IIIIIUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIItllllllllllllllllllllMltlltlllllllllllllllilJ 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS M. HAMS 
 
 miiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 
 
OP/8C5 
 
e Book- Lovers Library. 
 
 Edited by 
 Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A. 
 
MODERN METHODS 
 
 OF 
 
 I ILLUSTRATING BOOKS 
 
 BY 
 
 H. TRUEMAN WOOD, M.A., 
 
 SECRETARY TO THE SOCIETY OF ARTS. 
 
 r 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW 
 1886 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/modernmethodsofiOOwood 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HE progress which has recently 
 been made in the different arts 
 by which books can be illustrated 
 does not appear to be very generally or 
 widely known. My object in writing this 
 little treatise has been to place such in- 
 formation on the subject as I could get 
 together at the disposal of all those who 
 are interested in the production of books, 
 a large and ever-increasing public. 
 
 I have endeavoured to avoid giving 
 technical details, except such as were 
 necessary to make description intelligible. 
 With a view of helping those who require 
 f idler or moj'e special information than 
 the plan of the book pennits, I have added 
 in an Appendix a list of a few works — 
 
vi 
 
 Preface. 
 
 not a bibliography, or an attempt at one 
 — where the best information I know of 
 can be obtained. 
 
 I have tried to indicate zvith what 
 clearness I could the resources which are 
 available for book illustration, and to 
 show which of the various processes at 
 the disposal of an author it is best for 
 him to employ for any particular purpose. 
 
 In describing so many and such varied 
 processes, I can hardly hope to have escaped 
 falling into some errors, especially as in- 
 formation is not ahvays available. Very 
 many processes, and especially the most 
 recent, are worked in secret, and there are 
 thus two difficulties in the way of full 
 description : first, that the information is 
 sometimes not accessible ; and, secondly, 
 that when it is accessible, it often cannot 
 be published without unfair interference 
 with private rights or trade privileges. 
 Still, I believe most of the information 
 contained in the follozving pages is ac- 
 
Preface. 
 
 vii 
 
 curate, and I shall always be obliged to 
 anybody who will point out mistakes. 
 
 The zvork would never have been done 
 if I had not received a great deal of help 
 froin many friends. Several firms, who 
 make a business of producing printing 
 blocks, have most kindly thrown their 
 workshops open to me ; others, again, 
 have supplied me with valuable informa- 
 tion, under limitations as to its use. I 
 cannot thank all my helpers by name, but 
 there are two friends zvhom I must 
 specially mention, Mr. Thomas Bolas, 
 whose kind advice and suggestions have 
 never been wanting whenever I asked his 
 opinion, and indeed without whose assist- 
 ance the book would probably never have 
 been written at all ; and Mr. William 
 Simpson, the well-known artist of the 
 "Illustrated London News," who placed 
 the experience gained by early training as 
 a lithographic draughtsman unreservedly 
 at my disposal. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chapter I. The Older Processes of 
 
 Book Illustration . . i 
 II. Illustrations by Direct 
 
 Photographic Methods . 21 
 iii. woodburytype and stanno- 
 
 TYPE 37 
 
 IV. Collotype and Photolitho- 
 graphy 46 
 
 V. Methods of Producing 
 
 Surface Blocks . . 83 
 VI. Methods of Producing 
 
 Surface Blocks {continued), 103 
 VII. Production of Type-blocks 
 
 from Half-Ton e Negatives i 32 
 VIII. Production of Type-blocks 
 from Half-Tone Negatives 
 {continued) . . . .150 
 IX. Production of Type-blocks 
 from Half-Tone Negatives 
 {continued) . . . .163 
 X. Photographic Methods of 
 
 Producing Intaglio Plates 183 
 XI. Photogravure . . .191 
 XII. Mechanical Processes . .212 
 
 Appendix I. Preparation of Drawings 
 
 for Reproduction . . 234 
 
 II. Books of Reference . . 238 
 
 Index 241 
 
MODERN METHODS 
 
 OF 
 
 ILLUSTRATING BOOKS. 
 
 — K§)oOo@»<— 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 The Older Processes of Book 
 Illustration. 
 
 EFORE attempting to describe the 
 modern processes of book illustra- 
 \ tion, it may be well, for the sake 
 of those not conversant with the subject, to 
 say a few words about the older methods. 
 The older processes by which illustrations for 
 books were, and are, produced, may for our 
 present purposes be considered under three 
 heads: ist, Engravings, printed from an 
 intaglio plate ; 2nd, Woodcuts, printed from 
 
 1 
 
2 Copper-plate Engraving. 
 
 the surface of a relief block ; 3rd, Litho- 
 graphs, printed from a stone or other smooth 
 surface. 
 
 As the modern reproductive processes, as 
 they are termed, are one and all methods of 
 producing, by cheaper or more rapid means, 
 printing surfaces similar to those produced 
 in the older systems by the manual labour 
 of the artist, it will be necessary, for a com- 
 plete, if but a summary, treatment of the 
 subject, to state at all events the main prin- 
 ciples of these three systems of printing. 
 Those readers to whom the processes are 
 familiar must forgive the employment of a 
 few pages in such a fashion. Those who 
 desire further information must refer to 
 special works on the subject. The titles 
 of some of them will be found in an 
 Appendix. 1 
 
 Engravings are printed from a smooth 
 plate, generally of copper or steel, on which 
 the design has been incised in fine lines 
 or stipple. The plate, after being inked, is 
 carefully wiped, so that the ink remains 
 1 See Appendix ii. 
 
E tclting. 
 
 3 
 
 only in the lines, and is removed from the 
 surface, which is left perfectly clean. When 
 the paper is forced down upon the plate 
 by the action of the press, it takes up the 
 ink from the lines of the design, the plain 
 portions of the plate which are not charged 
 with ink not leaving any marks upon the 
 paper, and consequently forming the whites 
 of the finished picture. The design is pro- 
 duced in various ways. The artist may (in 
 copper-plate engraving) incise the lines with 
 a graver, or he may (in etching) merely 
 trace them on the plate, and afterwards 
 cause them to be eaten into the surface by 
 the action of an acid ; or he may (in the 
 mezzotint process) employ a plate the whole 
 surface of which has been roughened, so 
 that it will hold ink and consequently print 
 black, and on this plate he may scrape out 
 smooth patches which will retain no ink, 
 and will therefore print white. Also he may 
 employ two, or all three, of these methods 
 combined. 
 
 In etching, the smooth prepared plate 
 is covered with a thin film of material 
 
4 Etching, 
 
 capable of protecting it from the action 
 of the acid, and also of such a nature as 
 easily to allow lines to be traced through 
 it upon the surface of the plate. On the 
 completion of the design the plate is placed 
 in a bath of acid, and those parts of the 
 plate which are protected by the " etching 
 ground" are not acted upon by the acid, 
 while the metal exposed by the removal 
 of the ground is etched by it, and the 
 lines originally traced on its surface are 
 " bitten " in. By careful manipulation, 
 covering certain portions of the design 
 with varnish, where the process has gone 
 sufficiently far, and returning the plate to 
 the bath so that other portions may receive 
 longer treatment and consequently be more 
 deeply bitten, the required effects are pro- 
 duced, and deeper or shallower lines formed, 
 as may be required. An account, however, 
 of the precise method by which the etcher 
 produces his delightful results would be 
 foreign to our present purpose. The above 
 brief description must therefore suffice. 
 The earliest engravings were on copper. 
 
Wood-engraving. 
 
 5 
 
 Then steel came into use. The invention 
 of aderage, the deposition by electro-plating 
 of a film of steel on the copper, gave at once 
 the benefit of both metals. Engravings are 
 now always made on copper, which being 
 softer is much easier to work, and the 
 finished plate is steeled, so that a hard 
 surface is given to it. When the plate 
 shows signs of wear, the process of acierage 
 is repeated. 
 
 In printing from wood blocks, exactly 
 the converse action takes place from that 
 of plate-printing. It is the ink from the 
 surface of the block which is transferred 
 to the paper and forms the print, the incised 
 parts or hollows being made sufficiently 
 deep to prevent the ink in them, when any 
 ink gets into them, from reaching the paper. 
 Naturally the ink is for the most part de- 
 livered by the roller on the surface only of 
 the block. The presses also in which the two 
 processes are carried on are of a different 
 character. The plate is passed under a roller, 
 and the rolling pressure helps to force the 
 paper down into the lines of the engraving, 
 
6 
 
 Wood-engraving. 
 
 while the block is printed in a type press, 
 and receives a steady uniform pressure. It 
 is therefore not so difficult to understand 
 why in one case the ink is transferred from 
 the incised lines of the drawing, while in 
 the other the surface only is the printing 
 medium, the hollows of the block being 
 inoperative. 
 
 In practice the wood blocks themselves 
 are not generally used, an electrotype 
 serving in place of the original wood, 
 which is kept merely as a model from which 
 other electrotypes — as many as are required 
 — can be produced. Except in the case 
 of illustrations set up in pages of type, 
 when a cast of the whole page is taken, 
 the cheaper but coarser process of stereo- 
 typing is not often used for the repro- 
 duction of woodcuts for book illustration. 
 The great advantage of surface blocks, 
 whether produced by wood-engraving or 
 by one of the processes to be hereafter 
 described, is of course that they are printed 
 by one and the self-same process as the 
 book itself. When a picture is wanted to 
 
Lithography. 
 
 7 
 
 illustrate the text, in nine cases out of ten 
 it is a surface block that does the work. 
 
 The third process, lithography, might al- 
 most claim a place among modern methods, 
 had our line been drawn but a few years 
 further back. It differs entirely from either 
 of the processes above described. It may 
 be said to rely for its success on the mutual 
 antipathy of grease and water. A wet stone 
 will not hold greasy matter, and a greasy 
 stone will not hold water. If therefore 
 a design be drawn in greasy ink upon a 
 properly smoothed and prepared stone, and 
 the stone, after a very slight " etching" 
 with an acid solution, be then wetted, the 
 inked parts of the stone will not take up 
 water, and the wet parts of the stone will 
 not take up ink. The stone may therefore 
 be rolled upon with a suitable roller charged 
 with ink, and ink will only be transferred to 
 the lines of the design, the wetted parts of 
 the stone remaining clean. The design 
 may then be printed off upon paper by 
 a suitable press. Further, the design, in- 
 stead of being drawn direct upon the stone, 
 
8 Lithography. 
 
 may be drawn in lithographic ink upon 
 paper suitably prepared, and known as 
 " transfer " paper. This is laid down on 
 the stone, and the two passed through the 
 press. After the application of pressure, 
 the paper can be stripped off, leaving the 
 design upon the stone. It may be men- 
 tioned that this is, for those who can draw, 
 by far the cheapest method of producing 
 illustrations, provided the illustrations re- 
 quired are mere outline sketches, diagrams, 
 or the like. The finest work must not be 
 expected from a process of this nature. 
 
 The drawing on the stone is done either 
 with ink, applied by a brush or a pen of 
 special construction, or by crayons, which 
 are composed of much the same materials 
 as the ink, but in a solid form. When ink 
 is used the stone is perfectly smooth, but 
 for crayon drawing the stone is " grained," 
 that is to say, it has a " tooth " given to it 
 by grinding with fine sand, so that it may 
 take the chalk. Drawings of an artistic 
 character are generally done in chalk, the 
 pen and the brush being also employed to a 
 
Transfer Process. 
 
 9 
 
 certain extent. In outline drawings, diagrams 
 and work of a similar class, the pen is 
 principally employed, as it is of course for 
 the ordinary run of commercial lithography. 
 
 Transfer paper is paper coated with gela- 
 tine, starch, gum, or similar material, the 
 use of the coating being to prevent the ink 
 sinking into the paper, so that it may leave 
 it for the stone, when the paper is forced 
 into close contact therewith. For those 
 unaccustomed to its use, transfer paper is 
 by no means easy to work upon, and for 
 this reason many varieties of it have been 
 made, intended to lessen the differences 
 between it and ordinary paper. These, 
 however, are principally intended to enable 
 persons to write letters in their own hand- 
 writing, which can be transferred to stone, 
 and printed direct — an application of litho- 
 graphy which does not concern us here. 
 
 Whether the drawing be made upon the 
 stone or transferred to it, the after processes 
 are the same. The stone is lightly washed 
 over with an acid solution of gum. This 
 process is known as "etching," but as a 
 
10 
 
 Zincography, 
 
 matter of fact there is scarcely any true 
 etching action at all, the real use of the acid 
 being to render the uncovered parts of the 
 stone more repellent of water; the " gum- 
 ming " also tending in the same direction. 
 
 The lithographic press differs from that 
 used either for ordinary surface printing or 
 for plate printing. The stone with the 
 paper on it is drawn under a fixed scraper, 
 the paper being protected by a material of 
 a partly flexible nature, such as leather. In 
 some presses, however, a roller is substituted 
 for the scraper. A great deal of lithography 
 is now done by steam, though the product 
 of the steam press is naturally inferior to 
 that turned out by a skilful hand. 
 
 Zincography may be considered as merely 
 another form of lithography, the processes 
 in the two cases being almost identical, 
 except that a smoothed plate of zinc is 
 substituted for the stone. The power 
 possessed by the zinc of thus taking a 
 drawing in fatty ink, either direct or by 
 the transfer process, is of the utmost im- 
 portance for the manufacture of " process " 
 
CJiromolithography. 1 1 
 
 blocks, or substitutes for wood blocks, as 
 we shall see when we come to consider that 
 portion of our subject, many of the most 
 useful methods depending entirely upon it. 
 
 Chromolithography, or printing in colours 
 by lithography, is effected by a number of 
 successive printings, . one for each colour. 
 To enable each colour to be placed in its 
 proper place on its own stone, a "key-stone" 
 is prepared, which gives the outlines of the 
 picture, and shows where each colour comes. 
 From this stone a number of transfers are 
 taken and laid down on each of the colour 
 stones, the transfer being of such a nature 
 that it is easily removed as soon as its object 
 has been attained. The key-stone itself 
 may be printed from or not, according as 
 the design requires. In the printing of 
 maps, one of the most frequent applications 
 of chromolithography to book illustration, 
 the black outline serves for the key-stone, 
 and is printed first, the light tints of colour 
 being printed afterwards, over the black ; 
 in other cases the black may be printed last; 
 in others, again, it is omitted altogether. 
 
1 2 Chromoxylography. 
 
 To insure correct register, various devices 
 are employed, so that the different colours 
 may all come in precisely their proper relative 
 position. Similar marks may be made on all 
 the stones, and the paper accurately laid to 
 them, or pins may be set in corresponding 
 positions on all the stones, so that when 
 pin-holes made for the purpose are placed 
 over them, the paper will fall into its proper 
 place. 
 
 It may be worth mention that a slightly 
 larger number of tints than one for each 
 stone may be produced, since varied effects 
 are obtained by printing one colour on the 
 top of another. 
 
 Chromolithography is the process usually 
 employed when coloured illustrations are 
 desired for a book, but coloured pictures 
 may also be produced by the much older 
 device of successive printings from wood 
 blocks. When the sketches are simple in 
 character, and thin flat washes of colour 
 are only required, block printing gives ex- 
 cellent and artistic results. 
 
 The processes of lithography have been 
 
Early Engravings, 1 3 
 
 described in slightly greater detail than was 
 thought necessary for either surface or plate 
 printing, because, firstly, it is probable that 
 they are less generally known, except to 
 those who have special knowledge of such 
 matters; and, secondly, because some famili- 
 arity with them is necessary before it is 
 possible to understand the more recent 
 processes for the manufacture of pictures. 
 Many of those processes, whatever may be 
 their ultimate result, a surface block, an 
 intaglio plate, or a lithographic printing 
 surface, at one stage or other call in the aid 
 of lithography or zincography. 
 
 All the three methods, copper-plate en- 
 graving, wood-engraving, and lithography, 
 have had their turn as the principal means 
 of illustrating books. At the close of the 
 last century and in the early part of this, 
 books were, as was often stated on their 
 title-pages, " embellished with numerous 
 copper-plate engravings." When it was 
 desired to make some permanent pictorial 
 record of passing events, the same means 
 was employed. Going still further back, we 
 
14 Copper-plate Illustrations. 
 
 find that the wars of the Grand Monarque, 
 Louis XIV., were illustrated by copper- 
 plates, and from that date till the invention 
 of lithography at the beginning of the 
 century, when any illustration of importance 
 was to be brought out, whether for a book 
 or other purpose, it was the engraver who 
 was called upon to produce it. Wood- 
 engraving, though the two sister arts are of 
 about equal age, was only used for common 
 and cheap applications. 
 
 Down even to our own time the copper 
 plate held its own as the principal method of 
 producing book illustrations of the highest 
 class. The oldest among us can still re- 
 member the "Annuals" containing engrav- 
 ings from, the pictures of Turner, Stanfield, 
 Roberts, Leitch, Prout, and Harding, books 
 which, as an artist-friend of the writer has 
 well observed, will, when in due time they 
 become scarce, be much sought after and 
 will acquire considerable value, from the 
 high character of the art they contain. The 
 " Books of Beauty," too, which were about 
 contemporaneous with the annuals, were 
 
Advent of Lithography. 
 
 15 
 
 filled with engravings, and engravings also 
 of very high merit, however little may be 
 the interest now attaching to their generally 
 forgotten subjects. 
 
 With the advent of lithography, the palmy 
 days of copper-plate engraving (as a means 
 for book-illustration be it understood, no 
 reference is intended to the employment 
 of the art for the production of separate 
 pictures) came to an end. Of course even 
 at the present time engravings are to be 
 found in books, but it is as an occasional 
 portrait only, or as the finest way of repro- 
 ducing a work of art. They have long 
 ceased to be the principal means at the dis- 
 posal of an author anxious to add pictures 
 to explain or to adorn his text. Lithography 
 rapidly drove engraving out of the field, 
 first for cheaper work, and afterwards, as 
 the new art improved, even for the better 
 and more highly finished. 
 
 This was at first principally due to the 
 speed and the consequent cheapness of the 
 new process. With a copper plate the 
 whole surface has to be dabbed over with 
 
1 6 Comparative A dv ant ages. 
 
 ink, and then the ink has all to be wiped 
 cleanly off again so that it is left in the 
 engraved lines alone. This operation takes 
 time. In lithography the stone has only 
 to be damped, and the ink-roller to be 
 applied. When a large number of prints 
 are required, and time is limited, several 
 transfers can be taken, and all laid down 
 on the stone for simultaneous printing, so 
 that here again is a great saving. In con- 
 sequence of the advantages possessed by 
 lithography, copper-plate printing for com- 
 mercial purposes passed almost entirely out 
 of use, so much so that it is even now the 
 practice when a number of copies are re- 
 quired of some design which can best be 
 produced on copper, to take a print from 
 the copper and lay it down on stone as a 
 transfer, when the required number can be 
 rapidly worked off, frequently by steam. 
 When this plan is adopted, the device of 
 laying down several transfers side by side 
 on one large stone is found specially useful. 
 
 When artistic lithography began to make 
 progress, its greater cheapness in printing 
 
Illustrated Travels, 17 
 
 gave it an immense advantage as a means 
 of illustrating books. It also cost far less 
 to put a drawing on stone than it did to 
 engrave it on copper by the slow and 
 laborious process necessary; yet again, the 
 lithographic artist could make the drawing 
 direct on the stone, whereas for the en- 
 graver a finished drawing made by an artist 
 was required in the first instance. Every 
 way there was a considerable economy, and 
 the result was that engravings as illustra- 
 tions of books all but ceased to appear. 
 
 Books of travel were all illustrated for a 
 time by the new art, and books recording 
 events or describing localities of special, 
 often temporary, interest. It was long 
 before the days of illustrated newspapers. 
 When a war took place in India or the 
 Cape, if any of the officers made sketches, 
 and this was generally the case, his brother 
 officers in the campaign, who were naturally 
 anxious to retain some record of the opera- 
 tions in which they had been concerned, 
 would put down their names for copies of 
 the sketches if they should be published, 
 
 2 
 
i8 
 
 Modern 
 
 so that when they were brought home there 
 would be along with them a subscription 
 list all ready which would cover the ex- 
 pense, and prevent any difficulty in rinding 
 a publisher. One of the finest of this class 
 of works, which were generally in folio size, 
 is that of the first Afghan war, the sketches 
 for which were made by Dr. Atkinson, and 
 were afterwards beautifully lithographed by 
 Louis Haghe. About the last of them was 
 William Simpson's " Campaign in the East," 
 illustrating the siege of Sebastopol. Now 
 all this is changed, the special artists of the 
 illustrated papers follow each war, and by 
 the time the war is ended it has been re- 
 produced in pictures issued as the events 
 themselves took place. 
 
 The position at one time held by litho- 
 graphy is shown by the fact that Lane, 
 the brother of Lane the Arabic scholar, was 
 made a Royal Academician as a litho- 
 grapher. He was the first, and will certainly 
 be the last, to attain that rank. 
 
 As lithography by its speed and cheap- 
 ness superseded engraving, so in its turn 
 
W ood-engraving. 
 
 19 
 
 it had to give way to wood-engraving. 
 The modern school of wood-engravers, the 
 school founded by Bewick, discovered fresh 
 resources in their art and developed those 
 resources to such an extent that it could 
 compete with any of its rivals as regards 
 the beauty of its results, while the manner 
 in which those results were produced far 
 outstripped its rivals in speed. Though 
 the first cost of producing the printing 
 surface is greater with a wood block than 
 with a lithograph, the fact that the former 
 can be printed with the type may be said 
 to eliminate entirely this portion of the cost, 
 and the rapidity and cheapness with which 
 good wood blocks can be produced is very 
 remarkable. The practice of dividing large 
 blocks among several artists assists very 
 much in their rapid production, though it 
 certainly does not do much to improve the 
 artistic quality of the combined effort. 
 This, however, is a practice that is only 
 adopted for newspaper work, and does not 
 affect questions of book illustration. 
 
 That the art of wood-cutting too is now 
 
20 The Newer Methods. 
 
 being in its turn supplanted by the various 
 processes dealt with in the following pages 
 is quite certain. It may be a matter of dis- 
 pute to what extent chemical or "automatic" 
 engraving processes (both names are equally 
 inappropriate and equally convenient) will 
 oust wood-engraving from the place it now 
 holds, whether they will drive it out alto- 
 gether, or whether they will only take away 
 from it all the cheaper work, leaving the 
 finest still to be accomplished by its aid. 
 That they are interfering to a large extent 
 with it is unquestionable ; that they can 
 produce results it is incapable of is equally 
 certain ; and that in a very few years they 
 will do all that wood-engraving can do and 
 a good deal more, is, to say the least of it, 
 extremely probable. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Illustrations by Direct Photographic 
 Methods. 
 
 N the early days of Photography, it 
 was naturally thought that the 
 I simple process by which ordinary 
 photographic "prints" are produced would 
 offer a ready means of illustrating books. 
 Fox Talbot, whose " Pencil of Nature" was 
 illustrated by silver prints, believed that 
 this would be the first of many similar 
 volumes. 1 Events, however, have falsified 
 
 1 The " Pencil of Nature," published in 1844 and 
 1845, was intended to illustrate by photography- 
 places and objects of interest in England and abroad. 
 The aim of its author was really only to show the 
 applicability of the new art to illustrations of this 
 character. In an imperfect copy, originally belonging 
 to Lady Davy, and now in the library of the Photo- 
 graphic Club, the prints are greatly faded, in some 
 cases they have in parts almost disappeared, leaving 
 
22 
 
 Silver Prints. 
 
 this expectation, and though a certain 
 number of books have had photographs 
 pure and simple as illustrations, they have 
 not been numerous, and now that so many 
 better processes have been worked out, 
 their number is not likely to increase. 
 
 Photographic prints of the familiar type 
 known to us are produced by exposing pre- 
 pared paper, under a photographic negative, 
 to the light. This paper is coated with a 
 thin layer of albumen, containing certain 
 salts of silver which are sensitive to light. 1 
 The light passing through the transparent 
 parts of the negative, blackens the silver 
 compound. Under the dark parts of the 
 negative it is unaltered. To improve the 
 colour of the picture and to render it more 
 permanent it is treated with a gold solution, 
 and, finally, by immersion in a bath of 
 
 but dull yellow traces of the picture. The copy in the 
 British Museum is little, if any, better. The book was 
 originally published in four parts, and contains 24 plates. 
 
 1 The paper coated with salted albumen is sub- 
 mitted to a bath of nitrate of silver. Chloride of silver 
 and albuminate of silver are formed in the paper, which 
 also retains a certain amount of the unaltered nitrate. 
 
Silver Prints. 
 
 23 
 
 hyposulphite of soda, the unaltered salts 
 are dissolved away, while the darker parts 
 remain unaffected. 
 
