, the evolution of the power printing press from the primitive hand machines of the fathers would not have been possible,--it is an inexplicable truth that historians and encyclopaedia makers who have made investigation of the origin and progress of the art seem to have attached so little of importance to the invention or introduction of the composition roller that only meagre and casual reference is made to it. Even its predecessor, the "ink-ball," receives but scant courtesy at the hands of these chroniclers, for while they enter into the minutest detail (and properly so) in investigating as to whom the world is indebted for the idea of movable types and the invention of the printing press, they have not thought it worth their while to rescue from oblivion the suggester or adapter or constructor--whatever he may have been--of the device by which those types were inked to receive the impression from that press, and without which neither types nor press would have been of any avail.

It seems to be established beyond doubt, however, that the first suggestion of a roller to take the place of the ink-b.a.l.l.s in applying ink to type forms was that of William Nicholson, with whom, also, the idea of the cylinder press originated, in 1790. He recognized the fact that no power press on the cylinder principle could be of practical use without an inking apparatus different from the primitive ink-b.a.l.l.s. These were hollowed-out blocks of beech, mounted with a handle, the cavity stuffed with wool and covered with untanned sheepskin which had been well trodden until it was soft and pliable.

The early printing presses were made of wood, and two men were required to work a press--one to make the impressions and one to ink the forms with the b.a.l.l.s. The ink was contained in a receptacle called the ink-table. It was enclosed on three sides, and was attached firmly to one post, or cheek, of the press, on which were the racks for holding the ink-b.a.l.l.s when not in use. A beechen implement, resembling somewhat our potato masher, and called the "brayer," was used to manipulate the ink as it lay on the table; an iron shovel, known as the "slicer," being used to portion out from the ma.s.s of ink such quant.i.ties as were needed from time to time for the brayer.

It required much strength to manipulate the ink-b.a.l.l.s properly, and thus it was a man's work. Taking up ink with them from the table, the operator vigorously beat the b.a.l.l.s together with a rolling movement, turning them a little at a time so as to make the ink cover the entire surface and distribute it perfectly thereon. Then the type-forms were beaten with them until they were properly inked. The work of printing off an edition was divided between the two men, one manipulating the ink-b.a.l.l.s for an hour, and then taking his turn at the press, while for the next hour his fellow-workman attended to the inking.

William Nicholson, seeing at once that the idea of a cylinder press could never be worked out to practical perfection with such a process of inking as that, built up an inking roller with manifold layers of cloth, which he covered with the trodden sheep-pelt surface used in the ink-b.a.l.l.s, the distribution of the ink on the roller to be made by contact with a revolving cylinder of wood. The idea was there, but that it would have had the intended result was never known, for although Nicholson's press contained nearly all the principles on which the cylinder presses of our day are constructed, it lacked one vital feature--the attaching of the type-forms to the cylinders--and was consequently not of any practical use.

The Earl of Stanhope, who, in 1798, invented the first iron frame and "platen" press, with the improvement of levers in addition to screws to give the impression, coupled with his object Nicholson's idea of an inking roller or revolving cylinder. He spent large sums in trying to find a substance that he could utilize for that purpose. He investigated with the skins of many animals, domestic and wild, and tanned and dressed in various ways. Different textures of cloth and varieties of silk were used, but without success. The seam that was necessary down the entire length of the roller was one great impediment to success, and even if that could have been overcome, the proper softness and pliability of surface for receiving and depositing the ink evenly and smoothly on the type could not be obtained from any of the processes experimented with; and Stanhope's improvement in printing presses was still subject to the inconvenience of the ancient ink-b.a.l.l.s.

In 1807 a printer named Maxwell made a sheepskin roller which he introduced into Philadelphia. It failed of success, and the printers returned to the ink-b.a.l.l.s. This Maxwell roller was reintroduced by Fanshaw, a New York printer, in 1815, but the printers of that city rejected it.

The inventors in England were still busily engaged in trying to solve the problem of the cylinder press that Nicholson had more than suggested in 1790, and the one great obstacle to success was the absence of a proper substance for supplying the need of an inking roller, the difficulty of the type and cylinder having been overcome by the invention of the "turtle" form. In 1813 a man whose name one historian gives as B. Foster, another as T. B. Foster, and to whom another refers as "Forster, an ingenious printer, employed by S.