 The pictures thus produced are, as every 
 one knows, of great beauty, but they are 
 in many respects unsuitable additions to a 
 book. They are by no means permanent ; 
 sometimes they fade very rapidly, and in 
 every case they lose much of their beauty 
 and freshness in a few years. The cause of 
 this fading is uncertain, and some photo- 
 graphs are much more permanent than 
 others, but they can never be trusted. 
 Then, as each picture has to be produced 
 singly, and the separate manipulations re- 
 peated in each case, the production of any 
 number is a laborious and troublesome 
 business. Again, they require to be mounted 
 before they can be bound. Last of all, their 
 purple tone and glossy surface do not by 
 any means harmonize with the printed text. 
 On the whole it may certainly be said that 
 under no circumstances whatever are silver 
 prints desirable for book illustration. 
 
 Recently processes have been introduced 
 
24 Gelatino-brornide Paper. 
 
 for producing prints on paper coated with 
 silver salts in combination with gelatine, in 
 place of albumen. The " emulsion " with 
 which such paper is coated is similar to that 
 employed in the gelatine dry plates now 
 universally used for photographic purposes. 
 Naturally, printing on such paper is a 
 process of far greater rapidity than with 
 albumenised paper. Machines have con- 
 sequently been made, for making the ex- 
 posures, and by their use a number of 
 prints from one and the same negative 
 can be produced on a long strip of paper. 
 When completed (they are treated by a 
 different process to that above described, 
 as the image formed by light is invisible, 
 and requires "development"), the prints 
 are cut from the strip and are ready for use. 
 The necessity for separate production is thus 
 avoided, and this objection consequently 
 done away with. It is also stated that the 
 prints are more permanent. Whether this 
 is so or not time will prove ; even if it is a 
 fact, the process is not one to be recom- 
 mended for the illustration of books. 
 
Salts of Iron. 
 
 25 
 
 But silver is not the only metal whose 
 salts are sensitive to light. By a process 
 which need not here be described prints 
 of a bright blue colour can be produced by 
 using certain iron salts. The process is a 
 good deal employed for producing copies 
 of engineers' drawings and the like, but it 
 is doubtful whether it can well be applied 
 for purposes of book illustration. For its 
 own applications, it has the advantage that 
 the copies can be made direct from the 
 original drawing, provided that the original 
 is on moderately thin translucent paper. 
 
 There is, however, one process, known 
 as platinotype, in which salts of iron and 
 of platinum are employed, that is admirably 
 suited for pictures which can be bound up 
 amongst the pages of a book. The tone 
 of such pictures is either black or sepia. 
 They appear to be absolutely permanent — 
 the platinum black of which they are 
 formed resists even strong acids, — and 
 they are produced on paper having a dull 
 or rough surface. As a rule they require 
 mounting, but they can also be produced 
 
26 P latino type. 
 
 with a clean and sharp-edged margin, suit- 
 able for binding up without mounting. As 
 with a silver print, each proof is produced 
 separately; but for short numbers, and where 
 the illustrations consist of portraits, land- 
 scapes, architectural views, or in fine re- 
 presentations of any objects capable of 
 being reproduced by the camera, platinotype 
 has many advantages. Amongst these may 
 be noticed the fact that the prints are well 
 suited for colouring, or for receiving any 
 artistic treatment. It is indeed one of the 
 few direct photographic processes of which 
 this can be said. 1 
 
 The process by which these pictures are 
 produced is a sufficiently simple one. The 
 sensitive paper is charged with a salt of iron 
 and a salt of platinum. When such paper 
 is exposed to light behind a photographic 
 negative in the usual manner, the iron salt 
 
 1 Since this was written a new variety of the 
 gelatino-bromide paper, referred to on p. 24, has 
 been brought out, in which the proportion of gelatine 
 is so small that it does not give any gloss to the 
 surface. Probably this paper also would serve well 
 for painting upon. 
 
Applications of Gelatine. 27 
 
 is affected, while the platinum salt remains 
 unchanged. On immersion, however, in 
 the developing bath, 1 the iron salt is dis- 
 solved out, and as it dissolves it reduces the 
 platinum salt to the metallic state, thereby 
 forming a picture in platinum black. 
 
 Up to the present this process has been 
 but little used for book illustration, though 
 a few books have been published containing 
 platinotype pictures; but when its suitability 
 for the purpose comes to be more fully 
 recognized, it will certainly come into use. 
 For large editions it is unsuited. 
 
 The direct photographic methods which 
 have up to the present been used for book- 
 illustration are all of them varieties of, or 
 developments of what is known as carbon 
 printing. They one and all depend upon a 
 peculiar property of gelatine. It is pretty 
 generally known that when gelatine or glue 
 is soaked in cold water, it swells; when it 
 is heated in water, it dissolves. When a 
 mixture of gelatine and a salt of chro- 
 mium, usually the bichromate of potass or 
 1 A hot solution of potassium oxalate. 
 
28 Bichromatised Gelatine. 
 
 ammonia, is exposed to light, the gelatine 
 loses its solubility. It neither swells in cold 
 water, nor dissolves in hot. It may not at 
 first be easy to see how this property assists 
 in the production of a picture, but a little 
 explanation will perhaps show how it is 
 utilized. If a film of bichromated gelatine 
 is prepared on any suitable surface, such as 
 a glass plate, or a sheet of paper, and part 
 of the film be exposed to light for a suffi- 
 cient period, the part acted upon by the 
 light becomes insoluble, the rest of the film 
 remaining unaffected. We can then wash 
 away the unaltered parts with hot water, 
 when the insoluble parts will remain on the 
 glass. If the film has been covered by, 
 say a perforated plate, a piece of fretwork, 
 anything in fact which will screen certain 
 definite portions from the light, while 
 leaving the remainder unprotected, the 
 result will be an exact copy of the pattern, 
 whatever it may be. If instead of a screen 
 of the sort suggested, a photographic nega- 
 tive in simple light and shadow (without 
 intermediate shades or " half-tones ") be 
 
Carbon Printing. 
 
 29 
 
 employed, we shall have a perfect copy of 
 that negative, however elaborate and full of 
 detail the negative may be. If further the 
 gelatine be charged with any suitable pig- 
 ment such as carbon, the picture will be 
 reproduced in what is practically a thick 
 ink. Thus there is no difficulty in obtain- 
 ing a print in solid black and white. If a 
 negative be used, the picture will evidently 
 be a positive. 
 
 If, however, a negative be used in which 
 there are half-tones, in fact any negative 
 that is not a copy of a line drawing, a map, 
 diagram, etc., a difficulty at once arises. 
 The heavy shadows are all right, they are 
 represented by masses of the insoluble 
 gelatine ; the high lights are all right, they 
 have been protected from light by the dark 
 parts of the negative, and the pigmented 
 gelatine has been washed away by our treat- 
 ment, so that they are represented by the 
 white paper or the surface of the support 
 on which the picture has been mounted : 
 but what of the half-tones ? They have 
 been covered by the less dense parts of the 
 
30 
 
 Carbon Printing. 
 
 negative, the light has acted to a greater or 
 less extent upon them, that is to say, to a 
 greater or less depth, and they therefore 
 consist of a skin of insoluble material, 
 varying in thickness according to the depth 
 of penetration of the light, and having 
 below it a layer of gelatine as yet untouched 
 by the light and therefore soluble. If this 
 could be washed away, the varying thick- 
 ness of the insoluble layer would faithfully 
 represent the varying shadows of the nega- 
 tive ; but it is protected, and cannot be 
 reached. Again, if it could be washed 
 away, the hardened portion on the top 
 would be deprived of its support and would 
 float off. The action of light through 
 a negative on to a sheet of bichromatised 
 gelatine has been ingeniously compared 1 to 
 that of cold on a sheet of water. "The 
 whole surface of the latter may be frozen 
 over, and the ice be apparently of equal 
 thickness throughout ; but where bridges, 
 and banks, and trees have afforded shelter, 
 
 1 E. Edwards, in the Journal of the Society of Arts, 
 vol. xix. p. 480. 
 
Carbon Printing. 
 
 3i 
 
 the ice is thinner; so that though the upper 
 surface is perfectly level, the lower surface 
 varies with the degree of cold to which it 
 has been exposed." 
 
 The original workers at the carbon process 
 endeavoured to get over this difficulty by 
 exposing the film to the light through the 
 glass, that is to say, placing the negative 
 which was to be copied on the side of the 
 glass away from the film ; the light thus 
 passed through the negative, then through 
 the glass on which the sensitive film was 
 mounted, and at last reached the sensitive 
 film itself ; the light therefore attacked the 
 film on the side where it was attached to 
 the glass, and the parts rendered insoluble 
 were the parts adhering to and supported 
 by the glass. Then when the film came to 
 be developed, the insoluble gelatine was all 
 on the top, and could readily be washed 
 away, the result being that where a moderate 
 amount only of light had acted, by passing 
 through the half-tones of the negative, 
 a thin layer only of the film was left, and 
 an intermediate tint produced. The varying 
 
32 Single Transfer. 
 
 thicknesses of the gelatine corresponded 
 exactly to the gradations of the light, and 
 the half-tone picture was faithfully repro- 
 duced. But this device did not answer 
 in practice, because, if the negative was 
 separated from the sensitive surface by the 
 thickness of the glass, the light would 
 creep round the edges of the shadows, 
 and there would be a certain amount of 
 diffused light which could gain access to 
 the shaded parts of the plate, especially at 
 the edges of the shadows of the negative, 
 and thus a blurred and indistinct picture 
 only could result. 
 
 The problem was however solved by 
 transferring the film after exposure from 
 the support on which it was mounted 
 to another, turning it upside down, as 
 it were, so that the underneath layers of 
 gelatine were brought into a position 
 where they could be dealt with. In 
 the usual practice of carbon printing, 
 the "tissue," as it is termed, that is, the 
 layer of bichromatised gelatine supported 
 on paper,, after exposure, is soaked, and 
 
Single Transfer, 33 
 
 while wet laid down on a plate of glass, 
 or metal, or, according to the best and 
 generally adopted method, on a sheet of 
 specially prepared paper; intimate contact 
 is established by pressure, and after a few 
 moments the paper forming the original 
 mount can be stripped off, leaving the film 
 on its new support, ready for development. 
 
 The soluble portions can then be entirely 
 washed away, leaving the insoluble parts 
 attached to the support and accurately re- 
 presenting by their graduated depths the 
 lights and shadows of the picture. If the 
 final support on which the film is mounted 
 be of white paper, the highest lights will be 
 represented by bare paper, the deepest 
 shadows by the thickest layer of pigment, 
 and the half-tones by layers of pigment of 
 various densities, through which the white 
 below is more or less visible. In practice 
 it is found that by this means pictures of 
 the utmost delicacy can be produced, as 
 indeed is sufficiently evident to all familiar 
 with the productions known as "autotypes." 
 
 A little consideration will show that a 
 
 3 
 
34 Reversed Negatives. 
 
 carbon print produced in the way above 
 described is "reversed" right for left. We 
 are in fact looking at the back of the picture, 
 just as if we held a print, or a printed page, 
 up to the light, and looked at the back of 
 it. To get it right again, the picture must 
 be again transferred, unless in the first 
 instance what is known as a reversed 
 negative has been employed, that is to say, 
 a negative in which the picture has been 
 reversed right for left. It may be as well 
 to remind the reader unfamiliar with photo- 
 graphic processes, that this is a very different 
 thing from a positive, in which the lights of 
 the negative are represented by shadow, and 
 vice versa. Reversed negatives are easily 
 produced by devices which it is not neces- 
 sary to describe. It may be sufficient to say 
 that photographing the image of an object, 
 reflected in a mirror, will give a reversed 
 negative. The thickness of the glass on 
 which the film of the negative is supported 
 renders inapplicable the simple method of 
 turning the negative upside down, printing 
 it, that is to say, with the glass side, instead 
 
Double Transfer. 
 
 35 
 
 of the film side, in contact with the sensitive 
 tissue. If that were done, sharp images 
 would, as above explained, be impossible, 
 from the amount of diffused light that would 
 then gain access to the tissue. Both the 
 above-mentioned devices are employed in 
 practice. When a number of copies are 
 required, a reversed negative is generally 
 made. Where only a few are wanted, the 
 usual practice is to employ the method of 
 double transfer. 
 
 Carbon prints are to a certain extent 
 employed for the illustration of books. 
 They are quite permanent, as the carbon 
 of which they are composed is no more 
 liable to change from atmospheric causes 
 than are the constituents of ordinary 
 printer's ink. They are capable of greater 
 variety than silver prints, since any suitable 
 pigments can be used, and they can there- 
 fore be produced in many tints. The 
 process is, however, liable to the objection 
 that each print has to be produced by a 
 distinct and separate operation, and the 
 method is therefore only available when the 
 
36 Applications of the Process. 
 
 number of an edition is limited. The prints 
 also require mounting, and have the glossy 
 surface characteristic of processes in which 
 a film or coating of albumen, gelatine, or 
 any similar material is applied to the surface 
 of the paper. 
 
 When prints of this character are required 
 in larger number than can be supplied con- 
 veniently when each print has to be 
 separately printed under a negative, the 
 Woodburytype process described in the next 
 chapter may be employed. The results are 
 not quite so good as those of the usual 
 carbon process, but they can be produced 
 in much larger quantities, more easily, and 
 consequently more cheaply. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 WOODBURYTYPE AND STANNOTYPE. 
 
 j]HE Woodbury process is not a true 
 printing process, though it might 
 almost be classed as one. By its 
 aid any number of what are really carbon 
 prints can be reproduced mechanically, and 
 it may therefore be considered to occupy a 
 position between the ordinary process of 
 carbon printing, in which each print is pro- 
 duced separately from the negative, and 
 true printing processes, by the use of which 
 copies are produced in ink and paper by 
 means of a printing surface. 
 
 The process itself had its origin in the in- 
 vention of what is known as nature printing. 
 
38 Nature-printing, 
 
 In the 1 85 1 Exhibition, 1 in the Austrian 
 Department, there were shown some excel- 
 lent pictures of plants, flowers, etc., which 
 were printed in colours from copper plates. 
 These copper plates were made direct from 
 the object itself. If any small flat article, 
 no matter how delicate, be placed in con- 
 tact with a plate of metal — whether the 
 metal be as soft as lead or as hard as 
 steel — and the plate be passed through 
 a rolling press or submitted to great pres- 
 sure by other means, the object will be 
 imbedded in the metal, and on its re- 
 moval will leave an exact print of itself 
 in the metal. The plate can then be used 
 to give copies in a copper-plate press. So 
 far the process would be of very limited 
 application, but Mr. Woodbury extended it, 
 and by his extremely ingenious invention, 
 rendered it available for the reproduction 
 of carbon prints, that is to say, of any 
 
 1 Earlier than this, in 1849, Dr. Branson, of 
 Sheffield, obtained prints from fern-leaves in gutta- 
 percha, and by electrotyping on this, he made plates 
 stated to have been capable of being printed from. 
 
Woodbury type. 39 
 
 picture capable of being produced by photo- 
 graphic means. 
 
 He found that if a gelatine relief, similar 
 to that forming a carbon print, but con- 
 siderably stouter, be placed upon a block of 
 lead, and the two subjected to very great 
 pressure in a hydraulic press, the film will 
 be forced into the lead, and on strip- 
 ping it off, a perfect facsimile of the film 
 will be produced, only it is a reversed 
 facsimile, that is to say, the elevations 
 are represented by depressions, and the 
 depressions by elevations. The film is in 
 practice prepared on a sub-stratum of 
 collodion and is exposed through the 
 collodion, so that the parts unacted upon 
 by light are on the outside of the gelatine 
 film, and can therefore be reached in the 
 development. After development, the film 
 is treated with spirit to harden it, and the 
 result is that it suffers little or nothing 
 from the enormous pressure to which it is 
 subjected. A number of impressions or 
 "reverses" can consequently be taken from 
 the same film, fifty or sixty being by no 
 
40 
 
 Description of 
 
 means an impossible number. The re- 
 verse is then employed as a mould, from 
 which casts, similar to the original, can 
 be obtained. That is the rationale of the 
 process. 
 
 To produce the picture, a warm solution 
 of pigmented gelatine is poured into the 
 mould, and a sheet of paper placed on the 
 top ; a perfectly smooth surface is then laid 
 over the paper, and pressure applied ; the 
 superfluous gelatine is thus squeezed out, 
 only that being retained which is held in 
 the hollows of the mould. The paper being 
 forced down upon the highest parts of the 
 mould, all the composition is squeezed out 
 from between the paper and the mould, so 
 that the paper there is left clean, and forms 
 the highest lights of the picture ; where the 
 mould is deepest,' the thickest layers of 
 gelatine are formed, and we have the 
 darkest shades of the picture ; while the 
 varying depths of the relief between the two 
 extremes reproduce with admirable exact- 
 ness the various gradations of light and 
 shade, precisely as in a carbon print. 
 
the Process. 
 
 41 
 
 It is difficult to believe that so apparently 
 rough a method as this can produce good 
 results ; but as a fact it does, for pictures of the 
 utmost delicacy are constantly being made 
 by it. In practice the difficulties of manipu- 
 lation are considerable, but these difficulties 
 are all capable of being overcome by skill 
 and experience, and the practical results, as 
 everybody can see by looking at any good 
 Woodburytype print, are admirable. 
 
 In carrying out the process commercially, 
 each mould is set in a frame with a hinged 
 lid. After the lid has been closely brought 
 down on the picture, it is locked by a catch, 
 so that it is held fast until the gelatine has 
 had time to set. A number of these frames 
 are usually mounted on a revolving table, 
 and the workman fills each mould in turn 
 as it is brought round to him by the table. 
 By the time the frame has completed the 
 circuit, the gelatine is set, and the paper, 
 now bearing the picture securely mounted 
 upon it, can be removed, when the frame is 
 ready for a fresh charge. A Woodburytype 
 print is therefore, as above said, a cast in a 
 
42 Stannotype. 
 
 gelatinous pigment of the original film. 
 As the cast shrinks very considerably in 
 drying, it is necessary to exaggerate the 
 depth of the mould, and for this reason to 
 use a film in preparing the reverse very much 
 thicker than would otherwise be needful. 
 For this reason a Woodbury film is much 
 thicker than the film forming an ordinary 
 carbon print. 
 
 In order to simplify the process, and to 
 obviate the necessity for the use of a 
 hydraulic press, the inventor made many 
 attempts to obtain a suitable mould, by 
 some method of casting from the relief. 
 None of these, however, have come into 
 practical use, though certain of them are 
 experimentally practicable. After trying 
 many devices, he hit upon the process 
 which he called " Stannotype," from the 
 fact that the printing or moulding surface 
 is coated with tinfoil. In it, the relief 
 itself forms the mould, and therefore 
 it will be understood that this relief must 
 be of the reverse character to the relief 
 used in the original process, that is to say, 
 
Stannotype. 43 
 
 the shadows must be the depressions, the 
 lights the elevations. This was effected by 
 exposing the sensitive film under a positive, 
 instead of under a negative. The film is 
 laid down on a sheet of glass, and developed 
 thereon as if it were a carbon print. To 
 render it fit for printing from, it only requires 
 to be coated with tinfoil ; this is effected by 
 moistening the face of the relief with india- 
 rubber solution, laying a sheet of tinfoil 
 upon it, and passing the whole between a 
 pair of rubber-covered rollers. The foil 
 adapts itself accurately to the relief, and a 
 mould with a metallic surface is therefore 
 produced by this extremely simple means. 
 The remainder of the Stannotype process 
 is the same as the original Woodbury. The 
 advantages claimed for it are that the relief 
 is much more easily and simply obtained, 
 and without the use of a hydraulic press. 
 It is therefore thought to be applicable 
 for shorter numbers than the Woodbury, 
 and the inventor believed that Stannotype 
 would come into use among portrait photo- 
 graphers for the printing of portraits; but 
 
44 Applications of 
 
 this expectation does not as yet appear to 
 have been realized. 
 
 Woodburytype prints have been largely 
 used for the illustration of books, and where 
 a very short edition is to be issued, no doubt 
 the process might very well be employed in 
 the modified form of Stannotype. Probably 
 its most frequent application has been for 
 the production of portraits, as many of the 
 copies. of photographs used to illustrate 
 memoirs with a portrait of their subject, or 
 a book with a portrait of its author, are 
 produced by the Woodburytype process. 
 Some advantages and disadvantages the 
 process has in common with the process 
 of carbon printing previously described, 
 and the results are not quite so good. 
 On the other hand, Woodburytypes can 
 be produced in almost unlimited numbers, 
 though, of course, with less rapidity than 
 in a true printing process in which the 
 agency of steam can be employed. The 
 process is not well suited for the production 
 of large pictures, first, because to make the 
 leaden relief a press of large size and of 
 
the Processes. 
 
 45 
 
 very great power is required, and secondly, 
 because of the difficulty of securing absolute 
 parallelism between the surfaces of the 
 mould and the lid of the press, as well as 
 absolute uniformity in the paper. Naturally 
 the difficulties are increased when these 
 surfaces are of large size. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Collotype and Photolithography. 
 
 PEAKING strictly, none of the 
 processes previously described 
 can be termed printing processes. 
 This name is properly reserved for methods 
 in which surfaces are employed capable 
 of transferring to other surfaces impres- 
 sions of themselves in ink or colour. We 
 have now to deal with the preparation 
 of such surfaces by photographic means, 
 and here we really reach the important 
 portion of our subject. For the production 
 of illustrations in any number, the printing- 
 press in one form or another must be 
 employed. It is true, as observed in the 
 last chapter, that the Woodburytype process 
 offers valuable facilities for the production 
 
Pictures in Printers Ink. 47 
 
 of copies of photographs in comparatively 
 large numbers ; but for the illustration of 
 books this will not suffice, and we require 
 a process which will give us prints in ink, 
 capable of being inserted among the pages 
 of a book without incongruity, or obvious 
 unfitness for their position. 
 
 Photographic methods can be applied 
 to the production of printing surfaces of 
 each of the classes mentioned in the first 
 chapter — intaglio plates, surface blocks, or 
 lithographic surfaces. In many cases also 
 the methods first devised in connexion with 
 photographic methods have afterwards been 
 found applicable to other processes not of 
 a photographic character. For instance, 
 the process of chemical engraving, origin- 
 ally developed in connexion with photo- 
 graphy (though its origin may be traced 
 back to the first efforts of Senefelder, the 
 inventor of lithography), is now constantly 
 applied to the production of printing blocks 
 in which photography has no share what- 
 ever, and so with other processes. Still, 
 all or nearly all the modern improvements 
 
4 8 
 
 Properties of 
 
 have arisen directly or indirectly from 
 photography, and consequently it will be 
 convenient to consider in order the manner 
 in which photography can be applied to the 
 production of the three descriptions of 
 printing surfaces. And, as the natural 
 sequence of the subject seems to involve 
 our taking them in the reverse order to that 
 set down above, we shall commence with 
 processes of a lithographic nature, that is 
 to say, processes depending on the principle 
 on which lithography is based, the mutual 
 repulsion of oil and water on surfaces, not 
 only of stone, but of any suitable material 
 often of a very different nature from stone ; 
 we shall then consider methods by which 
 relief blocks for printing in the ordinary 
 type press can be obtained ; and after that 
 we shall deal with methods for the pro- 
 duction of intaglio plates for printing in 
 presses of the nature of the copper-plate 
 press. 
 
 The first-named class will form the subject 
 of the present chapter. Before, however, 
 dealing with the processes themselves, it 
 
Bichromatised Colloids. 49 
 
 may be as well to devote a little more space 
 to the consideration of those remarkable 
 properties of the compounds of a colloid 
 substance, such as gelatine, starch, gum, 
 etc., together with an alkaline chromate, 
 such as the bichromate of potass or 
 ammonia, since upon these properties most 
 of the processes depend. We have already 
 *seen that when a layer of this compound 
 is exposed to light under a photographic 
 negative, the parts receiving most light 
 become insoluble in warm water, those 
 receiving no light are of course unaffected, 
 and the intermediate shadows are repre- 
 sented by layers of insoluble gelatine, pro- 
 portionate in depth to the amount of light 
 they have received. Plain gelatine is, as 
 every cook knows, soluble in hot water, but 
 not in cold. When soaked in cold water, 
 gelatine softens and swells; but to dissolve 
 it requires the application of heat. The 
 amount of heat varies according to the 
 character of the gelatine. Gelatine con- 
 taining bichromate, which has not been 
 exposed to light, behaves in this respect 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 Sensitive Films. 
 
 exactly like plain gelatine. The result is 
 that if an exposed film (mounted, for con- 
 venience sake, on any suitable support such 
 as a plate of glass or metal) be soaked in 
 cold water, the soluble portions will absorb 
 water and consequently swell up, and the 
 bichromate they contain will dissolve out, 
 the insoluble parts not being affected, while 
 if a similar film be soaked in hot water, the 
 soluble parts will be entirely washed away, 
 leaving behind them the insoluble parts. 
 It will be understood that the line dividing 
 solubility from insolubility is not a fixed 
 one, but depends to a certain extent upon 
 the temperature of the water employed. 
 Whichever process be adopted, the film, 
 after this treatment, has practically lost 
 its sensitiveness, and can therefore be 
 safely exposed to light. In one case the 
 sensitizing constituent has been washed out 
 of the parts which could be injured by such 
 exposure, in the other those parts of the 
 film have been entirely removed. 
 
 And there is yet another effect produced 
 by wetting an exposed film of bichromatized 
 
Sensitive Films. 5 1 
 
 gelatine. The surface of the unexposed 
 parts becomes covered with a multitude of 
 tiny crape-like markings or folds. The 
 applications which have been made of this 
 property will have to be considered later on; 
 here it will be sufficient to merely note the 
 fact. 1 
 
 The films which are to be used for the 
 various purposes which have been or will 
 hereafter be described, vary considerably 
 in their nature, according to the particular 
 purpose for which they are intended, as to 
 the relative proportions of the bichromate 
 and the colloid substance, in the nature of 
 the colloid substance itself, and in their 
 thickness and toughness. This last property 
 is generally imparted by the addition of some 
 substance having a hardening or tanning 
 influence, such as alum. The temperature 
 
 1 The cause of this is doubtless the strain that is 
 put upon the gelatine film. The under surface of the 
 film, being attached to the glass or other rigid support, 
 cannot yield, and when the film swells a series of 
 strains is set up which causes minute folds and fissures. 
 Hence the reticulated appearance. 
 
52 True Printing Surfaces. 
 
 at which the film is dried is another dis- 
 turbing element, influencing very consider- 
 ably its behaviour under development. For 
 carbon printing thin films only are required. 
 We have seen that Woodburytype requires 
 much thicker films to allow for the shrinkage 
 of the gelatine which is poured wet into the 
 mould. Collotype, as will be shown, re- 
 quires a strong tough film. 
 
 In the processes described in the last 
 two chapters, carbon-printing and Wood- 
 burytype, the picture is formed of gelatine 
 and pigment, the properties of the bichro- 
 matized gelatine being employed in the 
 one case to form the picture itself, in 
 the other to form an original picture 
 or type, facsimiles of which are repro- 
 duced mechanically. In the next class 
 of processes, these same properties are 
 utilized in a different way, to produce a 
 surface from which copies in ink can be 
 printed direct, or an image which can be 
 transferred to stone or zinc (or produced 
 upon them), so that copies can be printed 
 from the stone or from the zinc. The first 
 
Collotype. 5 3 
 
 class of processes is termed collotype; 1 the 
 second comprises photolithography and 
 photozincography. 
 
 In the collotype process the gelatine film 
 itself forms the printing surface, and may 
 indeed be said to take the place of a litho- 
 graphic stone. 2 
 
 To prepare a collotypic plate, a warm 
 solution of bichromated gelatine, to which 
 is added also a certain proportion of albu- 
 men, and a small quantity of alum or other 
 hardening agent, is poured on a suitable 
 support, generally a thick glass slab, though 
 it may be a piece of slate, or even a litho- 
 graphic stone. When the film thus formed 
 is dry, it is exposed, through the glass, 
 when glass is used as a support, to 
 light. By this means a layer of insoluble 
 gelatine is formed on the glass. A second 
 coating of the solution is then given to 
 the plate, which is again dried. It is then 
 ready for exposure under a negative in the 
 
 1 German Lichtdruck ; French Heliotype or Photo- 
 typie. 
 
 2 Hence the derivation of the word, from the Greek 
 ic6\\a, ghte. 
 
54 Preparation of 
 
 ordinary manner, the progress of printing 
 being to a certain degree visible on looking 
 through the back of the plate. As soon as it 
 is thought sufficient exposure has been given, 
 the plate is immersed in cold water and 
 allowed to soak, when the bichromate will 
 be washed out from those portions which 
 will absorb water, while the harder portions 
 repel the water, and are found to be dry 
 when the film on its glass support is lifted 
 from the dish in which it has been soaked. 
 Those parts also which have received less 
 exposure to light, as having been under the 
 half-tones of the negative, will absorb a 
 greater or less amount of water as they 
 have received less or greater exposure ; the 
 amount of moisture in the film thus repre- 
 senting the gradations of light and shade. 
 If now a lithographic roller charged with 
 ink be passed over the surface of the gela- 
 tine, the dry parts will take up ink, while 
 the moist parts repel it, the parts inter- 
 mediate between the two extremes taking 
 up more or less ink according to the amount 
 of water they contain. 
 
Collotype Plates. 55 
 
 It will be understood that in a process of 
 this nature a perfectly flat surface is required, 
 and consequently the relief caused by the 
 swelling of the wetted gelatine is a dis- 
 advantage. It is therefore usual to keep 
 this down by again exposing the whole of 
 the back of the plate to the light for a short 
 time, before soaking. There is thus pro- 
 duced a layer of insoluble gelatine on the 
 under surface of the film, and there is 
 consequently a lesser thickness of soluble 
 gelatine to swell. The thinner the film can 
 be made, the stronger its adhesion to the 
 glass, and the less likelihood there is of its 
 being torn from the glass in the process of 
 printing. So strong indeed is the hold of 
 the gelatine upon the glass that in some 
 cases the glass has been broken by the 
 adhering film, instead of the film being 
 torn off. 
 
 The plate when dry is fixed on the bed of 
 a lithographic or other press, and printed 
 from as if it were a lithographic stone. The 
 press employed may be of the usual form of 
 a lithographic press with a scraper or roller, 
 
56 
 
 Printing 
 
 under which the stone (or collotype plate) 
 is drawn, but an ordinary printing press 
 giving a direct downward pressure is also 
 employed. The largest printers of collo- 
 type in this country, the Autotype Company, 
 use the latter form of press alone. 
 
 As an experiment, a collotype plate has 
 been printed from simultaneously with ordi- 
 nary type, and it is stated 1 that moderate 
 success was achieved. Such a process, how- 
 ever, was merely experimental, and there is 
 no reason to expect that it will ever get 
 beyond this stage. Possibly for rough and 
 hurried work it might indeed be useful, but 
 not for work aspiring even to moderate 
 artistic merit. 
 
 The collotype film is of course of a very 
 delicate nature, compared with a stone, and 
 the number of copies which can be printed 
 from it is limited. The number varies very 
 much, and depends not only on the nature 
 of the plate itself, but also on atmospheric 
 conditions. In cold weather more work 
 can be got out of a plate than in hot. As 
 1 Photographic News, 1884, p. 130. 
 
Collotypes. 57 
 
 many as two thousand impressions are said 
 to have been printed from one plate, but this 
 is quite an exceptional number. Roughly 
 speaking, it may be said that it is very 
 good work to get five hundred impressions, 
 and that the plate is likely to give out after 
 two or three hundred. Still, when it is 
 destroyed or worn out, the preparation of 
 a second plate from the original negative 
 is not a matter of any great difficulty or 
 delay. Unfortunately, such a second plate 
 is not likely to be identical with the first, 
 and the prints from it will not be uniform 
 in character with those from the first. 
 
 The manipulation of a collotype plate 
 requires greater care and skill than is neces- 
 sary for satisfactory working from a stone. 
 The film is liable to adhere to the roller 
 and be torn, and for this reason a velvet 
 roller has been introduced to take the place 
 of the usual lithographic roller of leather. 
 The velvet has no tendency to drag the film, 
 and its introduction is said to have consider- 
 ably increased the number of prints which 
 can be produced from each plate. In this 
 
5 8 Printing by Steam. 
 
 country, however, it does not seem to have 
 met with much favour, and the principal 
 collotype printers still use rollers of com- 
 position or leather. 
 
 Of late years steam has been employed 
 to a small extent for collotype printing, and 
 there seems no doubt that in the immediate 
 future its use will be very largely extended. 
 Naturally, it is only for the commoner sort 
 of work that steam can be employed. Still, 
 as collotype is coming into use for advertise- 
 ments, for illustrated price lists, and similar 
 purposes, work quite sufficiently good for 
 such applications can be done by steam. 
 
 Paper of any sort can be employed. At 
 first it was usual to print collotypes on a 
 paper with an enamelled surface, and in 
 ink of a tint like that of silver prints. As 
 a matter of fact, much pleasanter results 
 are produced by printing on paper with 
 an ordinary smooth surface and in black, 
 not purple ink. Great care, however, has 
 to be used as regards the paper employed, 
 as there is a risk of its affecting the delicate 
 surface of the gelatine. It is for this reason 
 
Applications of Collotype. 59 
 
 that the enamelled surface is preferred. 
 By methods similar to those employed for 
 chromolithography, collotypic prints may 
 be obtained in more than a single colour. 
 This process is termed Hoeschotype, from 
 its German inventor; though it does not 
 appear to have been as yet worked to any 
 large extent, it is certainly capable of pro- 
 ducing excellent results. 
 
 Good collotypes show great delicacy, 
 though not equal to the best silver prints. 
 The results are finer than Woodburytypes, 
 and are certainly much better suited for the 
 illustration of books. This is indeed a 
 purpose to which the process has been 
 largely applied, and it is well adapted for 
 the representation of still life, objects of 
 art, and subjects of this character. Its 
 power of rendering half-tone, and con- 
 sequently of representing delicate gradations 
 of light and shade, is very great, and it is 
 specially suitable for fine work, from the 
 fact that there is no risk of washing away 
 the finest lines, as may happen with certain 
 of the other processes yet to be described. 
 
6o Preparation of the Negative. 
 
 Collotype lends itself admirably to the re- 
 production of artistic objects in low relief, 
 such as coins, medals, bas-reliefs, etc. In 
 fact it would be difficult to imagine finer 
 results than it gives in this particular branch 
 of art. The impression of solidity given by 
 a good collotypic print of an ivory carving 
 or a bas-relief is simply marvellous. It is 
 as perfect a representation of the original 
 as can be transferred to paper. 
 
 Of course much depends upon the 
 original negative. In photographing medals 
 or metallic objects giving brilliant reflec- 
 tions, the ingenious plan is adopted of 
 making a plaster cast of the medals and 
 photographing it, it being much easier to 
 get a good photograph from the dull 
 white surface of the plaster than from 
 the glittering metal. In photographing 
 larger objects of bright metal, various 
 devices are employed. For instance, the 
 brilliancy of a polished silver cup may be 
 dimmed just before the picture is taken by 
 placing in it a lump of ice. The moisture 
 held in suspension by the atmosphere 
 
Reversed Negatives, 6 1 
 
 deposits on the chilled metal, and we get 
 a dull matt surface instead of a bright one. 
 
 Collotype has been applied with much 
 success to the reproduction in facsimile 
 of ancient manuscripts and printed books. 
 When only a small number of a reprint are " 
 required, it is convenient ; but otherwise it 
 has no advantages above the photolitho- 
 graphic processes soon to be described, and 
 compares unfavourably with them in its 
 results. 
 
 For printing the picture on a collotype 
 plate, a ' 'reversed" negative is required. 
 The reason of this is obvious. The original 
 negative we know is reversed, right for left. 
 The picture printed from the negative is 
 reversed again and brought right. If we 
 take this picture and make a printing 
 surface of it, as we do with the collotype 
 plate, we get another reversal, which makes 
 the print wrong. We must therefore start 
 with a reversed negative ; a negative, that is, 
 giving a true picture as regards right and left 
 when we look at the face of it, and then the 
 series will end in a correctly printed,picture. 
 
62 Permanence of Collotypes. 
 
 For another reason it is often necessary 
 to reproduce the negative. To insure its 
 absolute contact with the flat collotype plate, 
 the negative must be flat. There is no 
 power of accommodation as there is when, 
 in the ordinary practice of silver printing, 
 a negative is placed on a sheet of paper, 
 backed with a pad of yielding material. 
 Of course, if the negative and the sensitive 
 surface are not in absolute contact, we 
 cannot get a sharp print. 
 
 The prints are permanent, at least as 
 permanent as printing ink and paper can 
 make them, and they can be in any colour. 
 They require no mounting. They can 
 be produced at a moderately cheap rate, 
 and in tolerably large numbers. For very 
 long numbers there is the objection that, as 
 several plates have to be employed, the 
 prints are not absolutely identical, and in 
 the case of second editions there is the 
 further objection that the plates have to be 
 reproduced afresh, at precisely the same cost 
 as for the first. 
 
 It will thus be seen that collotype is 
 
Photolithography. 63 
 
 the proper process for moderate editions, 
 especially when a reprint is not contem- 
 plated. The cost of producing a large 
 number is not proportionately much less for 
 each example than the cost when a small 
 number only is issued, unless steam printing 
 is used, and this can hardly be recom- 
 mended for book-work. 
 
 In the second class of printing methods 
 above referred to, comprising photolitho- 
 graphy and photozincography, photography 
 is employed to produce on the surface of 
 the stone or of the metal an image in some 
 material which repels water and attracts 
 grease, so that it can be inked up with 
 lithographic ink and a print produced in 
 the same way as from a lithographic stone. 
 The working of the process is not very 
 different, whether the printing surface is 
 stone or metal, and therefore it will be 
 sufficient to describe it as applied to stone. 
 It will be understood that for the most part 
 the description is applicable also to printing 
 from zinc. 
 
 In some cases the sensitive material is 
 
6 4 
 
 Transfer Process, 
 
 spread on the surface of the stone itself, 
 and in this position exposed under the 
 negative, but in most cases it is usual to 
 employ a transfer process, and as this is the 
 commonest and most convenient plan, it 
 may as well be first described. 
 
 The transfer process as applied to photo- 
 lithography does not differ very much in 
 principle from the ordinary lithographic 
 transfer process, except that the design is 
 produced by photographic means instead of 
 by the hand of the artist. As with litho- 
 graphy plain and simple, so in photolitho- 
 graphy, we can only reproduce line-drawings 
 or designs in solid blacks and whites. The 
 half-tones of a negative cannot be repro- 
 duced by this method, as they can with 
 collotype. 1 For this reason the process is 
 only applicable for reproduction ; it cannot 
 produce a print from a negative taken 
 direct from nature. What it can do is to 
 reproduce in facsimile any picture or design 
 that has been produced by any printing 
 
 1 The methods employed for reproducing half-tones 
 in stipple will be described later on. 
 
Character of Negative, 65 
 
 process whatever (in which tints are not 
 employed), type, engraving, woodcut, or 
 lithograph, also any line-drawing in ink, 
 pencil, or chalk, anything in fact which 
 already possesses the grain, line, or stipple 
 required to hold the ink. 
 
 Whatever may be the original, it has to 
 be photographed, and it is essential that 
 the negative should be extremely dense, 
 while the lines are represented by clear glass 
 without any deposit upon them. The utmost 
 attainable contrast is in fact necessary, so 
 that as much light as possible may pass 
 through the lights of the negative, and as 
 little as possible through the shadows. 
 Upon the production of a suitable negative 
 much of the success of the whole process 
 depends. Unless good strong contrasts 
 exist in it, it is useless to expect to produce 
 strong blacks and clear whites by its aid. 
 The wet collodion process is generally used 
 for the purpose, as it is more easy to " in- 
 tensify" the shadows to strong blackness, 
 while leaving the lines clear, than with 
 gelatine plates. These are, however, used 
 
 5 
 
66 Inking the Transfer. 
 
 to a large extent by many photolithographers, 
 and doubtless their use will extend. 
 
 The transfer paper which is to be exposed 
 to light behind the negative is coated with 
 a thin layer of the sensitive gelatine com- 
 pound. 1 The exposed film has next to 
 receive a coating of ink, and this may be 
 effected in two ways. In the more usual 
 process ink of a suitable character is dabbed 
 over the whole surface of the paper, or 
 applied thereto by passing the paper, while 
 in contact with an inked stone, through a 
 press. The paper is next soaked in water. 
 The soluble gelatine can then be washed 
 away by means of a sponge or brush, and 
 as it is removed it takes with it the ink on 
 its surface, leaving the ink adhering to 
 those parts only of the film which have 
 been hardened by the action of light. 
 
 In the latest modification of the process 
 
 1 For full information as to the preparation of the 
 tissue, and for the amplest details as to the working 
 of the whole process, reference can be made to no 
 better source than the long series of articles con- 
 tributed by Lieut. -Colonel Waterhouse to the volumes 
 of the Photographic News for 1882-3-4-5. 
 
Transferring to Stone. 67 
 
 the paper is soaked to get out the unaltered 
 bichromate. It is then stretched over a 
 sheet of glass, and very carefully inked over 
 with a velvet roller, when the ink, as in 
 the collotype process, takes on the insoluble 
 parts, but leaves the soluble parts untouched 
 and clean. The advantages of this method 
 are that the finer lines are not washed away 
 — since the whole of the gelatine remains — 
 as is sometimes the case with the " washing 
 off" process, and the paper attaches itself 
 more firmly to the stone in the process of 
 transfer. 
 
 The transfer is effected in the usual 
 way, by laying the paper on the face of 
 the prepared stone or zinc, covering it 
 with a protecting layer of paper and ' ' glaze- 
 board," and passing the whole through 
 a lithographic press. Adhesion is soon 
 effected, and the paper may then be wetted 
 and stripped off, leaving the print in fatty ink 
 behind it on the stone. Henceforward the 
 proceedings are the same as in lithography. 
 The plate is treated with weak acid, gummed, 
 washed and inked up in the usual manner. 
 
68 
 
 Alterations. 
 
 A very important point in the process 
 is that alterations or additions can be 
 made by hand on the stone or zinc. 
 A proof can therefore be submitted and 
 any corrections made which it is in the 
 power of a lithographic draughtsman to 
 effect. The final result may indeed be to 
 almost any extent a combination of hand- 
 work and photography, and this often is 
 extremely convenient. It may sometimes be 
 worth while to make a copy by this process 
 with the intention of introducing consider- 
 able alterations. In the case of a map, for 
 instance, though much new material may 
 have to be introduced, and possibly some 
 of the old outlines altered, it will frequently 
 be the case that much of the draughts- 
 man's labour will be saved by making a 
 photolithograph, erasing the parts requiring 
 alteration, and filling them in by drawing 
 or even by a second transfer. 
 
 For the reproduction of maps, plans, 
 diagrams, or original sketches, no better 
 plan need be desired. In photographing 
 the original copy, it can be either reduced 
 
Production of Maps. 
 
 6 9 
 
 or enlarged (in practice generally the 
 former), and in either case the scale is 
 preserved with almost absolute accuracy. 1 
 It is evidently quite as easy in making the 
 negative to reduce the original to any re- 
 quired size, as it is to reproduce it of the 
 same size, and by a certain amount of re- 
 duction, greater delicacy in the resulting 
 print is obtained. If the reduction is carried 
 too far, the lines clog up, or become too 
 fine, and are lost. In copying plans with 
 lettering on them, it is necessary to avoid 
 over-reduction, or the lettering becomes 
 so small as to be illegible. When a transfer 
 process is used, a reversed negative is not re- 
 quired, the necessary reversal being effected 
 by the transference of the image from the 
 paper to the stone. 
 
 When large maps or plans are to be pro- 
 duced by the process of photolithography, 
 larger, that is, than can be brought within 
 the compass of a single negative, a number 
 of transfers can be laid down on the same 
 
 1 The unequal stretching of the paper introduces 
 a slight, but very slight, element of inaccuracy. 
 
Large Prints. 
 
 stone, great care being of course taken that 
 the edges fit together with the utmost ac- 
 curacy, so that no trace of the join may be 
 visible in the finished print. In the case 
 of large prints zinc is generally preferred, 
 on account of its greater lightness and 
 handiness, as well as its greater cheapness. 
 Stone has the advantage that corrections 
 are more easily made upon it, but even this 
 advantage is of less importance than it 
 used to be, for the difficulties in the way 
 of working upon zinc have now been for 
 the most part overcome. 
 
 It has been stated above that the transfer 
 method is not the only one available for the 
 production of photolithographs. The image 
 from the negative can be printed direct upon 
 a sensitive film, spread over the surface of 
 the stone, and this sensitive film may be 
 composed of bichromated gelatine or other 
 substance capable of being affected by light. 
 If gelatine be employed, we get a process 
 partaking of the nature of collotype, and 
 the printing is really from the surface of the 
 gelatine, rather than from the stone. Of 
 
Asphalt Process. 
 
 71 
 
 substances other than those of a colloid 
 nature (gelatine, albumen, etc.), the only 
 one requiring mention is bitumen or asphalt. 
 A dried film of this substance is by the 
 action of light rendered insoluble by its 
 usual solvents, and therefore if such a film 
 be exposed under a negative, the picture can 
 be obtained by dissolving off the portions 
 left soluble; turpentine being generally used 
 for the purpose. The hardened parts will 
 take lithographic ink, and the stone with the 
 asphalt image upon it can therefore be 
 treated as before described, and printed 
 from by the usual lithographic processes. 
 This method, however, is not largely used, 
 and therefore calls for no further notice at 
 present. When we come, in a succeeding 
 chapter, to consider the production of 
 phototypic blocks, we shall find more im- 
 portant applications of the asphalt process, 
 and it will be as well therefore to defer till 
 then any further notice of it. 
 
 It may be useful to conclude this descrip- 
 tion of the photolithographic processes by 
 a few suggestions as to the points to which 
 
72 Preparation of 
 
 attention should be devoted in the prepara- 
 tion of drawings which are intended to be 
 reproduced by them. To a great extent the 
 same suggestions will be applicable to any 
 photographic process for the reproduction 
 of lines, since, as we shall see as we proceed, 
 the first steps in all of them are generally 
 identical. The detailed instructions issued 
 by the Indian Survey for the guidance of 
 draughtsmen in the department will be 
 found in an appendix. 1 
 
 It is important to remember that the 
 original will be reproduced in facsimile. 
 As Colonel Waterhouse says, 2 "The camera 
 will not correct and beautify faulty drawing, 
 as the lithographer is often expected to do, 
 though a good deal may be done by skilful 
 touching up." Hence the drawing must be 
 made precisely what the finished print is 
 expected to be. It may be larger, and this 
 is an advantage, since in the reduction the 
 lines and the general character of the work 
 will be fined down. When lettering is 
 
 1 See Appendix i. 
 
 2 Photographic News, 1882, p. 482. 
 
Drawings for Reproduction. 73 
 
 inserted in a plan intended for reproduction, 
 it must be remembered that the lettering 
 will be reduced on the same scale as the 
 plan itself. When the plan of copying the 
 drawings of patent specifications by photo- 
 zincography was introduced in 1876 in the 
 English Patent Office, this precaution was 
 neglected, and the result was that the letters 
 of reference on the drawings are in many 
 cases quite microscopic. Care has now 
 been taken to prevent this mistake, and the 
 results are of course much better. Tints or 
 washes must not be used, except that washes 
 in faint blue (which will not photograph, 
 or rather will photograph white) may be 
 used as a guide merely to show where line 
 shading is to be introduced. A light shade 
 of blue may also be used for any details 
 which it is desired to insert in the drawing, 
 without their being reproduced in the copy. 
 The lines must be firm and clear, the paper 
 smooth and white. The drawing should be 
 rolled, never folded or creased. The ink 
 should be black, Indian ink is most suitable, 
 with perhaps a little yellow added to kill 
 any blue tone. 
 
74 Preparation of 
 
 In some cases it is required to prepare 
 from a silver print a drawing capable of 
 being laid down on stone or zinc. A con- 
 venient way of doing this is to trace, on the 
 surface of the photograph itself, the lines, 
 or the principal lines of the drawing. The 
 photograph is then bleached by immersion 
 in a solution of chloride of mercury, or 
 some other chloride capable of acting in 
 the same way. Nothing is then left but 
 the lines drawn by the draughtsman, who 
 is thus enabled to judge of the effect of 
 his work. If he has omitted anything of 
 importance, he can restore the original 
 photograph by immersing it in a solution 
 of hyposulphite of soda. The drawing 
 thus produced can be transferred to the 
 stone, and worked up upon it to any re- 
 quired extent. 
 
 A similar plan may also be employed when 
 a reproduction of a plan or map is wanted, 
 in which some of the details are left out. 
 In this case the reproduction will generally 
 be on a smaller scale than the original. 
 The original is photographed, and a silver 
 
Drawings for Reproduction. 75 
 
 print made, the draughtsman then traces 
 over those details which he wishes to appear, 
 bleaches the print, which is re-photographed 
 and the usual process carried on. 
 
 Another method of getting the desired 
 result has recently been described by 
 Lieut.-Colonel Waterhouse. 1 He pastes a 
 thin sheet of bank post paper over a 
 copy of the original map. This allows the 
 lines to show through the paper sufficiently 
 well for them to be traced over, but not 
 sufficiently for them to photograph. The 
 draughtsman then traces what is required, 
 omitting the rest. He can also add 
 any fresh details or lettering that may be 
 needed. The tracing does not require to 
 be removed from the original, but the whole 
 is set up in front of the camera. It is 
 obvious that this plan is only available when 
 the original may be spoilt. If the original 
 is of value, and has to be preserved, the 
 only way of dealing with it is to photograph 
 it, and to work on the photograph. 
 