Hamilton, at Weymouth, England," one day visited the Staffords.h.i.+re pottery. In a coloring process in use there Forster, or Foster, noticed a peculiar composition that covered the surface of the potter's "dabber." It was moist, pliable, and elastic. The historians do not say so, but we may well imagine that this "ingenious printer,"

seeing in that composition what he believed to be the long-sought substance that would do away with the sheep pelt as an inking device, with all that implied to the progress of the art of printing, must have awaited with feelings of acute anxiety the answer of the potter to his query as to what that composition was.

And what was it? "Glue and treacle,"--two of the simplest of articles, and the easiest to obtain. The printer experimented with them, and although he was the first to put to practical use in the art of printing the thing that revolutionized it and advanced it to its present state of wonderful perfection, yet so far as the printed chronicle of him goes, we do not know what his Christian name was, or whether his surname was Foster or Forster; and one chronicler states that it was in 1813, and another that it was in 1815, that he discovered roller composition to his fellow-printers.

The collateral evidence, however, is to the effect that it was in 1813. Forster (admitting that to have been his name), proved the availability of glue and mola.s.ses as an inking surface, not by using it in the form of a roller, but by coating a canvas with it, and using the canvas thus prepared in place of the sheep pelt on inking b.a.l.l.s.

From this the press inventors got the idea of coating a wooden cylinder with the composition. Applegath & Cowper, inventors of the Applegath cylinder press, were the first to adapt it in roller form, and for a time held a patent on the use of it; but the courts of England decided that there could be no patent on the composition, and subst.i.tutes for the manufacture of rollers having been devised which were no infringement on Applegath & Cowper's moulds, the compound came into open use, and Koenig, who had so improved and perfected Nicholson's ideas and plans for a power cylinder press, was able, in 1814, by the adaptation of the glue and mola.s.ses roller, to print the first edition of a newspaper that was ever run from a cylinder press--the historic edition of _The London Times_. The problem of the inking apparatus solved, there was no longer any limit to the exercise of inventive genius in the advancement of the printing art; and it is, therefore, to the printer's roller, more than to any one thing, that that art owes its wonderful preeminence to-day.

There is no record in any of the histories of printing, or in encyclopaedias, of who it was that introduced the composition roller into use in this country, or any reference to the date when it came into service. De Vinne, in his "Typographia," published in 1876, says that ink-b.a.l.l.s were in use here "fifty years ago," or in 1826; but it must have been only in isolated and out-of-the-way rural printing offices, for it can hardly be supposed that Yankee "go-aheadativeness"

would have failed to recognize at once the importance of the discovery, or have long delayed its general adoption, although the hand press, with many improvements, remained the universal printing machine in the United States until 1822, when the Treadwell power press gave the first impulse to more rapid printing. The Treadwell was not a cylinder press, but its invention would have been of no consequence without the composition roller. It is certain, however, that more than sixty years ago the melting pot and roller mould had become an important adjunct to every rural printing office, and the making of a new roller was an event in the routine of the establishment. The orthodox mixture for the composition in the printing office where the writer of this was the "devil" forty-seven years ago was "a pint of sugar-house mola.s.ses to every pound of the best glue, with a tablespoonful of tar to every three pints and three pounds." And that was the customary composition of that day among country printers.

There is a tradition among printers and roller-makers that the first roller turned out in this country was moulded in a stove pipe; but whether it was or not, and no matter who the first roller-maker might have been, it is a fact that the advance in the art of roller-making has had to be rapid in order to keep pace with the vast improvements in the cylinder press which the first composition called into use, and the old-fas.h.i.+oned glue and mola.s.ses rollers would be now of no more service to them than would the primitive ink-b.a.l.l.s which the roller replaced. A comparison between the mode of making a roller in the early days of the business and the methods in use to-day will be of interest.