 In some cases the drawing is reduced in 
 1 Year-Book of Photography for 1886, p. 88. 
 
j6 Reduction by Elastic Film. 
 
 scale by transferring it on to the surface 
 of a stretched sheet of india-rubber which 
 has been coated with a material capable 
 of receiving the transfer. The sheet is 
 clamped in a frame provided with means 
 for tightening or relaxing the tension as 
 required. The drawing having been trans- 
 ferred in the usual manner from the stone 
 to the stretched sheet, the sheet is allowed 
 to shrink, care being taken that its con- 
 traction is equal in both directions. From 
 the contracted sheet the drawing now re- 
 duced is re-transferred to a clean stone, 
 from which it is printed by the ordinary 
 methods. 
 
 There are various devices for economizing 
 labour by the mechanical introduction of 
 lines, shading or stipple, into drawings for 
 reproduction by photography. One of the 
 most commonly used of these methods is 
 the employment of an enamelled paper 
 having lines printed upon it so as to form 
 a tint. These lines may also be coated 
 with enamel, on which a second series is 
 printed in a different direction to the first. 
 
Introduction of Stipple. 
 
 77 
 
 By the deft use of scrapers of different 
 shapes, the artist can produce points or 
 lines running in various directions, while, 
 by either scraping out the lines entirely or 
 covering them with white pigment, he can 
 get pure whites. 
 
 Another of these devices is Day's "Shad- 
 ing Medium," intended for the use of litho- 
 graphers. In this a grain of any desired 
 character is indented upon a thin sheet of 
 flexible material. The sheet is inked and 
 laid on the stone, when by means of a 
 burnisher the grain can be transferred to 
 the desired parts of the drawing. 
 
 When old prints on discoloured paper 
 have to be copied, it is necessary to clean 
 and bleach them, since it must be borne 
 in mind that yellow will be reproduced 
 as almost black in the photograph, and if 
 the paper has anything of a yellow tinge, 
 it is impossible to get the strong contrast 
 between paper and ink, without which 
 success in the process is impossible. Actual 
 stains may be painted out with Chinese 
 white. 
 
78 Cleaning Old Prints. 
 
 For bleaching such discoloured originals 
 chloride of lime or eau de javelle is recom- 
 mended, followed by hyposulphite of soda 
 ("antichlore"). "Holmes' ozone bleach" 
 is also effective, or a weak solution of hydro- 
 chloric acid. In any case such treatment 
 requires great care in its application, and 
 in the case of valuable originals it should 
 be left to skilled hands. 
 
 Photolithographic prints do not, of course, 
 require mounting, but they have to be in- 
 serted in binding, like other lithographs, 
 as they cannot be printed with the type. 
 In the case of some cheap publications the 
 device has been adopted of leaving spaces 
 in the type where the pictures are to come, 
 and, by a second printing, filling in these 
 spaces from the stone. The plan is in- 
 genious, and served its purpose sufficiently 
 well, though it can hardly be said to possess 
 any other recommendation than that of 
 cheapness. The readiness, however, with 
 which any lithograph can now be translated 
 into a surface block, capable of being set up 
 with type, reduces the value of this method 
 
Reproduction of Text, 79 
 
 of producing the cheapest possible sort of 
 illustrations. 
 
 On the other hand, a transfer can be 
 taken from the type, the drawings can be 
 photographed, and a reproduction of a whole 
 page, text and illustrations, be transferred 
 to the stone. The official publication of the 
 United States Patent Office, which contains 
 selected drawings from the Specifications of 
 Patents, together with abridged descriptions 
 of them, is thus produced. Photolithography 
 has also been employed to produce a small- 
 sized edition of a book from the original 
 edition of larger size. Naturally this would 
 only be worth doing under certain circum- 
 stances, as for instance when the original 
 contained much type of an unusual character, 
 or belonging to a foreign language, so that 
 composition was costly or difficult. Recently 
 the large edition of Skeat's Etymological 
 English Dictionary was thus reproduced on 
 a small scale. It is evident that all the 
 trouble of press-correction is thus saved. 
 
 For the reproduction of old books in fac- 
 simile, photolithography is a most valuable 
 
8o 
 
 Anastatic Process. 
 
 process, whether the work be done from 
 the stone, or by an etched surface block. 
 The latter plan will generally be used if a 
 numerous edition be contemplated, or if it 
 is intended to reprint. For a small edition 
 the work may very well be printed from 
 stone at once. 
 
 Before the invention of photolithography, 
 work of this character was effected by the 
 process of anastatic printing, which was 
 introduced a little more than forty years 
 ago, and for long offered the most con- 
 venient means of reproducing printed matter 
 in facsimile. This process was really the 
 origin of the transfer process in lithography, 
 and may indeed be described as a simple 
 transfer process. 
 
 In anastatic printing, the printed page, 
 whether type or picture, which was to be 
 copied, was moistened with dilute acid, and 
 then forced down on a surface of zinc. The 
 acid affected the paper only where it was 
 not printed on, the ink of the print being 
 sufficient protection to the paper actually 
 underneath it. The result was a slight 
 
A nastatic Process. 8 1 
 
 etching of the metal by the acid in the 
 parts in contact with the imprinted portions 
 of the paper, and a slight setting off of the 
 ink in the printed portions. The plate was 
 then gummed and inked in the usual manner, 
 the ink of course only taking on those parts 
 of the metal which had been in contact with 
 the printed parts of the original. 
 
 The process was applied with a great 
 deal of success, even to old originals, by 
 soaking the copy in potash, and afterwards 
 in a solution of tartaric acid. Ink was now 
 applied by a roller to the paper itself, when 
 it was taken up only by the printed parts, 
 the fatty ink being resisted by the crystals 
 of the bi-tartrate of potash which had 
 formed in the unprinted portion. The 
 process was used with much success for 
 a considerable time, until its place was 
 taken by the photolithographic processes. 
 Lately, however, some modifications have 
 been made in it which are stated to have 
 rendered anastatic printing again likely to 
 come into use. It will not under any cir- 
 cumstances be likely to be of much service 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 Anastatic Process. 
 
 for the illustration of books, though it may 
 come to be valuable for such purposes as 
 the production of small editions of books 
 which have gone out of print, but for which 
 there exists a limited demand. 1 Reproduc- 
 tion by an anastatic process would be 
 cheaper than re-composition, and the whole 
 cost of correcting for the press would be 
 saved. There would also be the further 
 advantage that the copies would be absolute 
 facsimiles of the original. On the other 
 hand, the special advantage must always be 
 possessed by a photographic method that 
 the original is safe from injury. Owners 
 of a valuable print or a choice old book 
 will always be chary of having it treated 
 in the manner above described, though 
 they may raise no objection to its being 
 set up in front of a camera. 
 
 1 One method consists in flowing over the original 
 page, which has been previously damped, a dilute 
 solution of lithographic ink in benzol. The ink takes 
 on the printed portion, but is repelled by the water 
 in the unprinted parts of the page. A transfer is 
 then taken in the ordinary way. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Methods of Producing Surface Blocks. 
 
 HE processes which have been de- 
 scribed in the previous chapters 
 can none of them claim to be in 
 
 H 
 
 the fullest sense adapted to the illustration of 
 books. Book illustrations proper ought to 
 be capable of being produced by the same 
 means as the rest of the book is produced, 
 that is to say, in a printing press. Till 
 within a short time ago, the solitary process 
 which fulfilled that condition was the pro- 
 cess of wood-engraving; by it alone could 
 printing surfaces be made which could be 
 set in the midst of type, and printed with it 
 at one simultaneous operation. The arts of 
 wood-engraving and of type-printing may 
 be said to have grown up together. Their 
 
8 4 
 
 Ancient and 
 
 origin was practically identical ; the earliest 
 printed books were printed from what we 
 should now consider wood blocks ; text and 
 pictures were produced in the same way, 
 and treated in the same way, and the result 
 was a harmonious effect, which can hardly 
 be looked for from any other means. 
 
 This harmony of effect is strikingly evident 
 in the oldest printed books which contain 
 illustrations, and it must be admitted that 
 as the processes of wood-engraving have 
 advanced, or if it be not advanced, at all 
 events as they have gradually changed from 
 the simpler forms of the older artists to the 
 more elaborate styles of our own time, so 
 has this harmony between letterpress and 
 illustration been lost. To a search after 
 this lost effect are due the fanciful attempts, 
 in some of our illustrated magazines, at 
 printing the text of a poem w r ithin a design, 
 both text and design being the work of the 
 same artist. For the most part, however, 
 such attempts are not very successful, the 
 skill of the old text-writer is gone, the skill 
 acquired only by the constant practice of a 
 
Modem Wood-engraving. 85 
 
 lifetime, and the effect is at best bizarre, 
 if it is lucky enough to avoid being merely 
 grotesque. 
 
 Nor does there seem much room to 
 question but that the ancient art of wood- 
 engraving is doomed. For years it has 
 been trying to be anything but itself ; to 
 imitate engraving, mezzotint, chalk draw- 
 ing, anything but wood-engraving. Photo- 
 graphs, and the mechanical processes which 
 have been the outcome of photography, 
 have educated the public eye to a more 
 delicate, more minute style of work than 
 is proper to wood-engraving. The art has 
 endeavoured to compete with its rivals on 
 their own ground, and is being rapidly 
 worsted in the attempt. What will be 
 the ultimate result on the art of illus- 
 tration, it is not easy to foretell. It is at 
 all events certain that the public taste, 
 influenced principally by photography, has 
 altered a good deal recently. The simple 
 outlines that were once accepted as satis- 
 factory, now no longer suffice. Minute 
 detail is expected, and a softness which can 
 
86 
 
 Taste and Fashion 
 
 only be obtained by an absence of strength 
 and vigour. Many of the most admired 
 woodcuts of the present day look like 
 nothing so much as over-exposed photo- 
 graphs. Prints of this nature can never 
 harmonize with type. Some attempt may 
 certainly be observed to assimilate the 
 character of the type to the style of pictures 
 which it is now possible to produce by 
 means of surface printing blocks, and thus 
 to seek after that effect of harmony, which 
 is essential for good and artistic work of 
 every sort. This tendency, however, cannot 
 be carried very far, probably it can get no 
 further than it has already gone, without 
 sacrificing the clearness and uniformity, 
 without which type cannot hope for what is 
 after all its primary object, legibility. 
 
 The precise style of illustrations that may 
 be fashionable at any time will be partly a 
 matter of taste, partly dependent on the 
 means at the command of the artist. Public 
 taste will partly guide the artist, but to a 
 much larger extent it will be guided by 
 him. As new methods become available, he 
 
in Wood-engraving. 87 
 
 adopts them. If he is skilful, he increases 
 by their adoption the resources of his art. 
 If he is merely anxious to get his results in 
 the easiest way, he lowers the character of 
 his work. The public follows, and gradually 
 comes to admire what it gets used to, what 
 is constantly before it. 
 
 At present there is a conflict of testimony 
 as to the value of the newer methods. 
 Those who object to the new processes are 
 not content to put forward the real intrinsic 
 merits of wood-engraving, they urge objec- 
 tions which have no foundation in fact, and 
 naturally therefore damage their own case. 
 
 For instance, it is said that in mere 
 mechanical reproduction the beauty which 
 belongs to good original work must of 
 necessity be lost ; but this is assuredly not 
 the case. So far indeed is it from being 
 the case, that it is possible, nay easy, to 
 reproduce the actual work of the original 
 artist, more faithfully than if his design had 
 to be translated by the intervention of the 
 wood-engraver, however skilful, since it 
 may be definitely stated that there are now 
 
83 
 
 Advantages 
 
 available processes which will reproduce an 
 artist's sketch in the form of a surface block 
 with the same absolute fidelity as that with 
 which the old process of etching reproduces 
 the design outlined upon the copper. 
 
 There are certainly advantages belonging 
 to wood-engraving alone. These come 
 principally from the nature of the material 
 employed. A wood block offers a much finer 
 surface to print from than an electrotype 
 from the same block does. The wood is 
 porous, and absorbs the ink into its sub- 
 stance. With the metal the ink is merely 
 spread over the surface. It is easy to see 
 that the softer material will give a fuller, 
 richer print than the hard, unyielding one. 
 Again, a skilful wood-engraver, master of 
 the resources of his art, and responsible for 
 the whole execution of his work from first 
 to last, will certainly produce better results 
 than can be obtained by any process, of 
 necessity carried out to a large extent 
 mechanically, and by a workman guided 
 by another man's design. 
 
 Then, it may be said, there must always be 
 
and Drawbacks. 89 
 
 work for at least the highest class of wood- 
 engravers ? So there would, if such a class 
 could exist without there being a more 
 numerous class below it of inferior and 
 average workmen, from whose ranks vacan- 
 cies in the first class could be supplied. 
 This is obviously unlikely, to say the least 
 of it, and if the ordinary run of illustra- 
 tions can be produced without the aid of 
 the wood-engraver, the result will be that 
 there will be no wood-engravers to execute 
 the finest work. 
 
 With every respect and admiration for the 
 beautiful art of wood-engraving, it must be 
 allowed that it is not a natural, or a free 
 method of reproducing a sketch in black 
 on a white ground. If paper were con- 
 veniently made black, and ink were naturally 
 white, possibly artists would have drawn 
 in white on a black ground. This is what 
 a wood-engraver would find it easiest to do, 
 in fact some wood-engravers do get many 
 of their effects by what is practically such 
 a method. As a fact people draw, and 
 write, and print in black on white, and the 
 
go Wood Blocks and 
 
 wood-engraver follows suit, or appears to 
 do so. He does not in reality. He has a 
 ground that is black, potentially black, to 
 work on, and he digs out his whites till he 
 has so little left that the remains of his black 
 ground look like original black lines on a 
 white ground. If he wants a fine line, such 
 as the draughtsman makes with a stroke of 
 his pen, he laboriously cuts away his block 
 on each side of the line. If he wants cross- 
 hatching, such as the artist makes with half 
 a dozen strokes, and as many more at right 
 angles to them, he has to cut out twenty- 
 five little white lozenges, leaving only the 
 narrow lines of separation between them. 
 No. When the question of originality comes 
 in, the mechanical process has the best of 
 it. You may, if you like, call etching a 
 mechanical process, or just as truly, but it 
 reproduces faithfully what the artist draws on 
 the copper, and the mechanical processes 
 of chemical engraving, phototypy, or by 
 whatever other barbarous name they may be 
 called, faithfully reproduce what the artist 
 draws on the paper. 
 
Process Blocks. 91 
 
 Of course there is this objection. They 
 reproduce what the artist drew, not what 
 he meant to draw, or indicated as desirable 
 to have drawn. A skilful draughtsman now 
 often leaves to the wood-engraver the in- 
 terpretation of what is only a sketch, an 
 indication of the idea in his mind. The 
 engraver — an artist too— fills up the details 
 and produces a perfect picture. The picture, 
 however, is the work, not of one man, but 
 of two. The man whose drawing is to be 
 reproduced as it is, without the intervention 
 of another human brain, must finish the 
 work himself — must turn it out just as he 
 wants the public to see it. This means 
 additional trouble, and thence a natural 
 dislike — for artists are quite as human as 
 the rest of us, more so than the average — 
 to " mechanical reproductions." 
 
 So skilful have wood-engravers become, 
 that they can translate into the lines of 
 a wood block the tints of a photograph, 
 printed direct upon the wood, or transferred 
 thereto by the carbon or other process, and 
 a good deal of the work for our illustrated 
 
92 
 
 Photo-etching or 
 
 papers is prepared in this way. Much more 
 then can they work from the sketch of a 
 skilled draughtsman who knows exactly the 
 effect he requires, and knows also that he 
 will get it just as well by indicating to the 
 engraver what he wants, as by drawing all the 
 details as they are to be cut upon the wood. 
 
 That such translation is quite as easy for 
 phototype work as for wood-engraving is 
 certain. In cases where the artist cannot 
 make the finished sketch himself, as with 
 a special correspondent sending off home 
 any rough memoranda he has time and 
 opportunity to produce, there is no reason 
 why the rough sketch should not be worked 
 up into a finished drawing in black and 
 white, which can be reproduced as a relief 
 block by one of the processes to be de- 
 scribed in the following pages. 
 
 These processes are of two classes. The 
 first class may be said to depend upon a 
 combination of the ordinary plate-etching 
 process, with one or other of the processes 
 of photographic printing which have already 
 been described. The second class consists 
 
Chemical Engraving. 93 
 
 of processes in which the relief obtained 
 by the use of bichromatized gelatine serves 
 as the basis from which a block, having 
 sufficient relief for printing purposes, is 
 obtained. 
 
 We shall deal first with the etching pro- 
 cess, or, as it is sometimes termed, the 
 process of chemical engraving. 
 
 In the usual plate-etching process the 
 lines which are to contain the ink are bitten 
 out by the acid to a sufficient depth. It is 
 not difficult to perceive that if the process 
 were continued, the hollows might by the 
 action of the acid be eaten out to a sufficient 
 depth to depress them below the printing 
 level, and the surface of the plate employed 
 to print from. Of course, to produce a 
 practical printing block in such a manner, 
 the etching ground would have to be re- 
 moved from those portions of the plate 
 which were required to print white, instead 
 of from the black lines. Such a system for 
 the production of surface blocks has indeed 
 been introduced, under the name of "White- 
 line Etching " ; the artist draws his picture 
 
94 White-line Etching. 
 
 in white on a black ground, and by an 
 etching process, similar no doubt to that 
 which will shortly be described, the whites 
 are etched out, and a surface block pro- 
 duced. Very excellent results have been 
 produced by this device, but, whether from 
 the difficulty of getting artists to work in 
 a manner so different from that to which 
 they are accustomed, or because equally 
 good results can be obtained by other and 
 perhaps simpler methods, the system does 
 not appear to have come into use, though 
 it is now some little time since the inventor 
 brought it out. This seems a pity, for it 
 is both novel and ingenious, while it is 
 capable of producing certain effects in a 
 manner not otherwise easily attainable. 
 
 The methods by which a photographic 
 transfer can be obtained for the purpose of 
 photolithography have already been dealt 
 with, and it has also been stated that such 
 a transfer can be placed upon a zinc plate, 
 instead of upon a stone. As the use of 
 a transfer affords one of the simplest and 
 one of the commonest ways of producing a 
 
Transfer Process. 
 
 95 
 
 phototypic block, it may be convenient to 
 deal in the first instance with this method, 
 merely premising that it is by no means 
 necessary that the transfer should be a 
 photographic one. Any outline that can be 
 produced in a suitable fatty ink will serve 
 equally well to take the place of the etching 
 ground, and protect the surface of the plate 
 from the etching fluid, for that is really 
 what is required. One special convenience 
 of the process is that, as with photolitho- 
 graphy, a proof of the picture can be sub- 
 mitted from the stone, and any required 
 alterations made, before the block is etched, 
 an advantage which cannot be had with a 
 wood block. 
 
 And here it may be well to point out that, 
 as with photolithography, only drawings in 
 pure black and white can be produced. A 
 tint cannot be represented, any more than 
 it can by a wood block. Later on we shall 
 have to deal with devices for rendering into 
 line or stipple or granulation the half-tones of 
 a negative, but for the present we are dealing 
 only with reproductions of black and white. 
 
g6 Metal for Transfer. 
 
 The transfer, in whatever way produced, 
 is damped and laid on the smooth and 
 carefully prepared face of a zinc plate, 
 zinc being preferred to any other metal on 
 account of its cheapness, and for its ready 
 solubility in the acids used for etching. 
 This is naturally of special importance, 
 since large quantities of the metal have to 
 be removed, and removed with rapidity. 
 Under these circumstances copper is much 
 less suitable, though, as we shall see here- 
 after, it is capable of being used in some 
 cases, especially with very fine work, with 
 effect. Zinc is also preferable on account 
 of its " lithographic " qualities, its power, 
 that is to say, of taking up both the ink 
 and the water. Copper is a denser, more 
 close-grained metal, and therefore not so 
 suitable. Type-metal (an alloy of lead and 
 tin, with a little antimony) has also been 
 employed. Cast-iron would also serve, but 
 the writer has not heard of anybody who has 
 had the hardihood to propose to etch cast- 
 iron. The idea may have some value, since 
 it must be one of the very few connected 
 
Preparation for Etching. 97 
 
 with the subject of photo-typography still 
 remaining unpatented. 
 
 By being passed a few times through a 
 lithographic press, just as if the transfer 
 were for photolithography, it is caused 
 to adhere to the plate. The paper is then 
 wetted, after which it can be stripped off, 
 leaving the whole of the ink on the plate. 
 The amount of ink, however, thus deposited 
 on the plate is not in itself sufficient to 
 offer the requisite protection from the 
 acid, nor is the transfer ink of a nature 
 capable of resisting the acid. The plate 
 is therefore inked up, much in the same 
 way as a lithographic stone is inked up, 
 with a view of rendering the lines as solid 
 and as strong as possible. That is to say, 
 it is washed, gummed, again sponged over, 
 and then rolled up with a suitable ink. 
 The process is repeated until a sufficient 
 amount of ink has been taken up by the 
 lines, that is, in fact, as much ink as they 
 will hold. The covering of the lines is then 
 still further strengthened by dusting over the 
 plate powdered asphalt or other suitable 
 
 7 
 
98 Etching the Plate. 
 
 material, the plate being warmed just 
 sufficiently to incorporate the asphalt with 
 the ink. The back and other parts of the 
 plate, where the acid is not required to act, 
 are protected by varnish, and the plate is 
 then placed in a bath of acid, in order that 
 the parts not covered by any protective 
 coating, the parts, that is, which are to 
 form the whites of the finished picture, may 
 be dissolved away. 
 
 Now comes the principal difficulty of the 
 process, and one which for long formed 
 the chief obstacle to its practical use. 
 If the acid were allowed to act continu- 
 ously on the plate until a sufficient depth 
 had been obtained, it would not content 
 itself with eating straight down into the 
 plate, but it would act on the sides of the 
 furrows it formed as well as on their 
 bases, and would consequently undercut 
 those parts of the plate which were covered 
 by the protecting material. The result 
 w r ould be that the fine lines, being under- 
 mined from both sides, would disappear 
 altogether, while the strongest lines and 
 
Etching the Plate. 
 
 99 
 
 the edges of the solid blocks would become 
 rotten. The way in which this difficulty is 
 overcome is highly ingenious, and it has 
 the further advantage of acting on the 
 metal in such a manner as to leave the 
 lines supported on a broad base of metal, 
 each line being in section an inverted V, 
 and having thus, however fine it may be, 
 strength sufficient to stand the pressure to 
 which it is subjected in printing. 
 
 As soon as the etching has proceeded to 
 a very slight depth, the plate is removed 
 from the bath, washed, and gently heated. 
 The ink and the other protective medium 
 is thus melted, and caused to run down 
 the sides of the little furrows formed by the 
 acid, and thereby protect them from further 
 action. It is obvious that this is a process 
 of great delicacy, and requiring careful 
 watching, since the ink is only allowed to 
 flow far enough to protect the sides, without 
 covering the bottoms of the hollows, or 
 extending beyond the sides. It is, how- 
 ever, successfully carried out, and seems to 
 present no difficulty to the skilful workmen 
 
ioo Etching the Plate. 
 
 employed. The process of inking and 
 dusting on resinous material is repeated, 
 and the plate is then ready for a second 
 etching. The action of the acid in the 
 second etching also is only permitted to 
 reach a very slight depth, when the plate 
 is removed and treated as before. 
 
 So the process goes on till a depth which 
 it is considered will give satisfactory results 
 in the printing press has been attained. By 
 that time hollows have been eaten away, 
 the sides of which are composed of little 
 ridges or steps, each step marking the 
 progress of one etching. The last etchings 
 are allowed to proceed to a greater depth 
 than the earlier ones, stronger acid being 
 employed, and the process being allowed 
 to continue for a longer time. The number 
 of etchings, and the amount each is allowed 
 to do, depend on the character of the work 
 to be produced. In fine work the etching 
 is much more gradual than in work of a 
 rougher and cheaper character. 
 
 The etching is carried on in baths or 
 troughs to which a rocking motion is given. 
 
Finishing the Block. i o I 
 
 The object of this is to cause the acid to 
 flow to and fro in waves over the surface of 
 the plate, so that it may wash away the little 
 bubbles of gas formed by the action of the 
 acid on the zinc, and may also carry off 
 the small particles of foreign matter which, 
 as they are liberated from the zinc by the 
 corrosion, tend to settle on its surface, the 
 effect of either gas or solid matters being 
 alike to protect the zinc, and so to prevent 
 the acid from getting free access to it. 
 
 A final etching is given after the block has 
 been cleaned and properly inked up in such 
 a way as to protect only the surface, so that 
 the edges of the little ridges may be eaten 
 away and thus rounded off. Where large 
 spaces of white occur, the metal is cleared 
 away with a graver, to insure their being 
 lowered to a sufficient depth, and thus to 
 avoid risk of their printing. Very often much 
 of the depth is obtained in this way, only 
 just the amount of work that is absolutely 
 required being done by the acid. In large 
 establishments special machines are used 
 for the purpose. Other makers, however, 
 
102 Finishing the Block. 
 
 prefer to get the whole depth required by 
 etching, and leave nothing to be removed 
 mechanically. The superfluous metal round 
 the edges of the design is cut away with 
 a saw, and the plate mounted on a wooden 
 block of such size as to make it "type- 
 high," and therefore suitable for being made 
 up with type in the ordinary way. 
 
 In practice it is usual to lay down several 
 subjects on one plate of zinc, if the pictures 
 are all small, for it must be remembered 
 that the size of the surface etched is quite 
 immaterial. It is as easy to etch a large 
 plate as a small one, or a plate with half a 
 dozen pictures on it as a plate with one. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Methods of Producing Surface Blocks 
 {continued}. 
 
 jHE transfer process, however, 
 though offering many and con- 
 siderable advantages, is not suited 
 for the finest kinds of work. For these 
 it is requisite to print direct from the 
 negative on the zinc, which is of course 
 coated with a sensitive film. The finest 
 results are obtained by the employment 
 of bitumen. Next, perhaps, to this comes 
 bichromatized albumen. Gelatine is not 
 now much used, as albumen gives finer 
 results, and is more rapid. Other colloid 
 substances in combination with a bichro- 
 mate are also employed. In the choice of 
 the precise process, operators are guided by 
 their own practice, and opinions differ as 
 
104 Direct Processes. 
 
 to which is the best. The general belief 
 appears to be that expressed above, but 
 some operators prefer albumen to bitumen. 
 When the direct process is employed, the 
 facility afforded by all lithographic pro- 
 cesses, or processes into which lithography 
 enters, of giving proofs which can be 
 altered to any desired extent, no longer 
 exists, nor can original drawings on transfer 
 paper be utilized. The process becomes in 
 all cases a photographic one. The drawing 
 must be photographed and a negative ob- 
 tained under which the sensitive surface 
 can be exposed to light. As in the case of 
 collotype, reversed negatives have to be 
 employed. The negatives also must be of 
 the same character as those for photolitho- 
 graphic work, 1 that is to say, the lines of the 
 drawing must be represented by lines of clear 
 glass, and the whites by as dense a deposit 
 as can be obtained. Negatives of this 
 character, showing intense contrast of black 
 and white, are more easily obtained by the 
 wet-plate process than by the use of dry 
 1 See ante, p. 65. 
 
Character of the Negative, 105 
 
 gelatine plates, and for this reason the wet- 
 plate process is still generally employed, this 
 being, perhaps, the only important applica- 
 tion of photography in which the wet-plate 
 process has not yet yielded to the dry plate. 
 Some workers, however, are successful with 
 gelatine plates, and probably their greater 
 convenience will eventually cause them to 
 be employed almost exclusively here, as in 
 nearly all other photographic work. 
 
 If indeed this is to be the case, the makers 
 of such plates will have to use glass with 
 a flatter and more accurate surface than at 
 present, for it is easy to see that unless the 
 surfaces of glass and metal are alike equally 
 true, perfect contact between them cannot 
 be obtained, and imperfect contact of course 
 produces want of sharpness in the resulting 
 outlines. This may indeed, to a certain 
 extent, be guarded against by taking care 
 that the light by which printing is effected 
 falls vertically on the face of the negative, 
 thus throwing a sharp shadow on the sensi- 
 tive surface, instead of the shadow with 
 indistinct edges which is naturally produced 
 
io6 Bitumen Process, 
 
 by diffused light when the object forming 
 the shadow is at any distance, however 
 slight, from the shaded surface. It is, 
 however, better and safer to make sure 
 that the two surfaces are really in contact, 
 and for this purpose to employ proper glass 
 for the negative. 
 
 One important advantage of the direct 
 process is that the final picture is not 
 liable to the slight distortion which arises 
 from unequal stretching of the paper in 
 all processes in which the image is trans- 
 ferred from paper. This distortion, slight 
 as it is, is often sufficient to throw the 
 picture out of exact scale, and renders the 
 transfer process objectionable when minute 
 accuracy is necessary. When the image is 
 printed direct from the negative upon the 
 ultimate printing surface, such distortion 
 is evidently impossible. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the 
 use of bitumen in the photolithographic 
 process, and the same material affords a 
 ready means of producing a phototypic 
 block. There is this of special interest 
 
Bitumen Process, 
 
 107 
 
 about the process, that it was one of the 
 earliest of all photographic processes, and 
 certainly the earliest by which any attempt 
 was made to obtain a printing surface by 
 photographic means. Niepce, the father 
 of photography, produced a photograph by 
 exposing in the camera a metal plate covered 
 with a thin layer of bituminous varnish. 
 As he had expected from his previous ob- 
 servations, those portions of the layer on 
 which light fell were hardened, while those 
 parts were unaffected which had remained 
 in shadow. It is unnecessary to say that to 
 obtain this result an enormously long ex- 
 posure was required. By the application 
 of a solvent such as had been used in the 
 manufacture of the varnish, the soluble 
 parts were cleared away, and an image 
 formed in which the shadows were repre- 
 sented by bare metal, and the lights by the 
 varnish. To convert this negative image 
 into a positive, the exposed metal was 
 darkened by exposure to the vapour of 
 iodine, and the varnish was cleared off by 
 a stronger solvent. Niepce de Saint Victor, 
 
io8 Niepce' s Process, 
 
 the nephew of Nicephore Niepce, en- 
 deavoured to apply this process to the 
 production of engraved plates, and published 
 a work on the subject. 1 He exposed a 
 metal plate coated with bitumen under a 
 transparency, so that the lines were protected 
 from light and were therefore left soluble. 
 Treatment with a solvent exposed the metal 
 in the lines, and etching in the usual manner 
 produced a plate which could be printed 
 in a copper-plate press. 
 
 A process in principle almost identical 
 with that of Niepce, though considerably 
 modified in its practical details, is now 
 largely used for the production of photo- 
 type blocks. The chief objection to this 
 process was originally the length of ex- 
 posure required, but this is now over- 
 come by treating the bitumen in the first 
 instance with ether, by which the in- 
 sensitive portions are dissolved out. The 
 remainder is dissolved in turpentine, and 
 the varnish thus obtained is employed 
 
 1 Traite Pratique de Gravure Heliographique. 
 Paris, 1856. 
 
Coating the Plate. 109 
 
 to coat the zinc plate. The device by 
 which an even coating is obtained is 
 highly ingenious, and is applicable not 
 only for coating a plate with bitumen, but 
 whenever a very thin and even film is re- 
 quired. The plate to be coated is clamped 
 on a " whirling table," a disc mounted on 
 a vertical spindle, and capable of having a 
 rapid rotary motion imparted to it. A little 
 of the bituminous compound is poured upon 
 the plate, which is then rapidly revolved. 
 The centrifugal force causes the liquid to 
 fly outwards and spread itself in a thin 
 layer over the plate. When it is dry, the 
 plate is exposed behind a negative for a 
 suitable period, a reversed negative being, 
 it will be remembered, necessary. It is 
 next treated with a solvent, which may 
 be a mixture of oil of turpentine and ben- 
 zole, 1 the proportions being varied as 
 required, since benzole is a more active 
 solvent than turpentine, and therefore by 
 adding more or less of it, a developer of 
 
 1 Bolas, Cantor Lectures, Journal of the Society 
 of Arts, vol. xxvi. p. 819. 
 
1 1 o Development t. 
 
 any necessary strength can be obtained. 
 As soon as the development is complete, 
 the plate is very carefully cleaned, it being 
 obviously necessary to remove all traces of 
 the varnish or the solvent from the un- 
 covered spaces of metal. This removal of 
 the last traces of the coating is one of the 
 difficulties of the bitumen process. A certain 
 amount, of rubbing is necessary, and this is 
 very apt to endanger the finer lines. It has 
 to be remembered that the parts exposed 
 to light do not become absolutely insoluble. 
 Their condition is only one of relative 
 insolubility, as compared with the shaded 
 parts. Both are to a certain extent affected 
 by the solvent, and consequently even the 
 hardest parts are not in a condition to stand 
 rough treatment. When the cleansing 
 process is complete, the plate is generally 
 again exposed to the light, so as to com- 
 pletely harden the film, and it is then 
 submitted to the etching process previously 
 described. The bitumen coating being a 
 better protective from the acid than the fatty 
 ink of the transfer, the plate can be placed 
 
Albumen Process, 1 1 1 
 
 in the bath for the first etching without any 
 further protection. After this the process 
 is identical with that employed when a 
 transfer is used. 
 
 When a colloid substance is employed, 
 albumen, as stated above, is generally pre- 
 ferred to gelatine. The mixture of bichro- 
 mate, albumen and water is poured on the 
 carefully cleaned zinc plate so as to give a 
 very thin film; to ensure evenness, the whirls 
 ing table, or some similar arrangement for 
 giving a rapid rotation to the plate, should 
 be used ; the film is dried, and is then ready 
 for exposure. The time for the exposure, as 
 indeed is the case with most other photo- 
 graphic printing, has to be learned by 
 experience. When the exposure is com- 
 plete, the development is effected by simply 
 placing the plate in water; before doing 
 this it may be inked over, in w T hich case the 
 image is seen in ink, as the soluble albumen 
 dissolves away from the other portions, or, 
 if the ink is not applied, it is well to add 
 a little aniline dye to the water, in order 
 that the image may be stained, and so 
 
1 1 2 Honey Process. 
 
 rendered visible. The etching may be 
 effected, at all events the first etching, by 
 using a solution of perchloride of iron, and 
 if an alcoholic solution be employed, the 
 first etching can be effected without inking 
 up the image, the albumen alone being 
 sufficient protection. The later stages of 
 the etching must be conducted in the 
 manner previously described. 
 
 Another valuable material for use in pre- 
 paring a sensitive film, and one perhaps 
 less commonly known than albumen, is 
 honey (it may be worth mention that the 
 rarer sort of honey, that produced by the 
 bee, alone will serve, the ordinary com- 
 pound of glucose sold as honey in the 
 shops will not answer). The compound of 
 honey and bichromate requires special treat- 
 ment, and the process varies in some of the 
 details from that usual with albumen. In 
 the hands of some operators a greater 
 speed can be attained with honey than 
 with albumen, and this additional speed, 
 when the work has to be carried on in dull 
 winter weather, or even, as is now often 
 
Silver-line Process. 
 
 113 
 
 the case with newspaper work, at night, by 
 means of the electric light, is a most im- 
 portant point. With a good negative, and 
 a well-prepared film, whichever compound 
 be employed, a print can be obtained in 
 ten minutes by the electric light. Three or 
 four hours will suffice for the etching, and 
 thus, in cases of pressure, a block can be 
 ready for the printing press in five or six 
 hours. 
 
 Yet another method of etching, and one 
 differing very considerably from any of those 
 yet mentioned, is that to which the name 
 of "silver-line" has been given. It was 
 patented some years ago in Germany, but 
 does not appear to have been worked there, 
 in consequence of certain difficulties in its 
 practical working ; these difficulties are be- 
 lieved now to have been overcome, and the 
 process is at present being successfully 
 worked in this country. Those who are 
 engaged upon it speak highly of its capa- 
 cities, and some specimens of the prints 
 produced by this means, which have been 
 shown to the writer, leave little to be desired. 
 
 8 
 
H4 Silver -line Process. 
 
 A zinc plate, covered with bitumen or 
 other sensitive compound, is exposed under 
 a transparent positive, so that the lines only 
 of the picture are left soluble ; after de- 
 velopment in the usual manner, the lines 
 are etched out, the acid being allowed to 
 penetrate to what is found to be a sufficient 
 depth, and also permitted to undercut the 
 sides of the lines. The varnish or other 
 protective covering is then entirely removed 
 from the plate, and the lines filled in with 
 a metallic alloy, capable of resisting the 
 action of the acid. Owing to the under- 
 cutting of the acid, the lines of alloy thus 
 formed are rather broader at the base than 
 at the top. The surface of the plate is then 
 scraped away, down to nearly the level of the 
 base of the etched lines. The reduction of 
 the plate is carried to such an extent that 
 a thin layer of the alloy is left, in the lines 
 originally etched. The plate is then placed, 
 without further treatment, in the usual etch- 
 ing bath, and etched as deeply as is safe 
 without the risk of undercutting. Owing 
 to the comparative thickness of the lines of 
 
Galvanic Etching. 1 1 5 
 
 alloy, and to their being imbedded within 
 the substance of the zinc, the first etching 
 may be carried to a much greater depth 
 than when the protective layer is only on 
 the surface of the plate, and when it there- 
 fore offers no resistance to the undercutting 
 action of the acid. After this first etching 
 the plate is inked, and the process continued 
 in the usual manner till sufficient printing 
 depth has been attained. 
 
 By the use of a somewhat similar method, 
 it has been proposed to convert intaglio 
 plates into surface blocks. The lines in 
 the plate are to be filled up with a suitable 
 composition, and the metal etched away. 
 Whether the plan has ever passed beyond 
 the theoretical stage, the writer has no 
 means of knowing. Various other devices 
 for obtaining etched blocks have also been 
 put forward, but those previously described 
 comprise all that are known to be in use, 
 and there is little reason to believe that any 
 of the methods worked as secret processes 
 differ very greatly from them. 
 
 To assist the process of etching, the aid 
 
1 1 6 Galvanic Etching. 
 
 of galvanism has been occasionally called 
 in, with the view of lessening the time re- 
 quired to eat away the metal to the needful 
 depth. The simplest plan adopted with the 
 view of setting up galvanic action is to flow 
 over the plate, before it is placed in the 
 etching bath, a solution of sulphate of 
 copper ; the zinc is instantly coated with 
 a film of finely divided copper, in fact what 
 electricians term a " Copper-zinc Couple " 
 is formed, and when the plate is placed in 
 the acid, the action is far more energetic 
 than when the zinc alone is submitted to 
 the acid. 
 
 Or the plate to be etched may be connected 
 to the negative pole of a voltaic battery, and 
 another metallic plate connected to the 
 positive pole, both plates being immersed 
 in a suitable etching fluid such as sulphate 
 of copper or of zinc, for instance. The 
 metal is rather rapidly dissolved from the 
 parts not protected by the ink or varnish. 
 
 Or, again, the zinc plate to be etched and 
 a plate of copper may themselves be formed 
 into a voltaic battery by immersing them in 
 
Warnerke* s Method, 117 
 
 a suitable fluid and connecting them by a 
 wire, the action then is the same as in the 
 last case. 
 
 Various plans have been suggested for 
 protecting the parts of the plate to be left 
 in relief. Thus the plate may be gilt, and 
 the design incised by a graver, or, after the 
 design has been obtained in any protective 
 coating, the plate may be gilt. The removal 
 of the varnish then leaves the ungilt parts 
 exposed to the corrosive action of the bath. 1 
 In practice, however, it is not thought that 
 any of these devices offer any advantages 
 over the simpler etching method, and they 
 are not so perfectly under control. 
 
 If, however, this principle is to be em- 
 ployed, perhaps the most ingenious appli- 
 cation of it is that of Mr. Warnerke. In 
 Capt. Abney's Treatise on Photography 2 
 an illustration is given produced by Mr. 
 Warnerke' s method ; but at the time of the 
 publication of that book the method was 
 
 1 A. Watt, "Electrodeposition" (1886), p. 152. 
 G. Gore, " Electro-metallurgy (1877), p. 231. 
 
 2 Treatise on Photography (1878), p. 185. 
 
1 1 8 Warnerke's Method, 
 
 a secret one. Mr. Warnerke has since been 
 good enough to furnish the author with par- 
 ticulars. He takes a plate of copper or zinc 
 — by preference the former metal — on which 
 a picture in bitumen has been obtained, 
 and flows it over with a solution of a salt 
 of platinum, nickel, or cobalt. Other metals 
 will serve, but the most effective results 
 have been produced with those mentioned. 
 The metal is deposited in a fine state of 
 division on the exposed parts of the 
 plate, which is then placed in a bath of 
 extremely weak acid — so weak that it would 
 have no effect on zinc or copper alone. 
 Action is set up where the metal has been 
 deposited, and the plate can be etched 
 away till a printing depth has been obtained. 
 The bitumen is not needed as a protection 
 from the acid, merely as a means of getting 
 the deposit in the place required, and this 
 once done, the bitumen might be cleared 
 away. If a series of lines, or an outline, 
 be traced with the metallic salt on a clean 
 plate of zinc or copper, and the plate be 
 immersed in the weak acid solution, the 
 
Etching on Glass. 119 
 
 lines will be etched, the rest of the surface 
 remaining bright and unaffected. In this 
 case the whole etching is carried out at a 
 single operation, and Mr. Warnerke states 
 that there is no undercutting effect, the 
 etching proceeding merely in a vertical 
 direction. For cheap commercial work the 
 process cannot compete with the ordinary 
 zinc etching process in the matter of price, 
 but in the hands of the inventor very good 
 work has been produced by it. Blocks 
 made in this way have been printed in 
 some foreign periodicals, but the process 
 has never come into any extensive use. 
 
 An attempt has been made to substitute 
 glass for zinc in the preparation of surface 
 blocks by the etching method. The etching 
 in this case is effected by means of hydro- 
 fluoric acid, as in the ordinary process for 
 etching glass, the protective film being 
 applied in the usual way. So far as the 
 writer is aware, no details for the carrying 
 out of the process have been published. 
 The brittleness of the material is an obvious 
 drawback, possibly compensated for by its 
 
1 20 Swelled Gelatine Method. 
 
 comparative cheapness. The surface would 
 be quite true, and would require no pre- 
 paration. The process has been introduced 
 commercially, but it does not appear to 
 have attained any amount of success. It 
 was proposed to use it for large pictures 
 for illustrated newspapers, and to some 
 extent this was done in a paper published 
 in Australia. 
 
 We now come to the second class of 
 processes by which phototype blocks are 
 made, processes of some importance, though 
 less extensively used than the etching 
 methods. These are exclusively photo- 
 graphic, as transfers or drawings made by 
 hand cannot be employed. If a sheet of 
 plate-glass covered with a film of bichro- 
 mated gelatine be, after exposure under a 
 line negative, soaked for a considerable 
 time in cold water, the parts protected from 
 light will swell up, and the lines will con- 
 sequently appear as depressions. A plaster 
 cast, taken from the wet swelled gelatine, 
 will reproduce these depressions as raised 
 lines. A reproduction of this cast in metal 
 
Increasing Relief, 121 
 
 will consequently be a surface printing 
 block. This reproduction is most easily 
 effected by taking another cast from the 
 plaster, and then electrotyping, or by 
 electrotyping from the plaster, and making 
 a second electrotype from the first one. 
 Additional relief may be given in large 
 spaces of white, by depositing wax, stearine, 
 or some other easily fusible material on 
 those parts of the mould requiring to be 
 raised in order to give deeper depressions 
 in the block. " This is best done by 
 holding a stick of stearine or wax in the 
 left hand, and a warm pencil of metal in 
 the other hand, and so holding the wax or 
 stearine as to let a thin melted stream flow 
 down the warm pencil." 1 
 
 There are special difficulties in the way 
 of carrying out the process, and blocks 
 made in this way are generally considered 
 to be much inferior to etched blocks ; 
 the edges of the lines are inclined to be 
 rounded, instead of being square, and the 
 
 1 Bolas, Cantor Lectures, Jotirnal of the Society of 
 Arts, vol. xxvi. p. 805. 
 
122 Dazvson Process. 
 
 surface of the metal is less truly even than 
 the surface of an etched block ; this will 
 easily be understood when it is remembered 
 that in the latter case it is the surface of 
 the original plate of zinc, which had been 
 carefully smoothed, whereas in the former 
 case the surface results from the level of 
 the unswelled gelatine, and this, though 
 fairly even, is not absolutely so. The writer 
 is not aware whether any process, founded 
 on this principle, is in actual use. 
 
 Again, if the exposed film be developed 
 in hot water, the soluble parts can be 
 entirely removed. By exposing under a 
 positive, the lines may be left soluble, and 
 then after development we get a mould, the 
 base of which is the surface of the plate 
 glass, and is consequently perfectly even 
 and true. A process of this nature is 
 successfully worked by Messrs. Dawson, 
 whose wax process for the production 
 of relief blocks is described later on. 1 
 They have, by the method they employ 
 for the production of the swelled gelatine 
 1 See Chapter XI. page 215. 
 
Applications of the Processes. 123 
 
 film, succeeded in getting a very satis- 
 factory and sharp relief, though it is a 
 very low relief. From this they take a 
 cast in plaster, and from that a cast in wax. 
 This wax cast is then carefully worked over 
 and additional wax is run on to all the 
 parts where additional depth is wanted in 
 the printing block. The practice acquired 
 in the Dawson wax process has doubtless 
 given the operators considerable skill in 
 this department of the work, and the results 
 are certainly extremely good. 
 
 It will be seen that these processes, 
 whether the etching method or any other 
 be employed, provide us with a most 
 important and valuable means of illustrating 
 books. By their aid any drawing or design 
 in line or stipple can be translated into a 
 solid block, and with such success that with 
 suitable subjects it is often hardly possible 
 to tell the original from the copy. And 
 not only do they enable surface blocks to 
 be produced with great rapidity and at 
 slight cost, but they give blocks capable 
 of producing effects which could not be 
 
124 Process Blocks and 
 
 obtained at all by wood engravings, or if 
 at all only at a great expense. A familiar 
 and obvious instance of this may be found 
 in the diagrams with which scientific books 
 are illustrated. At one time it was the 
 usual practice to construct such diagrams 
 of white lines on a black ground, like 
 drawings on a slate. The reason for this 
 was that it was easy for the wood engraver 
 to cut out a white line, leaving the remain- 
 ing surface of his block untouched ; while 
 it was very troublesome for him to cut away 
 the whole surface of his block, leaving only 
 the few thin lines required to form his 
 diagram. Now, however, by the etching 
 process, it is just as easy, in fact it is rather 
 easier, to produce a block which will print 
 the lines in black. This is a simple case, 
 but an extension of the same principle, 
 that (within certain limitations) the character 
 of the lines is of no great moment, gives 
 automatic or chemical engraving its great 
 advantages over wood blocks. As a tour 
 de force, wood engravers have sometimes 
 copied etchings, but with a result by no 
 
Wood Blocks. 125 
 
 means commensurate with the labour ex- 
 pended. Now an etched block will render 
 with equal facility the diagram of a problem 
 of Euclid, a page of type or manuscript, a 
 pen-and-ink sketch, an etching, a mezzotint, 
 or a copper-plate engraving. An artist 
 ought therefore to be able to express himself 
 with much greater facility than when he is 
 drawing for the wood-engraver, and there 
 need be little doubt that when the different 
 processes have been a little more improved, 
 and have reached the perfection they are 
 rapidly approaching, he will be able to do so. 
 
 Also it is of little or no consequence how 
 elaborate or complicated the original design 
 may be. If it is photographed, it is of no 
 consequence at all, and if it is drawn, it is 
 far easier to copy a complicated line drawing 
 upon the stone than it is to translate it 
 into a woodcut. 
 
 The process of making a block by the 
 etching or other photographic method is 
 one requiring great skill and great care. 
 The theory is simple enough, but the practice 
 is extremely difficult. That the finest results 
 
126 A dvantages 
 
 may be attained in it is shown by the ex- 
 quisite illustrations in many of the magazines 
 illustrated by -• process " blocks, while its 
 rapidity is another great advantage. For 
 diagrams and line subjects it is excellent. 
 For pictorial effects it can hardly, as yet, 
 be said to come up to the best wood- 
 engraving, though it is rapidly coming up 
 to this standard. The finest blocks now 
 produced are indeed nearly or wholly free 
 from the flatness or greyness which was 
 the objectionable feature of the earlier 
 prints ; but even now, where the finest 
 results are desired, and the cost is not 
 a matter of special consideration, it will 
 be best to rely on the wood engraver. He 
 can still give us brighter and clearer work 
 than his more modern rivals, though there 
 is not much likelihood of this remaining 
 so for any length of time. In the various 
 processes that are necessary for the pro- 
 duction of relief blocks by any of the 
 methods described, there are many risks 
 to be run. In inking up the transfer, lines 
 sometimes get thickened out, especially at 
 
and Drawbacks. 
 