In the old days the composition was cooked in a caldron over a coal fire, with water between two jackets to make the steam that forced the melting. The cast-iron moulds were placed near a stove to give them the necessary warmth of inner surface, a warm mould being required to give a good "face" to the roller in the casting. While cooking, the composition was constantly stirred with a stick to a.s.sist in the proper a.s.similation of the ingredients. After it had reached the proper stage, it was strained from the melting kettle into pouring kettles, similar to ordinary milk pails. The composition was poured from the top. Naturally, this let into the moulds, with the composition, the air bubbles and froth that were always present, which caused imperfections in the rollers. After pouring, it was necessary to let the moulds stand all night, so the composition might become sufficiently cool to permit the "drawing" of the rollers. This was effected by placing a stick against the iron journal at one end of the roller core and pus.h.i.+ng until the roller was forced out of the mould.

But the roller factory of to-day is quite a different affair. Instead of separate moulds standing about a stove to get ready for the pouring, there are moulds in nests, or cylinders, resembling a Gatling gun, or a tubular boiler. There will perhaps be twenty roller moulds in a nest. The cylinders are balanced in the centre on journals, thus enabling the workman to place them at any angle desired, for purposes of oiling the moulds and loading them with the roller cores. The cylinders have hot and cold water contact, by which they may be surrounded by either at will. To warm the moulds the cylinder is put in an upright position, and hot water circulated about it the required length of time.

The composition--which is something more than the old-time glue and mola.s.ses--is prepared for pouring by melting in a double-jacketed steam kettle, the stirring being done by a mixer run by steam power.

When ready, the composition is drawn off from the bottom of the cooking kettles into pouring kettles which have air-tight hoods. To these a hose is attached, the other end of the hose being connected with a tank which is charged with air by a pump. The hose being then attached to the cylinder, the air is introduced from the tank into the pouring kettle, forcing the composition upward into the cylinder, and all air from the moulds. This insures a perfect roller.

When the composition has reached the top of the roller stocks, the valve at the bottom of the cylinder is closed, and the process is continued to the next cylinder ready for pouring. The cooling of the cylinders is effected by turning the cold water current around them, and a nest of moulds may be filled and emptied four or five times a day. After the cooling, the bottom plate of the cylinder is removed; the rollers drop out, are trimmed, and are ready for the s.h.i.+pping box.

THE ILl.u.s.tRATOR

By Charles D. Williams.

It is only in comparatively modern times that the art of ill.u.s.tration has received the encouragement that makes for perfection. For this, the cheapening of the manufacturing cost in printing is mainly responsible. An ill.u.s.tration proper should always accompany text and in days past the making of a book was so costly in itself that the possibility of ill.u.s.tration was almost beyond thought. Only the wealthy could afford ill.u.s.trated books and as their reading was very limited, naturally ill.u.s.tration was crowded to the wall. Those with money to spend on pictures preferred decorations or portraits, consequently the endeavors of artists were aimed at supplying what suited the tastes of buyers. Ill.u.s.tration is and always has been the art of the people. It makes clearer to the imagination their stories and their songs, it mirrors their manner of life, interests, and pursuits in a way that brightens what would otherwise often be commonplace.

Art seems to entwine itself about the strongest figures in a community, absorbing with its nourishment the ethical qualities of the leader. Thus we have Michael Angelo in a community ruled by the church, creating, at its demands, a "Day of Judgment," a "Magdalen at the Cross," a "Moses," and Velasquez, evolving a marvellous technique while immortalizing in wonderful portraits the vanity of his Spanish lords.

So that at the present day, with the people in ascendency, what is more probable than the perfect development of the art which most appeals to their tastes? Every day, artists of the highest intelligence find in ill.u.s.tration an opportunity to give the best that is in them, and the chances that ill.u.s.tration will reach the heights of perfection attained by other branches of art are exceedingly good.

The opportunities for an ill.u.s.trator are without end, and the problems are beyond number. It is a difficult performance to hand out, to order, pictures in which human emotions stand counterfeited. In the fact that ill.u.s.tration springs from and stands with the written tale and must finally serve its proper place between board covers, the man who labors at it finds some of his work already finished for him by the author. But it is a saving that tantalizes more than it a.s.sists.