 127 
 
 their ends. On the other hand, in etching, 
 the lines get eaten away, so that they become 
 rotten, and sometimes they entirely dis- 
 appear. 
 
 There is also a great tendency for the 
 lines to become rotten owing to their edges 
 not being entirely protected by the ink and 
 other materials, and also to the ink having 
 been allowed to cover rather too much of 
 the metal after the first etchings, so that 
 little projecting ridges and points of metal 
 are left by the side of the lines, and almost 
 the same height, so that they print. These 
 faults are not, however, to be found in good 
 work, and, unless when the blocks are made 
 in a very great hurry, they ought to show 
 perfectly sharp firm lines. The time taken 
 in the production of a block is not very 
 long ; a few hours will suffice for the etch- 
 ing, depending to some extent upon the 
 character of the work, for with fine work 
 the etching, especially in the earlier stages, 
 has to be carried out more gradually, and 
 with weaker acid, than is permissible with 
 work of a coarser character. 
 
128 Preparation of 'Drawings 
 
 In the swelled gelatine methods the diffi- 
 culties arising in the chemical processes 
 for dissolving away the metal are of course 
 avoided. In these the chief difficulties 
 appear to be found in the preparation of 
 the film. There is no fear of rotten lines, 
 the tendency seeming rather to be to coarsen 
 the work. Sufficient relief is not easy to 
 get, and, except in very skilled hands, the 
 lines are apt to be deficient in strength 
 from a lack of sufficient base of metal. 
 
 These defects, however, will not be found 
 in good work, and process blocks are to be 
 thoroughly recommended for illustrations, 
 at all events in which artistic beauty is not 
 the first consideration. They can be trusted 
 to reproduce faithfully in a form capable of 
 being printed simultaneously with the text 
 any picture capable of reproduction by any 
 known printing process. 
 
 Naturally their most important application 
 is for the production of blocks from original 
 drawings made specially for the purpose. 
 When such drawings are properly prepared, 
 and with an intelligent appreciation of the 
 
for Reproduction. 1 2 9 
 
 method in which they are to be repro- 
 duced, illustrations of the most satisfactory 
 character ought to be obtained. 
 
 The proper conditions under which suc- 
 cessful reproductions can be obtained are 
 getting to be pretty generally understood, 
 and many artists now find it worth their 
 while to devote themselves specially to this 
 branch of their work. By skilful employ- 
 ment of the various resources at their com- 
 mand, using the special process which is 
 most applicable, or even laying several 
 different methods under contribution, the 
 best results are to be had. 
 
 Those who have no experience in the 
 preparation of drawings which are to be 
 reproduced as surface blocks, cannot do 
 better than follow the directions given 
 for making drawings which are to be 
 copied by photolithography. 1 If an artist 
 is employed, and the originals have to be 
 drawn, not photographed, the draughtsman 
 is often expected to work from very rough 
 sketches indeed, and if he is a skilful 
 1 See ante, p. 71, and Appendix I. 
 
 9 
 
130 
 
 Choice of 
 
 artist, will generally turn out satisfactory 
 work from the crudest suggestions. If an 
 author is capable of drawing on transfer 
 paper, he can himself prepare his own 
 drawings, and these can be transferred 
 direct to the zinc for etching. Naturally, 
 the cost of such illustrations is reduced, but 
 it is only in exceptional cases that the 
 results are equal to those produced from 
 the work of an expert lithographic draughts- 
 man. When the author prepares his own 
 drawings, it will generally be safer to make 
 them carefully in black ink on smooth paper, 
 following the instructions given, and to have 
 the originals photographed. 
 
 The question will often arise whether it 
 is better to employ lithography for some 
 particular illustration, or to have a block 
 made. If the illustration, whether it be a 
 picture, a map, or diagram, be large, there 
 is no choice. The size of a block to be 
 printed with the text is limited by the size 
 of the page, and if it is not to be printed 
 with the text, there is not (except for very 
 high numbers) much gain in printing it in 
 
Processes. 
 
 131 
 
 the press instead of from the stone. Any 
 saving in the printing will be absorbed by 
 the cost of making the block. On the 
 other hand, if the illustration be very small, 
 it must be set in the text, and must there- 
 fore be a relief block. 
 
 If the illustration is to be about the size 
 of the page, other considerations come in. 
 For moderate numbers it will in most cases 
 be better to rely on lithography. As the 
 pictures are printed separately from the 
 text, suitable paper can be used, tinted if 
 preferred ; the cost will be a little higher, 
 but the results will be more satisfactory. 
 
 If the cost is a matter of great importance, 
 and it is proposed to print a large edition, 
 there will be a decided saving in the use of 
 blocks which can be printed with the type. 
 There is also this important consideration 
 that they are ready for future editions, 
 whereas the lithograph will in most cases 
 have to be drawn afresh. The cost of pre- 
 paring the principal illustrations over again 
 is often sufficient to prevent the issue of a 
 second edition of a book. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Production of Type-blocks from 
 Half-Tone Negatives. 
 
 j|HE production of printing blocks, 
 or of intaglio plates, direct from an 
 ordinary photographic negative, 
 containing not merely blacks and whites, 
 but intermediate shades also, was for a long 
 time the crux of those who devoted them- 
 selves to the subject, and it is only quite 
 recently that any very marked success has 
 been attained, at all events in the former 
 of the two attempts. The production of 
 prints from plates, the preparation of which 
 was at all events in large share due to 
 photographic methods, however much the 
 etching needle or the graver might after- 
 wards assist, has now for some years been 
 a successful branch of trade, but it is only 
 
Early Experimenters. 133 
 
 within the last year or so that surface blocks 
 have been produced from half-tone negatives 
 on anything like a commercial scale. 
 
 Several ardent experimentalists have, it is 
 true, long been working at the problem, and 
 they have from time to time produced very 
 remarkable results, as a matter of fact not 
 greatly inferior to those of the present time. 
 None of these, however, could justly claim 
 more than an experimental success, and it 
 has been reserved for others to bring to 
 perfection, or very near perfection, the 
 methods they originally devised. 
 
 The object of some of these earlier 
 workers was to produce a lithographic 
 surface. Others sought to make relief 
 blocks, but as the end they really sought 
 was identical, the breaking up into grain or 
 stipple the graduated shades of a negative, 
 it is not easy to discriminate between their 
 labours. Many of the devices intended for 
 photolithography have resulted in the pro- 
 duction of surface blocks, and one at least 
 of the most successful methods of making 
 a photolithograph from a half-tone negative 
 
134 
 
 Secret Processes. 
 
 is based on an invention intended to serve 
 for relief blocks. Amongst the latter class 
 should be mentioned Pretsch, Dallas, Asser, 
 Leggo, Woodbury, and Husnik ; amongst 
 the former Bullock and Swan. All of 
 these produced working processes, and 
 processes by which extremely good work 
 could be and was produced. Most of 
 the recent methods indeed are founded 
 on the work of these men, and of others 
 who equally deserve recognition ; often the 
 resemblance is so close that the difference 
 consists only in small details, hardly capable 
 of description. 
 
 Many of the processes, too, are being 
 worked as trade secrets, partly no doubt 
 because of the difficulty of obtaining valid 
 patents for them when so much has been 
 published, and when so many closely allied 
 processes are already public property; and 
 partly because the difference between success 
 and failure consists to a large extent in the 
 observance of minute details, of which, even 
 were they protected by a valid patent, it 
 would not be easy to detect an infringement. 
 
Conditions of the Problem. 135 
 
 Under these circumstances it would be 
 unreasonable to complain of manufacturers 
 who adopt a perfectly legitimate course for 
 the protection of their own interests, though 
 it may be a natural source of regret, to those 
 who only take a scientific interest in such 
 matters, that much information of an interest- 
 ing character should thus be unavailable. 
 There is, therefore, the double difficulty in 
 writing on the subject, that in the case of 
 some processes the information is really 
 not accessible, and in the case of others 
 it cannot be given without infringing upon 
 what at all events the users of those pro- 
 cesses believe to be private rights. It is 
 hoped that the following pages will contain 
 enough to give their readers sufficient general 
 information on the whole subject, without 
 unduly trespassing on trade privileges. 
 
 It is perhaps unnecessary to remind the 
 reader that the problem to be solved is 
 the translation of the light and shade of 
 the negative into solid outlines of black 
 and white. The shadows may be solid 
 black and the whites solid white, but the 
 
136 Translation of 
 
 intermediate shades must be lines of various 
 breadth, or of varying distance apart, or 
 spots or grain of various fineness or close- 
 ness. In a surface block any part that 
 touches the paper prints, any part that does 
 not touch the paper leaves no mark at all ; 
 there is nothing between, no slight touches 
 or faint impressions. Certain effects may, 
 it is true, be gained by slightly " lowering'' 
 the surface of the block, or by "overlays" 
 which increase the pressure of the paper 
 on certain parts. These devices, however, 
 though most important in improving the 
 lightness and the delicacy of the picture, 
 are quite insufficient for the purpose of 
 giving different tints or degrees of shading. 
 Nor has the surface block the resource of 
 the intaglio plate, the deep lines of which 
 hold a large proportion of ink, and transfer 
 it to the paper, while the shallow lines, 
 holding a less quantity of ink, can only 
 deliver that to the paper, and consequently 
 make a lighter impression. 
 
 The photographic image is of course 
 continuous. There are no outlines in it. 
 
Shade into Grain. 
 
 137 
 
 The picture is formed of graduated tints or 
 shades, ranging from the white of the paper 
 up to the darkest colour that the process 
 employed can give. In a wood block lines 
 are employed more or less freely to indicate 
 the outlines of the design. Such outlines 
 are employed with the greatest freedom 
 by the early wood-engravers, sparingly by 
 Bewick and his school, very little by the most 
 recent school, whose object appears to be to 
 give as closely as possible the character of 
 a photograph, or at all events of a type 
 block produced from a photograph. To 
 make a block capable of being printed 
 from, the graduated tints of the photograph 
 have to be translated into shading, which 
 will, as far as possible, give the same value. 
 The image must be broken up into stipple 
 or grain of some sort, and it must be a 
 stipple closest in the shadows, gradually 
 becoming more open through the range 
 of the intermediate tones, and vanishing 
 altogether in the highest lights. 
 
 For a typographic block the relief, too, 
 must be considerable, and here is one of 
 
138 Style of Printing, 
 
 the greatest difficulties. The best relief 
 blocks now made direct from half-tone 
 negatives are very far from being satis- 
 factory in this respect. They are not 
 nearly deep enough, and they consequently 
 require the most careful and delicate 
 printing. For ordinary printing the paper 
 is damped, and it is forced down on the 
 type by a cylinder covered with a slightly 
 yielding material. The type is thus pressed 
 a little into the paper, as may be seen on 
 looking at any roughly printed sheet, when 
 the depressions formed by the type are evi- 
 dent enough. Treatment of this sort applied 
 to one of the modern tint blocks generally 
 results in the production of a black smudge. 
 The paper has to be dry, and the cylinder 
 over which the paper passes must have a 
 firm unyielding surface. The paper must 
 only touch the top of the printing surface, 
 there must be no burying of the lines of 
 the block in the body of the paper. Printing 
 of this character must always lack some- 
 thing of the richness and vigour of the old 
 style, however much it may gain in delicacy. 
 
Improved A ppliances. 1 3 9 
 
 And this necessity for an improved 
 method of printing was one of the reasons 
 why it is only quite recently that tint blocks 
 have come into use. It was no use making 
 delicate blocks if nobody could print from 
 them, and so, though really excellent work 
 was produced by the inventors named above, 
 their inventions languished, as so many 
 inventions languish, because they were a 
 little ahead of the practical appliances by 
 which they were to be used. 
 
 And the same may be said of the attempts 
 to produce photolithographs in half-tone, 
 which preceded the endeavour to make 
 type blocks. Before these systems could 
 be used improvement was necessary in the 
 printing appliances, and besides this greater 
 skill was needed on the part of the work- 
 men. The extended use of lithography, 
 and the various processes # to which it is 
 now applicable, have developed a wonderful 
 amount of dexterity amongst those who 
 have to carry out these processes, and a 
 consequent facility for the execution of 
 processes still more delicate and difficult. 
 
140 Classificatio7t 
 
 Many of the processes with which we are 
 now concerned are most suitable for photo- 
 lithography, many others are intended for 
 the production of type blocks. As, how- 
 ever, it may be considered that any litho- 
 graph can by the transfer method be repro- 
 duced as a block capable of being printed 
 with type, and that conversely a print can 
 be obtained from any type block which can 
 be transferred to the lithographic stone, it 
 will be convenient if in this chapter we 
 consider rather the question of translating 
 half-tones into grain or stipple, without 
 reference to the particular manner in which 
 the actual printing is to be effected, and if, 
 therefore, we deal with photolithographic 
 processes in half-tone, as well as with type 
 blocks. Such a course will save incon- 
 venient repetition, and it is to be hoped 
 will not cause any confusion. 
 
 No attempt will be made to describe, or 
 even to enumerate, all the various processes 
 which have been proposed, and this will 
 be the less necessary because, as far as is 
 known, they all of them rest on a few 
 
of Methods. 
 
 141 
 
 well-known principles, though there has 
 been great ingenuity in the manner in which 
 those principles have been applied. 
 
 Most then, if not all, the successful pro- 
 cesses for the purpose depend on one or 
 other of the following methods, or on a 
 combination of one or more of them. 
 
 1. The natural reticulation of the gelatine 
 or other colloid film, in the parts exposed 
 to light. 
 
 2. Copying mechanical network, stipple 
 or grain on to one of the sensitive surfaces 
 used in the production of the printing- 
 surface, or introducing granular material 
 into the substance of one of those surfaces. 
 
 3. Imparting line or stipple to a Wood- 
 bury film or analogous relief. 
 
 There are some other processes available 
 for the manufacture of type blocks, 1 but 
 those given above are believed to be almost 
 exhaustive, except as regards methods in- 
 tended primarily for photogravure, some of 
 
 1 For some of these see the articles on the subject 
 by Lieut. -Col. Waterhouse in the volume of the 
 Photographic News for 1885 (vol. xxix.). 
 
142 
 
 Pretsch 
 
 which may very probably hereafter suggest 
 means for the purpose. These methods 
 will be considered in a later chapter, 1 
 devoted specially to the means employed 
 for producing intaglio plates from half-tone 
 negatives. 
 
 One of the oldest processes for the 
 production of grained blocks direct from 
 a negative was that of Paul Pretsch. He 
 discovered the fact that the bichromatized 
 gelatine film, in addition to the proper- 
 ties of which so much has already been 
 said, possesses also the property already 
 mentioned 2 of reticulating or covering 
 itself with minute vermicular markings, 
 when it is wetted after the usual exposure 
 to light. This property is specially apparent 
 when the film has been rather rapidly dried, 
 and when it contains a proportion of a de- 
 liquescent material, such as chloride of 
 calcium. The reticulation varies consider- 
 ably in its character, according to the 
 temperature at which the film has been 
 dried, its thickness and its composition. 
 1 See Chapter X. 2 See ante, p. 51. 
 
Process. 
 
 143 
 
 Its amount also varies precisely as the 
 amount of exposure to light. In the 
 shadows of the highest lights of the picture, 
 where the protection from light by the 
 darkest parts of the negative has been 
 complete, there will be no reticulation at 
 all, and the gelatine having preserved all 
 its power of solubility will swell up, when 
 the film is soaked. In the highest shades 
 of the picture, where the light passing 
 through the clear parts of the negative has 
 acted most strongly, the gelatine will absorb 
 no water, and here also there is no re- 
 ticulation. In the intermediate shadows a 
 graduated amount of reticulation will be 
 found, slightest and most open when the 
 light has acted slightly, and increasing to 
 a certain point, after which it begins to 
 merge into the solid shadows of the 
 picture. 
 
 We have therefore, after exposure and 
 soaking, a film with the high lights raised 
 and smooth, the middle tones partly raised 
 and grained, and the solid blacks depressed 
 and smooth. A cast from this represents 
 
144 P ret sch Process. 
 
 a typographical block of the character 
 required. 
 
 If therefore an electrotype be taken 
 direct from the wet gelatine, the block is 
 obtained at once, but as this is not an easy 
 process, it is better to take a cast from the 
 gelatine, and to reproduce this by a double 
 electrotyping or by casting again and electro- 
 typing. 1 
 
 The Pretsch process, though a very old 
 one, has many advantages, and, if a demand 
 should ever arise for the production of type 
 blocks for newspaper work direct from 
 original negatives, there is perhaps no 
 process likely to give better results. The 
 grain is extremely good, and the worm-like 
 markings work themselves in a wonderful 
 manner into the details of the negative, 
 aranging themselves along the lines and 
 following out the finer outlines. 
 
 As Major Waterhouse observes, "The 
 
 1 The best account of the Pretsch process is given 
 in the British Journal of Photography for 1879, 
 p. 567. A formula for it is also given in the Year- 
 Book of Photography for 1885, p. 191. 
 
Asser's Process. 145 
 
 only objection to it (the Pretsch process) is 
 that the grain may become unduly promi- 
 nent, and destroy fine detail, but the general 
 effect is good." For this reason it is not 
 very well suited for fine work ; at all events 
 better results can be obtained by other 
 means, but for bold rough work it has many 
 advantages. Probably the finest example 
 of a Pretsch block is one which was printed 
 as an illustration of the process in the 
 Photographic News 1 in 1883. 
 
 This was printed in the ordinary manner 
 on a newspaper machine, and is certainly 
 an admirable example of the suitability of 
 the process for producing newspaper illus- 
 trations direct from a negative, should such 
 a process ever prove to be required. 
 
 Another process by which similar results 
 can be obtained is Asser's starch process. 
 This is a transfer process, in which starch 
 takes the place of the gelatine usually 
 employed. Paper is covered with a thin 
 film of starch or of flour paste, spread on 
 with a brush, and is then immersed in a 
 1 Photographic News, 1883, p. 386. 
 
 10 
 
146 Asser's Process. 
 
 weak solution of bichromate of potash. 
 After exposure the paper is soaked in cold 
 water to remove the unaltered bichromate ; 
 it is then dried and ironed with a hot iron, 
 in order to harden the coating. After this 
 it is inked, and the ink washed off the 
 unexposed parts in the ordinary way. The 
 picture can then be transferred to zinc for 
 etching. 1 
 
 Considerable progress has recently been 
 made in methods of obtaining grain by 
 means of the natural reticulation of colloid 
 substances, combined with an alkaline 
 chromate, and in the application of such 
 grain, either to photolithography or to the 
 production of surface blocks. Many of the 
 methods employed are, however, of the 
 nature of secret processes. It may fairly be 
 assumed that in most cases the secret 
 
 1 In the Photographic News of July 13, 1 883, a 
 print is given, the block for which was made by this 
 process. This block, however, does not serve to 
 illustrate the applicability of the process for the trans- 
 lation of half-tone negatives, since it is a copy of a 
 pen-and-ink sketch. It is in fact an ordinary photo- 
 type block, by a transfer process, in which starched 
 paper has been used instead of gelatinized paper. 
 
Borland's Process. 147 
 
 consists of minute variations of the pro- 
 portions of the ingredients used, or (and 
 more frequently) in manipulative skill. At 
 the same time, it is not to be forgotten that 
 in these small differences lies the difference 
 between success and failure. 
 
 The reticulation of the gelatine is present 
 in collotype plates, but generally in an 
 extremely fine form, though sometimes it is 
 very noticeable in the finished print. Even 
 in an ordinary gelatine dry plate it some- 
 times appears. In the " Year-book of 
 Photography " for 1885, Mr. Borland pro- 
 poses a process for the production of type 
 blocks founded on this fact. He floods an 
 ordinary gelatine negative with hot water 
 (up to ioo° Fah.), and a beautiful reticula- 
 tion immediately shows itself, bringing the 
 details of the negative into a relief quite 
 sufficient for casting from. The great 
 simplicity of the idea recommends it, and 
 it is very possible that a successful method 
 may hereafter be developed from it. 
 
 It does not appear that the Pretsch, or any 
 similar method is at present used directly for 
 
148 S Prague's 
 
 the production of type blocks, but the success- 
 ful " Ink-Photo " process of Messrs. Sprague 
 seems to be based upon the same principle. 
 Messrs. Sprague have not published their 
 method, which is a lithographic one, 
 but it is evident from the appearance of 
 the pictures that the natural grain of the 
 gelatine film is transferred to the stone. 
 Such a process as this offers great advan- 
 tages in many cases. A printing surface 
 can be made at very short notice from any 
 good silver print, and the cost of printing 
 the pictures is not heavy. It must be 
 admitted that as works of art such pictures 
 leave a good deal to be desired, and will 
 not compare with good collotypes, but they 
 are at all events fair transcripts from the 
 original photograph, and are quite suitable 
 for book illustrations of a cheap sort. The 
 process is coming rather extensively into 
 use for newspaper illustration, especially for 
 the reproduction of portraits, and as it has 
 already been considerably improved since 
 its first introduction, it will doubtless be 
 still further developed. The quality of the 
 
Process, 
 
 149 
 
 results in this, as in all similar processes, 
 depends on the special fitness of the nega- 
 tive. It does not follow that the negative 
 which is best for giving a silver print is 
 also best for the purpose of making a type 
 block. Soft delicate negatives full of detail 
 do not appear to reproduce as well as rather 
 hard negatives with strong contrasts of light 
 and shadow. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Production of Type-blocks from 
 Half-Tone Negatives {continued), 
 
 j HE devices belonging to the second 
 class, those in which a mechanical 
 stipple, line, or grain is produced 
 on one of the sensitive surfaces employed, 
 have been very numerous. The grain (when 
 one is used) may be produced in the negative, 
 in the positive, or on the film of bichro- 
 matized gelatine or its substitute. It may 
 be on a transparent screen, interposed 
 between the transparency, whether negative 
 or positive, and the surface printed upon ; 
 or it may be placed in contact with the 
 transparency which is copied in the camera; 
 or it may be produced on the transparency 
 itself, by various means, as by printing lines 
 
Graduated Stipple. 151 
 
 or stipple upon it, by dusting powder on it, 
 and by other plans patented and re-patented 
 over and over again. The devices, in fine, 
 by which this end has been sought are in- 
 numerable. And the same may be said of 
 the means employed. Some inventors have 
 used gauze or other fine fabric, others ruled 
 lines, others again the natural gelatine grain 
 previously referred to, by printing from a 
 suitably grained surface on to a transparent 
 medium, or even on to the surface of the 
 print to be copied. The favourite plan, and 
 the most successful, is to use a photograph 
 of a suitable grain or network, interposed 
 between the transparency and the surface 
 on which the transparency is to be copied, 
 a film photograph being employed when 
 the printing is to be effected by contact. 
 
 In all these processes the great difficulty 
 has been to get a graduated stipple. It is 
 evident that if we expose a negative over a 
 sensitive surface with a network interposed, 
 the picture will be broken up, and further, 
 that in the whites of the picture, as these 
 are already fully protected by the shadows 
 
152 Bullock's and 
 
 of the negative, the network will have no 
 effect, and consequently no grain will show. 
 If the exposure takes place under a positive, 
 the reverse action will take place. If the 
 whole surface of the transparency be ruled 
 with lines, or impressed with a grain, these 
 lines, according as they are transparent or 
 opaque, will appear in the lights or in the 
 shades, being merged either in the full 
 shadows, or in the full whites. In either 
 case a certain value will be given to the 
 half-tones, but they will vary as a rule very 
 little from the deep shadows, and there will 
 therefore be a prevailing flatness and in- 
 sipidity in the picture. To get rid of this 
 flatness, and to infuse vigour into their 
 production, has been the chief aim, and 
 the chief difficulty of inventors of processes 
 for making blocks from half-tone negatives. 
 
 The first to attempt to produce a grain 
 by any of these mechanical means appear 
 to have been Bullock and Swan, both of 
 whom patented devices for attaining this 
 end in 1865. Bullock, according to a paper 
 which he read before the Photographic 
 
Swan's Processes. 153 
 
 Society in 1866, tried a number of different 
 devices. The glass plate on which the 
 original negative was taken was grained ; 
 the finished negative was coated with 
 granular varnish ; the negative was copied 
 in the camera, with a grained plate inter- 
 posed between it and the camera; grained 
 plates were interposed between the negative 
 and the paper. None of these methods 
 appear to have been very successful, though 
 it is worth notice that several of them con- 
 tained the germ of success, since some of 
 the best recent processes have been based 
 upon them. 
 
 Of the two methods which Mr. Bullock 
 states were most successful, one seems to 
 have gone out of use, but the other has 
 served as the foundation of some recent 
 processes. The first was to imprint a 
 grain, by aquatint or otherwise, upon the 
 unsensitized gelatine paper — all that was 
 required being to sensitize the paper with 
 bichromate of potash, and print from an 
 ordinary negative. The exposed surface was 
 then inked and washed in the ordinary way. 
 
iS4 
 
 Swan's 
 
 To carry out the second process a piece 
 of ground glass, or a photographic copy 
 on glass of some reticulated surface, was 
 placed face to face with the negative, and 
 a transparency taken from the two whilst 
 in contact. From this transparency any 
 number of negatives could be produced, 
 each containing a granulation so marked as 
 to give the prints on transfer paper a well- 
 marked half-tone composed of lines or dots. 
 
 Major Waterhouse 1 gives the following 
 description of Mr. Swan's process : — 
 
 "In Mr. Swan's process he first produced what 
 he termed a crayon photograph, i.e. one in which 
 gradation of shade was produced by dots of opaque 
 matter more or less aggregated as the shading is 
 darker or lighter, and therefore corresponding to 
 a crayon drawing in the principle on which the 
 gradation of shade is produced. Such a crayon 
 photograph may be produced in various ways, but 
 Mr. Swan preferred to obtain it by means of a gelatine 
 tissue containing a certain proportion of charcoal or 
 other opaque substance, in such a state of division or 
 granulation that when diffused through the gelatine 
 solution and spread upon glass in a thin layer, the 
 
 1 Photographic News, 1885, p. 269. 
 
Process. 
 
 155 
 
 opaque particles will show distinct granularity between 
 particle and particle. This tissue was either pre- 
 pared ready sensitized with bichromate, or could be 
 sensitized as required. It was exposed under a 
 photographic negative or positive, that surface of the 
 tissue which was uppermost during the solidification 
 of the gelatine being placed next to the cliche, and 
 care being taken that the light might fall at right 
 angles to the plane of the cliche. After exposure 
 the exposed surface of the tissue was coated with 
 a solution of india-rubber and dammar in benzole, 
 and mounted on a glass coated with the same solution, 
 the solvent being allowed to evaporate. The image 
 was then developed in w r arm water in the usual way. 
 The crayon photograph could also be produced by 
 the dusting process." 
 
 The crayon photograph obtained by the 
 above methods was used instead of an 
 ordinary negative or positive for the pro- 
 duction of a transfer print in the usual way. 
 
 Both these processes were intended for 
 photolithography, though they would be 
 equally available for the production of 
 surface blocks. It does not appear that 
 the process of Mr. Swan has been developed, 
 or that it is now in use. It is certainly 
 a very promising one, and possibly it may 
 
156 MeisenbacJis 
 
 yet be taken up and brought to perfection. 
 For the production of intaglio plates, as 
 will be seen later on, this device of using 
 a granular tissue has been employed with 
 very considerable success. 
 
 It has been otherwise with Mr. Bullock's 
 plan, for the method of producing grained 
 negatives by placing a transparent screen, 
 on which a suitable grain is imprinted, in 
 contact with the negative or the positive 
 to be copied, and then photographing the 
 two together, has been brought to great 
 perfection lately, and most, if not all, the 
 successful processes now coming into use are 
 dependent, at all events partially, upon it. 
 Meisenbach, of Munich, took out a patent 
 in 1882, 1 in which the method he employs 
 is described as follows : — 
 
 "A transparent plate is hatched or stippled in 
 parallel lines. A transparent positive is made of the 
 object. The two plates are joined, preferably face to 
 face. From the combined plates a definite negative 
 is photographed in the ordinary manner. In order 
 to cross-hatch and break the lines of the shading, the 
 
 1 8th May, No. 2156. 
 
Process. 
 
 157 
 
 hatched or stippled plate may be shifted once or more 
 during the production of the said definite negative. 
 This negative is transferred in the usual manner on to 
 a plate of suitable material, which is graved or etched 
 in the usual manner to form a typographic block. 
 For the engraving plates the negative is transformed 
 into a positive, and the latter is transferred on to the 
 etching plate in the usual manner." 
 
 The inventor also states that the hatching 
 or stippling may be produced photographi- 
 cally on the same plate as that on which 
 the original object is photographed, and 
 this plate used direct for the production of 
 an "engraved," or intaglio, plate. 
 
 It will be seen that not very much in- 
 formation is to be gathered from the patent 
 as to the method of operation, and as the 
 process is worked in secret, it may fairly 
 be assumed that the means by which success 
 has been attained was not divulged in the 
 specification. Nevertheless some work of 
 the very highest character has been done by 
 the company working the process, both in 
 this country and abroad. A large print, 
 from a photograph of Sarah Bernhardt, the 
 celebrated actress, issued as a supplement 
 
158 MeisenbacKs Process. 
 
 to the Photographic News in November, 
 1883, 1 was one of the first illustrations by 
 this process issued in this country, and it left 
 almost nothing to be desired for brilliancy 
 and softness combined. Since that date 
 excellent work from blocks by the same 
 inventor is constantly appearing in the 
 Magazine of Art and other periodicals, 
 and quite lately it has also been used for 
 the illustration of books. The process has 
 even with fair success withstood the severe 
 test of illustrated journalism, for the Graphic 
 recently published a supplement, the illus- 
 trations of which were Meisenbach blocks, 
 reproducing photographs of animals in the 
 Zoological Gardens. It must be said that 
 the pictures produced by the process have 
 varied much in merit. Some have been 
 extremely good, but others again have been 
 extremely bad. Doubtless a certain amount 
 of this difference may be attributed to 
 printing, but that will not account for all 
 of it. 
 
 A process, to all appearance of a closely 
 1 Photographic News, Nov. 23, 1883. 
 
Silk Process. 
 
 159 
 
 similar nature, is being worked by Messrs. 
 Goupil, of Paris, who have given it the 
 name of typogravure, and also by Messrs. 
 Waterlow, of London. The last-named 
 firm have produced some excellent blocks, 
 giving a little more vigour and brightness 
 than is usual in blocks from half-tone 
 negatives. 
 
 Another device which has been employed 
 to get a grain on to the picture is to print 
 from the original negative, by any suitable 
 process, upon a piece of silk. The threads 
 of the silk break up the picture printed on 
 it into a very nice and regular grain. The 
 positive on the silk is then photographed, 
 and a printing block made by the ordinary 
 etching process. Unfortunately it is found 
 impossible to get silk of a sufficiently even 
 and regular texture for the purpose. Flaws 
 and shadows, not noticeable even in the 
 print, come out with startling distinctness, 
 and the inventor of the process has given 
 it up on this account. Some experimental 
 blocks, for the production of which suitable 
 bits of silk had been found, gave promising 
 
i6o Difficulties of Printing, 
 
 results, but there the idea seems to have 
 been left. 
 
 One chief defect of these processes is 
 that they give extremely low relief. A 
 block made by one of them looks more 
 like a copper plate than a genuine surface 
 block. Then (and with low relief it is 
 inevitable) they give little or no pure whites 
 or solid blacks. The range of tones they 
 give is consequently very limited, and the 
 picture is of necessity flat. The earlier 
 Meisenbach blocks had no pure white at 
 all, but they are improving, and in later 
 blocks, by this and other processes, surfaces 
 of clear white are now attainable. 
 
 On account of their very low relief, all 
 these blocks require the most delicate and 
 careful printing, but in the hands of an 
 expert printer, they can be made to give 
 excellent results. t 
 
 In some cases the makers of blocks by 
 these processes prefer to use copper for the 
 fine and delicate work they turn out instead 
 of zinc. In this case the etching fluids 
 used for the original plate-etching process 
 
Brown, Barnes, and Bell's Process, 161 
 
 are available. Of these, one of the best is 
 the mixture of hydrochloric acid, chlorate 
 of potash, and water known as the " Dutch 
 Mordant." Perchloride of iron may also be 
 used. This is said to show but little tendency 
 to undercut the lines, and the first etching 
 may be carried a good deal further than is 
 safe with zinc. When proper printing depth 
 is wanted, it is a very tedious business to 
 obtain it with copper; but in cases where 
 such depth cannot be had at all, there is 
 less disadvantage in using copper, and there 
 is the natural gain of using the stronger 
 and closer metal. 1 
 
 In the same year as that of Meisenbach's 
 patent (1882), Messrs. Brown, Barnes, and 
 Bell, of Liverpool, took out two patents, 2 
 in which very similar methods are described. 
 
 These inventors claim various methods of 
 producing the grained surface. They pro- 
 pose to grain the surface of the photograph 
 
 1 Further information as to the method for typo- 
 graphic engraving on copper will be found in the 
 Photographic News for 1883, p. 338. 
 
 2 No. 1380 (amended and reprinted as 1380*), 
 15th March, 1882, and No. 4705, 3rd October, 1882. 
 
 II 
 
1 62 Brown, Barnes, and Bell's Process, 
 
 itself by hand, to copy the negative and a 
 photograph of a grained surface simultane- 
 ously or successively on the same sensitive 
 surface ; to grain the surface mechanically 
 by pressure against a sheet of wire gauze or 
 other suitable material, or by printing a 
 grain upon it ; to cover the sensitive plate 
 in the camera with a network, and to copy 
 the original photograph with this network 
 interposed between the plate and the 
 original, or to back up a transparency of 
 the original with paper bearing a grain, and 
 then to photograph. 
 
 Some blocks produced by this firm were 
 printed in a local paper, and certainly 
 possessed the interest of illustrating the 
 application of phototype blocks for such 
 a purpose, but in the opinion of most who 
 saw them they rather failed to prove the 
 suitability of the process for such a use. 
 Which of the many devices referred to in 
 the above-quoted patent specifications was 
 used in the manufacture of the blocks, or 
 whether any of them were, does not appear 
 to have been stated. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Production of Type-blocks from 
 Half-tone Negatives {continued). 
 
 HE third class of processes men- 
 tioned in Chapter VIL, in which 
 a stipple is impressed on a 
 Woodbury or other suitable relief, holds 
 out great promise, and has already, in the 
 hands of Mr. Ives, of Philadelphia, given 
 excellent results. The late Mr. Woodbury 
 himself attempted to make type blocks from 
 his reliefs, and succeeded in producing 
 some good work, as indeed so clever a 
 manipulator was likely to do by any process. 
 It is of course evident that a simple relief, 
 whether a Woodbury relief, or a cast in 
 swelled gelatine, obtained by methods 
 already described, would not serve our 
 purpose ; the relief from a half-tone 
 
164 Woodbury s Block Process. 
 
 negative would not print, any more than 
 the surface of a medal or a coin would print, 
 and an indistinct and blurred outline would 
 be the best that could be hoped for. 
 
 Woodbury broke up the image by placing 
 between the gelatine film and the trans- 
 parent positive from which the picture was 
 to be taken, a piece of network, either a 
 piece of some suitable fabric, such as gauze, 
 tulle, etc., or a photograph on collodion or 
 mica of any suitable design which would 
 give the stipple required. The effect of 
 this was to give a strong grain in the higher 
 parts of the relief, an absence of grain in 
 the lower parts, and a moderate amount 
 in the intermediate parts. From this grained 
 relief a block was made in soft metal by 
 pressure, and this block could be used for 
 printing if only a small number was required, 
 or if it was to do much work, an electrotype 
 could be made from it in the usual manner. 
 In his patent specification, the inventor 
 refers to the use of diffused light for print- 
 ing, " As in that case the light in the parts 
 that represent the white creeps round the 
 
Ives' Process. 
 
 i6 5 
 
 lines, thus partly obliterating them in that 
 part, and leaving them strongest only in 
 the parts printing dark." An obvious ob- 
 jection to this method is that the different 
 parts of the printing surface are not in the 
 same plane, and for this reason Mr. Wood- 
 bury lately modified the process by taking 
 a transfer from the relief, and laying this 
 down on a zinc plate to be etched. So far 
 as the writer is aware, this process has never 
 been worked commercially, or indeed by 
 anybody but the inventor. 1 
 
 Mr. Ives's process certainly shows more 
 originality than is to be found in most of 
 the recent methods for producing type 
 blocks. His first plan (patented in the 
 United States in 1878) was to take an inked 
 Woodbury relief, and to press it against 
 grained or embossed paper. The higher 
 parts of the relief were forced most strongly 
 against the paper, and consequently crushed 
 
 1 A description of the process is given in Bolas's 
 Cantor Lectures, published in the Society of Arts 
 Journal, vol. xxxii. p. 1090. Fuller details are given 
 in the inventor's Patent Specification, No. 1954, of 
 the year 1873. 
 
Ives' Process. 
 
 down the grain upon it, producing a more 
 or less solid black. The lowest parts of 
 the relief did not touch the paper at all, 
 and consequently left no mark upon it. 
 The intermediate parts touched the points 
 of the paper lightly, and consequently 
 received a little ink, or were slightly 
 flattened down, and therefore took a larger 
 quantity of ink. The stipple was there- 
 fore perfectly graduated from solid black, 
 through a coarse grain gradually growing 
 finer, up to pure white. The picture on 
 the grained paper was, in this first process, 
 copied in the camera, or transferred direct 
 to stone or zinc, for the production of an 
 etched block by any of the known methods. 
 
 In an improvement on this process, Mr. 
 Ives substituted a swelled gelatine relief for 
 the Woodbury relief, and took a cast from 
 this in plaster. On this plaster cast he 
 impressed lines or stipple by means of an 
 elastic stamp, and this plan, Mr. Ives says, 
 gives the operator considerable control over 
 the effect. By flowing the inked plaster 
 over with collodion, he was able to transfer 
 
Ives' Process. 
 
 the ink to the resulting film, and after strip- 
 ping this film off, he made a print from it on 
 a dry plate. The last improvement (1084) 
 was to transfer the ink impression to a sheet 
 of india-rubber, and thence to stone or zinc, 
 it having been found that the direct trans- 
 ference from the plaster itself, though practi- 
 cable, did not give the best results. Ives's 
 blocks have been used to a considerable 
 extent in the illustrated American magazines, 
 and many of them show very great merit. 1 
 
 Some other inventors have been working 
 in the same direction as Ives, but none of 
 them seem to have anticipated him. Eggis 
 proposes 2 to employ carbon paper instead 
 of inking the film ; the paper is placed 
 between the relief and the grained paper, 
 but the rest of the process is the same as 
 the earlier one of Ives. 
 
 1 Full information as to the Ives process will be 
 found in the volumes of the Photographic News for 
 1883 and 1884, pp. 498 and 677, of the former, 
 and pp. 130, 257, and 324 of the latter. Also in 
 Bolas's Cantor Lectures, Society of Arts Journal, vol. 
 xxxii. p. 1091. 
 
 2 Photographic A T eivs, 1 883, p. 789. Society of 
 Arts Journal, vol. xxxii. p. 1091. 
 
1 68 Zuccatds Process. 
 
 Zuccato uses a different application of 
 the same principle. In one of the devices 
 proposed a piece of type metal or similar 
 surface planed into a series of ridges, or 
 pyramids, is inked and pressed against 
 the relief, with a piece of very thin paper 
 interposed ; the relief crushes down the 
 pyramids in proportion to its depth. The 
 pyramid of type metal is spread out, and 
 forms a sharply-cut outline on the paper, 
 and in this way a transfer is obtained which 
 is said to have a remarkable clearness of 
 outline. In another process he interposes 
 between the relief and a sheet of transfer 
 paper a piece of gauze, or a piece of silk 
 which has been inked with transfer ink ; 
 the threads of the gauze get crushed out 
 to a greater or less extent, and form lines 
 of greater or less width ; but this method 
 in which the gauze is crushed down is not 
 nearly so perfect as the method with the 
 plate of type metal. 1 
 
 Another device of the same inventor is 
 
 1 Bolas, Cantor Lectures, Society of Arts Journal, 
 vol. xxxii. p. 1092. 
 
Applications of the Processes. 169 
 
 to press the relief upon a lithographic or 
 zincographic surface on which an ink stipple 
 has been impressed. The stipple gets 
 crushed out more or less, according to the 
 extent of the pressure ; and this depends 
 on the thickness of the relief. 
 
 The patents previously referred to, of 
 Messrs. Brown, Barnes, and Bell, 1 also 
 allude to the use of a Woodbury film, grained 
 by one of the methods they describe. 
 
 For artistic purposes, all these processes 
 labour under the grave drawback that they 
 can only reproduce the original photograph 
 with its defects, as well as its merits. For 
 portraits this is really less a disadvantage 
 than for landscapes. Our photographic 
 portraitists are now so expert at lighting 
 and posing, that a good photograph is as 
 satisfactory and as artistic a piece of work 
 as a painting by any but one of our greatest 
 artists. Of course a good deal is done by 
 the pencil, working upon the lines first 
 drawn by the sun, but surely this is not a 
 legitimate objection ; if the result is good, 
 1 See ante, p. 161. 
 
170 Merits and Defects 
 
 that is all that ought to be wanted. Natur- 
 ally, portrait-painters decry photography ; 
 they would not be human if they did not. 
 Many, however, use photography exten- 
 sively, and many more would be wiser if 
 they used it to a still greater extent. 
 Decry it however as they may, the fact 
 remains that a good photograph is a 
 better portrait than can be produced by 
 any painter outside the number of a select 
 few who can be counted on the fingers 
 almost of one hand. This being so, though 
 of course it is heresy to say it, there ought 
 to be no reason why very satisfactory por- 
 traits should not be produced by the use 
 of relief blocks direct from photographs. 
 It is too much to say that any process can 
 do this as yet ; but if the advance of the 
 last two or three years be continued, it will 
 not be long before such blocks will take 
 the place of woodcuts in the illustrated 
 periodicals and papers at all events. 
 
 With landscape it is different. The 
 photographer cannot control the lighting 
 of the scene as he can that of the figure 
 
of Phototype Blocks, 1 7 1 
 
 in his studio. He cannot lighten up the 
 dense black mass of shade which perhaps 
 spoils the look of his picture. He cannot 
 always get at once his extreme distance 
 and his foreground. He cannot omit some 
 offensive staring object which comes, as 
 such things always do, precisely in the most 
 objectionable of all possible positions. 
 
 Hence there will ever be a difficulty in 
 the direct production of printing surfaces 
 from landscape photographs, or rather in 
 producing blocks or plates for printing in 
 line, which will compare favourably with an 
 artist's sketch. Doubtless these difficulties 
 exist in all photographic pictures ; but in 
 processes like silver printing or collotype, 
 where the actual tones of nature are re- 
 produced with more or less accuracy, they 
 are not so great as with processes where 
 those tones have to be translated into con- 
 ventional line and stipple : under these 
 conditions rigid mechanical methods can 
 hardly ever hope for success. 
 
 It will, of course, be understood that 
 nobody pretends that pictures produced by 
 
1 72 Merits and Defects 
 
 any mechanical process, however ingenious 
 and however true to nature, can ever 
 seriously compete with the work of even a 
 moderately skilful landscape artist, whether 
 painter, etcher, or sketcher. The camera 
 cannot interpret nature. It can at best 
 reproduce. If "what a great landscape 
 painter attempts to render is not the 
 natural landscape, but the state of feeling 
 which the landscape produces in himself," 1 
 it is hardly necessary to argue that such 
 interpretation cannot be effected without 
 the intervention of the artist's mind. 
 
 Were it possible to realize the old magi- 
 cian's dream, and fix for ever the image of 
 a landscape as it is seen in a mirror, that 
 would not suffice. How much less, there- 
 fore, any method of rendering permanent 
 the changes effected by light and shadow 
 falling on a surface sensitive to those 
 changes. Except for the sake of avoiding 
 misapprehension, it is scarcely worth while 
 even to state this. For such sake, how- 
 ever, let it be said, and said once for all, 
 1 Hamerton, Etchers and Etching, ed. 1876, p. 66. 
 
of Phototype Blocks. 173 
 
 that as all our methods are essentially 
 mechanical, their highest aim is faithful 
 reproduction ; that their merits are greater 
 or less in proportion as they approach this 
 standard ; and that if they are spoken of 
 as artistic, it is within the reasonable limits 
 enforced by the unchanging character of 
 the conditions. 
 
 Working within these limits the landscape 
 photographer can, by judicious selection of 
 his subject and by skilful adaptation of the 
 means at his command, produce pictures 
 of very high merit. For beauty of appear- 
 ance no photographic process has yet 
 equalled the silver print, and in proportion 
 as other processes, free from its drawbacks, 
 approach the merit of the silver print, so 
 may they be estimated. 
 
 Photography, on the other hand, has the 
 very great and important advantage that 
 all modifications and interpretations on the 
 part of the artist being impossible, pictures 
 produced by it of necessity possess an 
 absolute and unquestionable fidelity to 
 nature. Where it is important to reproduce 
 
174 
 
 Value for 
 
 accurately any natural object, the use of 
 the camera is a guarantee of accuracy. In 
 the case, for instance, of a traveller's de- 
 scriptions of a new or little-known country, 
 photographs reproduced without the inter- 
 vention of the draughtsman afford invaluable 
 evidence of the truth of those descriptions. 
 In all works of a scientific character such 
 unimpeachable evidence is well worth the 
 sacrifice of some artistic merit. 
 
 This is fully recognized by scientific 
 men, who will now hardly recognize as 
 evidence a drawing whenever a photograph 
 is possible. Thus, for instance, Mr. Norman 
 Lockyer referred to a photograph of the 
 Nebula of Orion, taken after much labour 
 by Mr. A. A. Common, as being worth more 
 for scientific purposes than all the numerous 
 drawings which had been made of the same 
 object in all the years during which it had 
 been observed. 
 
 But unless the actual photograph can be 
 reproduced without the intervention of the 
 draughtsman, or of the wood-engraver, half 
 this advantage is lost. Hence even a bad 
 
Scientific Purposes. 175 
 
 reproduction, so long as it shows the form 
 and whatever characteristics of the original 
 are required to be shown, is better for many 
 scientific purposes than a more artistic and 
 attractive woodcut. There is now every 
 reason to expect that wherever it is of im- 
 portance to reproduce accurately the original 
 photograph as an illustration in the text, 
 that will soon become a regular practice, 
 drawing being as now resorted to in the 
 very numerous cases in which a satisfactory 
 illustration cannot be obtained by photo- 
 graphy. As the artist chooses out those 
 points which lend beauty to his sketch, and 
 gives them prominence, so he whose duty 
 it is to explain any scientific fact must often 
 find it necessary to omit many details which 
 may conceal or obscure the points to which 
 he desires to draw attention. In the pre- 
 paration of such pictures, the camera, 
 which has no selective power, and can only 
 reproduce all that is in front of it, will 
 often lend little or no aid. 
 
 When, however, a natural object has to 
 be represented, it is not easy to over- 
 
176 Preparation of Drawings 
 
 estimate the importance of obtaining that 
 representation by the unerring process of 
 photography, whenever it is possible. With 
 the best intentions, draughtsmen cannot 
 always be accurate. They have no special 
 knowledge of the subject to be illustrated, 
 they may omit important characteristics, 
 and they may unintentionally falsify others 
 equally important. Of course, photographs 
 may be deceptive, and they can be purposely 
 sophisticated, but such alteration is generally 
 capable of detection and only occasionally 
 possible. In all cases where accuracy of re- 
 presentation is essential, illustrations ought 
 to be made by some process of the nature 
 of those dealt with in these chapters, so that 
 the block from which the picture is printed 
 can be made direct from a negative of the 
 object itself. 
 
 In the reproduction of pictures or of 
 sketches specially made for such reproduc- 
 tion, there is a great future for typographic 
 blocks, as there is for similar blocks from 
 line-drawings, or for photogravure methods 
 for the production of large engravings. 
 
for Reproduction. 177 
 
 The illustrations issued with the French 
 publication, Figaro-Salon, edited by Mons. 
 A. Wolff, show what can already be done 
 in the direct reproduction of pictures, for 
 all these illustrations are from relief blocks, 
 and are printed with the type. It may be 
 safely assumed that a good deal of hand 
 work has been expended on these blocks — 
 which are made on plates of copper, not 
 on zinc plates ; but even if this is so, that 
 amount of hand work is as nothing as com- 
 pared with the skilled labour required for 
 the cutting of a wood block, even when the 
 draughtsman's work is economized by photo- 
 graphing the original upon the block. There 
 seems reason to believe that if blocks of 
 this character can be readily produced, and 
 easily printed, they will run the engraving 
 methods hard for all work except the very 
 finest. 
 
 But the special value that these processes 
 have is that they enable an artist to execute 
 his sketches in monochrome, and to get 
 them copied direct, the intermediate process 
 of drawing being rendered unnecessary. 
 
 12 
 
178 Preparation of Drawings 
 
 This is of very great advantage in many 
 cases. Not only does it save much time 
 and labour, but it may give the artist the 
 power of expressing himself in the medium 
 that suits him best, and allow him con- 
 sequently greater freedom. 
 
 Special precautions are necessary in pre- 
 paring sketches for copying by photography. 
 Not only do the rules laid down for line- 
 drawings hold good, but certain additional 
 points have to be considered when washes 
 of colour are employed. To begin with, 
 yellow tints must be avoided ; they will of 
 course give a much darker tone in the 
 photograph than in the original. Blues, 
 on the other hand, appear lighter. It is 
 particularly important to avoid the use of 
 yellow and blue tints in the same picture. 
 The effect may be correct to the eye, but it 
 will be entirely falsified in the photograph. 
 
 The best colours to use are Chinese 
 white and lamp-black. A little gamboge 
 may with advantage be added to the 
 black, as it will insure more vigorous 
 blacks in the photograph. An artist who 
 
for Reproduction, 179 
 
 has had much experience in work of this 
 sort told the writer that he found it con- 
 venient to mix up a pot of his black with 
 a little white in it, and to use this for his 
 strongest shadows, adding white as he 
 required for the intermediate shades. He 
 had then his full black in reserve, so that 
 a few touches could be added as required 
 to the nearly finished picture. 
 
 By confining himself to pure blacks and 
 greys, the artist will be enabled to judge 
 with accuracy the effect which will be pro- 
 duced in the photograph, but he is likely 
 to be wofully misled if he uses tints with 
 a shade of colour, especially if such tints 
 are laid over others. 
 
 In this country we are certainly behind 
 our rivals on the continent, both in France 
 and Germany, as regards the use made by 
 publishers of the facilities now afforded by 
 modern reproductive processes. As an in- 
 stance of the enterprise of French publishers 
 may be mentioned a large work now being 
 issued by the successors to Messrs. Goupil, 
 of Paris, which contains reproductions of 
 
1 80 German and French 
 
 pictures illustrating the Franco-German war, 
 by Neuville, the popular French painter of 
 battle pieces. This work, which has either 
 recently appeared, or is in actual course of 
 publication, is or was issued in parts of large 
 folio size, each part containing a number 
 — six or eight — of whole or half-page illus- 
 trations, and often a double-page picture 
 in addition, the price of each number being 
 two francs. The printing and paper leave 
 something to be wished for, and the subjects 
 of the pictures will not interest everybody ; 
 but as reproductions they are extremely 
 good, and as evidence of how cheaply, and 
 with what uniform excellence, work of very 
 high character can be produced, they are 
 most remarkable. 
 
 Nothing of the sort, so far as the writer 
 is aware, has ever been attempted in this 
 country. Why this is so, it is not easy 
 to say. It is hard to have to admit that 
 our printers are so much inferior to those 
 of France that such work cannot be 
 done in London ; but if lack of capacity 
 cannot be pleaded as an excuse, the only 
 
Publications. 1 8 1 
 
 reason seems to be want of enterprise. The 
 printing of the publication above mentioned 
 has certainly not been executed with very 
 special care ; the type on the back of the 
 page is often visible through the paper, 
 quite spoiling the impression, and the 
 whole thing is evidently a cheap publica- 
 tion ; still, there it is — a cheap book, full 
 of excellent pictures, pictures doubtless 
 suited to the popular taste, produced by 
 means which a few years ago were not in 
 existence. To issue a book of this sort 
 is a credit to its publishers, and to neglect 
 so important a means of cheapening the 
 production of good illustrated books, with- 
 out in any way lowering their merits, is 
 very little to the credit of our English firms. 
 
 And in Germany, too, the case is the 
 same. Not only is better work produced 
 by phototypic methods, but far more use 
 is made of those methods. Possibly one 
 state of things may be the cause of the 
 other ; anyhow, there are not likely to be 
 many to dispute the fact. In England one 
 meets now and again with a new book in 
 
1 82 Foreign Publications. 
 
 which a few "process" blocks have been 
 used. In Germany a large proportion of 
 the illustrated books contain pictures from 
 such blocks. Were it not for the enormous 
 stores of old cliches which, like newspaper 
 paragraphs, seem to go the round of all 
 the countries in which books are manu- 
 factured, returning every now and again to 
 the land which gave them birth, probably 
 the use of phototype blocks would be even 
 larger still ; but as it is, a very large pro- 
 portion of the new pictures in German 
 books seem to be thus produced ; and as 
 the proportion seems to be rapidly increas- 
 ing, it will doubtless be a good deal larger 
 in the course of a short time. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Photographic Methods of Producing 
 Intaglio Plates. 
 
 m 
 
 T is not difficult to see that almost 
 any of the processes used to pro- 
 duce phototype blocks from line 
 subjects might also be applied to the pro- 
 duction of intaglio plates which could be 
 printed from in the same manner as copper 
 plates. The only necessity is to arrange 
 that the etching should, as in ordinary plate 
 etching, attack the metal in the lines of the 
 picture, not in the whites. The photograph 
 must therefore show the lines dark, and the 
 whites must be represented by clear glass, 
 that is to say, it must be a positive. If 
 a copper plate be coated, say, with a bitu- 
 minous varnish, and exposed behind such 
 
1 84 
 
 Intaglio 
 
 a positive, the lines will be left unaffected 
 by the light, and the varnish covering the 
 metal can be dissolved off by the usual 
 solvents. A slight etching in any suitable 
 etching fluid will incise the lines. The 
 process is a more simple one than that of 
 etching a block, as the relief required is so 
 much less, and the precautions of inking 
 up, re-etching and resining are not re- 
 quired ; the process, in fact, is the same as 
 that of etching a copper plate on which 
 a design has been drawn on an etching 
 ground. 
 
 It is only for certain purposes that 
 processes for producing intaglio plates 
 photographically from line-engravings or 
 drawings in line can compete with photo- 
 lithographic processes on the one hand, 
 and processes for making surface blocks on 
 the other. Photolithography is a great deal 
 cheaper and a great deal faster; surface 
 printing is cheaper and faster still. 
 
 But, by treating a plate thus prepared 
 with the same care as is bestowed upon an 
 original etching, biting in different parts of 
 
Plates, 
 
 185 
 
 the plate to different depths so as to enable 
 some of the lines to hold, and therefore to 
 transfer to the paper a larger amount of 
 ink than the others, by adding hand work 
 where required, employing in fact a large 
 share of the skill which goes to the pro- 
 duction of a good copper plate, or a good 
 etching, much finer results can be obtained 
 than either of the above-named methods 
 will give. 
 
 The principal application of this method 
 has been to the reproduction of the works 
 of the older engravers. So successfully has 
 this been done, that such copies, when 
 carefully printed upon a suitable old paper, 
 have been declared by so good a judge as 
 Mr. Reid, the accomplished Keeper of Prints 
 at the British Museum, to be so similar to 
 the originals that it was almost impossible 
 to distinguish between the original and the 
 copy. 1 
 
 Another application of these particular 
 processes is the reproduction of the original 
 
 1 Comyns Carr, Cantor Lectures on Book Illustra- 
 tion, Society of Arts Journal, vol. xxx. p. 1056. 
 
1 86 Applications of 
 
 illustrations for a reprint of a book, and 
 here again considerable success has often 
 been attained. For the reproduction of 
 large originals, such as the ancient views 
 of London by Wyngaerde, and by Visscher, 
 published by the Topographical Society, the 
 process is very suitable, as the plates are too 
 large for convenient printing at press, and 
 the results might probably not have been 
 quite so good if they had been produced 
 by a lithographic process. Original sketches 
 have been reproduced by photo-intaglio 
 plates, but, as the writer believes, not to 
 any great extent, and it must be doubtful 
 whether, considering the cost and slowness 
 of the printing process — the plate, like any 
 other copper plate, has, after each impres- 
 sion, to be carefully cleaned, inked, wiped, 
 and again partly cleaned — it can often be 
 worth while to adopt this method of pro- 
 ducing pictures. 
 
 On the whole the opinion may safely be 
 expressed that at present there seems no 
 great reason to expect any great develop- 
 ment in these processes. Those who are 
 
the Processes. 187 
 
 working at the subject are all turning their 
 attention in other directions, where there 
 is better promise of satisfactory result. 
 
 The production of engraved plates direct 
 from paintings or sketches in tints, by what 
 is known as heliogravure or photogravure, 
 is of course a very different matter. To 
 the solution of this problem much time and 
 a great deal of ingenuity has been devoted, 
 nor has the success achieved been slight. 
 Of recent years very great advance has been 
 made, and quite lately results have been 
 shown by several different printers which 
 appear to hold out the probability that the 
 work of the copper-plate engraver may soon 
 be superseded, at all events so far as relates 
 to the reproduction of the work of others. 
 The processes by which these results have 
 been effected will, so far as they are public 
 property, be considered in the following 
 chapter. For the present we are concerned 
 merely with the production of intaglio plates 
 from line subjects alone. 
 
 Any of the heliogravure processes are 
 available, and many of them are used, for 
 
4 
 
 1 88 Dawson's Process. 
 
 the reproduction of line drawings, and they 
 have all the advantage that by the intro- 
 duction of a grain they give a better hold 
 for the ink than when the grain is absent. 
 The ink is apt to be wiped out of the lines 
 when these are thick, and have been pro- 
 duced by a process which gives a smooth 
 surface all over the copper : which metal, 
 it should be said, is used almost exclusively 
 for this class of work. There are, however, 
 a few processes which have been devised 
 specially for the production of intaglio 
 plates from line subjects, and these may 
 be briefly noticed. 
 
 The original bitumen process of Niepce 
 de St. Victor has already been referred to. 1 
 This was originally brought out as a method 
 for producing plates, not blocks, as indeed 
 were all the earlier processes. 
 
 An electro-deposition process has been 
 worked with a considerable measure of suc- 
 cess by Messrs. Dawson. A carbon print is 
 developed on a metal plate, it is then black- 
 leaded, to give the whole a conducting 
 1 See ante, p. 107. 
 
EhrarcTs Process. 189 
 
 surface, and copper is deposited upon 
 it. The carbon print is of course in slight 
 relief, and the electrotype from it is con- 
 sequently a not very deep intaglio. How 
 far the process is worked in this form the 
 writer is not aware, but there is no doubt 
 that experimenters with the process — and 
 these have been numerous — have generally 
 found that more satisfactory results are 
 obtained when some device is employed to 
 give a grain or tooth to the lines. This, 
 however, greatly depends upon the character 
 of the work, and doubtless for fine line- 
 work the simple method described is quite 
 sufficient. 
 
 Ehrard's process, described by Captain 
 Abney, 1 is worth mention, because it depends 
 on different principles to any yet noticed. 
 A copper plate carrying on it a transfer of 
 the usual character is treated in an electro- 
 silvering bath. The copper, where it is not 
 protected by the lines of the transfer, is 
 thinly coated with silver, the metal under 
 the lines of greasy ink remaining unaffected. 
 1 Treatise on Photography (1878), p. 183. 
 
190 Groves Process. 
 
 By treatment in a solution of chloride of 
 mercury, the silver is converted into a 
 double chloride of silver and mercury. The 
 ink is then removed and the plate etched. 
 The chloride film protects the metal below 
 it, and the acid acts only on the copper 
 where it is not covered by the chloride. 
 
 Another interesting point about this 
 process is that it closely resembles an early 
 process by which Sir William Grove success- 
 fully converted daguerreotype plates into 
 plates capable of being printed from. The 
 daguerreotype image is formed of a white 
 amalgam of silver and mercury on a ground 
 of silver, faintly gilded. The plate in a 
 solution of hydrochloric acid was subjected 
 to an electric current from a battery, when 
 an oxy-chloride of silver was formed. On 
 its removal it was found that the plate 
 had been bitten sufficiently for printing 
 purposes. 1 
 
 1 Abney, Treatise on Photography, p. 42. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Photogravure. 
 
 []HE processes to which the general 
 names of Photogravure or Helio- 
 gravure have been given, those, 
 to say, which are used for the production of 
 intaglio plates from half-tone negatives, 
 have been up to the present a good deal 
 more extensively used than the correspond- 
 ing processes for the production of relief 
 blocks ; in fact the publication of engravings 
 from pictures printed from Phbtogravure 
 plates has been carried on commercially for 
 some years. There are various reasons for 
 this. First, the plates are really made by 
 a combination of mechanical processes and 
 hand work. The plate, after being carried 
 as far as possible by the process, whatever it 
 
192 Special Advantages 
 
 may be, is then handed over to an engraver, 
 who takes up the work where it was left, 
 and renders the plate fit for printing. That 
 this is possible arises from the similarity, 
 both of material and method. If, say, a 
 plate etched by any of the methods employed 
 in photogravure be handed over to an etcher, 
 he might perhaps have a good deal to do 
 to it in the way of correction and alteration, 
 before it would give a passable print, but 
 it would be merely carrying on the same 
 process of biting away parts of the plate by 
 means of acid. If, on the other hand, an 
 etched zinc relief block were given to a 
 wood-engraver to finish and perfect, he 
 could do nothing, or next to nothing, to it. 
 Thus, however imperfect the actual results 
 of the process may be in themselves, if 
 they afford a basis on which the engraver 
 can work, if they act as a substitute for any 
 part of his work, the process can be em- 
 ployed. This, as a matter of fact, they 
 have done for some time. By the use of 
 photogravure the time necessary for the 
 production of a copper plate has been 
 
of Photogravure Methods. 193 
 
 reduced from years, at all events to months, 
 and the cost has been lessened in corre- 
 sponding proportion. The principal workers 
 of photogravure do not publish the methods 
 they employ, but it is generally understood 
 that the admirable pictures they issue are 
 partly produced by photographic means, 
 and partly by handwork, either etching or 
 engraving. 
 
 Recent developments of photographic 
 methods have considerably lessened the 
 amount of handwork necessary for the 
 production of a good printing plate, and 
 some fine pictures have been exhibited on 
 which there was stated to be no handwork 
 at all ; but it can only be in rare cases that 
 perfect results are to be obtained without 
 such aid : and though the amount of it may 
 be lessened, it is certain that some must 
 always, or nearly always, be employed. As 
 a tour de force it may be interesting to see 
 the amount of success that can be attained 
 by purely automatic methods — methods not 
 dependent simply on the skill and ability of 
 the worker ; but when it is a question of 
 
 13 
 
194 Reproduction of 
 
 obtaining a certain result, the only points 
 that ought to be considered are the merits 
 of the result and the facility with which it 
 has been gained. If the best picture can 
 be printed from a plate made partly by 
 photographic, partly by chemical means, 
 and finished with the graver, the means 
 adopted to produce that plate will come, 
 and ought to come, into general use. 
 
 The principal use of photogravure is for 
 the copying of large pictures, and for this 
 purpose it is likely to continue to be used 
 to an increasing extent. One great difficulty, 
 indeed the greatest difficulty, in using pho- 
 tography for the reproduction of pictures 
 arises from the fact that the scale of tones 
 in which colours are reproduced by no 
 means corresponds with their relative 
 brightness to the human eye, or therefore 
 to the tones of light and shadow by which 
 we naturally represent colours when we 
 attempt to give their effect by black and 
 white. If we look at the prismatic spectrum, 
 the brightest part of it is that which consists 
 of the yellow ; but if we photograph the 
 
Pictures in Colour, 195 
 
 same spectrum, we shall find that the yellow 
 portion has hardly affected the sensitive 
 salts of silver at all, and in the print from 
 our negative we shall find the yellow space 
 represented by a dark shadow, while the 
 blue and violet parts, which to the eye 
 appear comparatively dark, will act vigor- 
 ously on the photographic surface, and in 
 the corresponding positive they are repre- 
 sented by white. 
 
 Still all the rays of the spectrum affect 
 a photographic surface more or less ; and 
 if time be given, photographs can be taken 
 even by the yellow or red light. 1 
 
 If therefore the action of the more photo- 
 graphically active rays can be delayed, so as 
 to give the feebler rays time to work, this 
 inequality of action can be removed, or 
 rather minimized, and it is found that by 
 
 1 By this of course it is not meant that a portrait 
 could be taken in a room glazed with red glass, but 
 that the red end of the spectrum has been photo- 
 graphed, and that, as some amateur photographers 
 have found to their cost, it is perfectly easy to print 
 a transparency by the light which passes through the 
 red window of many a so-called dark room. 
 
196 Orthochromaiic Plates, 
 
 staining the material of which the sensitive 
 plate is composed, or, to speak more 
 accurately, the medium in which the sensi- 
 tive salt is held, with a stain of reddish 
 or yellowish hue, this effect is produced. 
 The more active rays are delayed, and con- 
 sequently their effect is lessened. The 
 feebler rays pass on unhindered, and so their 
 comparative power is increased. Similar 
 effects are produced by the interposition of 
 a coloured screen between the photographic 
 lens and the object, or between the source 
 of light and the object, which thus becomes 
 illuminated with coloured light. It is there- 
 fore now becoming the practice for photo- 
 graphers copying pictures to employ either 
 a gelatine plate stained with eosine or other 
 suitable dye, or when they prefer the wet- 
 plate process, to make use of a collodion 
 similarly coloured. Sometimes the coloured 
 screens are used as well, sometimes not, the 
 practice of different photographers varying 
 in this respect. 
 
 The production by etching of an intaglio 
 plate is naturally a simpler process than 
 
Processes Available. 197 
 
 that of a relief block. There is less depth 
 to be obtained, and in the shallow lines 
 required there is no risk of the acid under- 
 cutting the edges. So also is the produc- 
 tion of grain easier, since it is only required 
 that the surfaces of the etched portions 
 should be roughened sufficiently to hold 
 the ink when the plate is wiped, for them 
 to possess a certain printing value. It is 
 therefore not difficult to see why the earlier 
 inventors of photographic printing processes 
 endeavoured to produce plates, instead of 
 surface blocks, and also why the former 
 have also preceded the latter in coming 
 into practical use. 
 
 In theory any of the processes available 
 for the production of relief blocks would be 
 available also for the production of intaglio 
 plates ; since it is only necessary to cause 
 the acid to etch away the lines, as in the 
 old plate-etching process, instead of direct- 
 ing its action upon the parts representing 
 the whites of the picture, as has to be done 
 when we desire a relief block. To effect this 
 it is obviously only necessary to reverse the 
 
198 
 
 Talbot s 
 
 lights and shades in the surface forming 
 the protective coating for the plate, bichro- 
 mated gelatine, bitumen, or other suitable 
 material, and this is most readily done by 
 exposing under a positive photograph, in- 
 stead of under a negative. In practice 
 several of the etching processes already 
 described are available, with this modifi- 
 cation, for the production of intaglio plates, 
 and some also of those described in this 
 chapter will serve for the production 
 of relief blocks, but it has seemed more 
 convenient on the whole to describe here 
 the processes most suitable for engraved 
 plates, as it was in the former chapter to deal 
 with those generally employed in making 
 blocks which could be printed with type. 
 
 The earliest process for the production 
 of etched copper plates from half-tone 
 negatives was that of Talbot. He covered 
 a polished copper plate with a weak solu- 
 tion of bichromatized gelatine. This, when 
 dry, was exposed under a positive, so that 
 the shadows of the picture were represented 
 by the soluble portions of the gelatine, 
 
Etching Process. 
 
 199 
 
 the depth of the insolubility of course 
 corresponding inversely with the depth of 
 the shadow. The plate was then put into 
 an etching fluid, which could act through 
 the soluble portions of the gelatine, but 
 had no effect on the gelatine itself. A 
 suitable solution for the purpose was found 
 to be perchloride of iron, the usual acids 
 employed for etching being of course un- 
 suitable, in consequence of their destructive 
 action upon the gelatine. 
 
 It was found that the perchloride acted 
 more or less vigorously, according to the 
 insolubility of the film. The portions of 
 the plate covered with the thickest layer of 
 the insoluble gelatine were left untouched, 
 and those where the gelatine was entirely 
 soluble were most deeply etched. When 
 the etching had gone far enough, it was 
 only necessary to clean off the gelatine, 
 when the plate was ready for printing, the 
 process of etching having roughened the 
 slight hollows sufficiently to hold the ink 
 when the plate was wiped in the usual 
 manner. 
 
200 Klids Process. 
 
 Processes based on the principle of 
 Talbot's process, etching through the 
 soluble parts of the bichromatized film, 
 are still employed. As in that process, it 
 is of course necessary to use an etching 
 fluid which will attack the copper without 
 injuring the thin protective film. In 
 the modern modifications of the process 
 it is usual to impart a grain to the plate 
 by one of the methods described in previous 
 chapters, 1 as applied to the production of 
 type-blocks. 
 
 The process invented by Klic, and now 
 being worked with great success by Messrs. 
 Annan, of Glasgow, is not at all unlike the 
 original one of Talbot. It is shortly and 
 clearly described in the following extract 
 from the Photographic News : — 
 
 "The process itself was a secret at first, but we 
 are informed that the principle of working is as 
 follows : — A copper plate is dusted with powdered 
 asphalt, and the plate is heated, so that the asphalt 
 becomes nearly melted. A negative carbon print is 
 now transferred on to the copper plate, and the plate, 
 
 1 See ante, Chapters VII., VIII., and IX., pp. 132 
 
 et seq. 
 
Kite's Process. 201 
 
 now covered with the negative in carbon, is etched, 
 at first by a strong solution of perchloride of iron, 
 which penetrates only the thinnest parts of the 
 picture ; then by a weaker solution of the same salt, 
 the solution etching through the thicker parts. By 
 employing more and more diluted solutions, it is 
 possible to etch through thicker and thicker layers of 
 gelatine, so that only the high-lights remain un- 
 etched." 1 
 
 This device of graining the plate by cover- 
 ing it with asphalt dust has been employed 
 in connexion with other processes, and has 
 been found very effective. For typographic 
 work it appears to give too fine a grain. 
 
 The method of Klic has been employed 
 to some extent for book illustration, and 
 the writer was shown a short time ago a 
 very elaborate volume issued by a German 
 publisher, all the illustrations of which were 
 thus produced. 2 Many of the pictures were 
 on the same pages as the text, being of 
 course printed by a second operation, not 
 simultaneously with the type. They had 
 
 1 Photographic News, 1884, p. 67. 
 
 2 Leben eines Tauchenichts. Published by C. F. 
 Amelang, Leipsic. 
 
202 Woodbury's 
 
 evidently been reproduced from originals 
 specially prepared, probably in monochrome. 
 Some of them were extremely good, and all 
 were of fair excellence, quite fit to compare 
 with the average of good woodcuts or en- 
 gravings that might be expected in a book 
 of the class — an ornamental drawing-room- 
 table sort of book. The style of illustration, 
 the introduction of copper-plates among 
 printed text, is not one to be recommended, 
 but the book showed that its German pub- 
 lisher was at all events alive to the oppor- 
 tunities offered by photogravure, and gave 
 another illustration of the great readiness 
 shown, as was previously mentioned, by 
 foreign publishers to adopt novel methods. 
 
 Another of the earliest methods of photo- 
 gravure was the invention of Mr. Woodbury, 
 and this is believed to be the method which 
 has been for some time worked with very 
 great success by Messrs. Goupil and Co., 
 of Paris. Mr. Woodbury incorporated with 
 the gelatine used in making the relief 
 crushed glass or some similar powder. 
 From the rough relief a leaden reverse was 
 
Stipple Process. 
 
 203 
 
 taken in the manner in which Woodbury 
 moulds are produced, 1 and from this leaden 
 reverse a printing plate was produced by a 
 double electrotyping. 
 
 It has always been understood that plates 
 produced by this process require a very large 
 amount of handwork before any use can 
 be made of them. These finishing touches 
 can either be put on by hand with a graver, 
 or by etching, the plate being coated in the 
 usual manner with an etching ground. In 
 some cases tints can be drawn by a ruling 
 machine on the plate, which has been 
 previously covered with an etching ground, 
 or they can be transferred to the plate, and 
 then etched-in in the manner that phototype 
 transfers are usually etched upon zinc. A 
 good deal can also be done by " re-biting " 
 in parts of the plate, which are skilfully 
 inked over with a dabber. In fact, there 
 are numerous " dodges " which a skilful 
 manipulator will employ, and in con- 
 sequence the finished plate may really have 
 had to pass through a considerable number 
 1 See ante, p. 39. 
 
204 
 
 Waterhouse' s 
 
 of different processes applied to one part or 
 another of its surface. The result of course 
 is that plates produced in this manner are 
 still very expensive, though their cost does 
 not at all compare with the cost of original 
 copper plates. One great objection to such 
 plates is that the grain throughout is 
 entirely uniform, and the resulting prints 
 are consequently very flat, and wanting in 
 vigour, at all events until they have been 
 worked upon by hand. 
 
 In 1880 Lieut. -Colonel Waterhouse pub- 
 lished 1 a method of obtaining what he 
 termed a " discriminating grain," that is to 
 say, a grain which was closer in the shadows 
 than in the high lights. This was effected 
 by sifting over a Woodbury film, or a carbon 
 print, developed on a copper plate (the 
 copper being, in order that the picture 
 might show up better, generally silvered) 
 some granular powder which had been 
 waxed. Graining sand, emery powder, and 
 powdered glass were all effectual, but the 
 
 1 Photographic News (1880, p. 568) and Photographic 
 Journal, vol. v. p. 20. 
 
Process. 
 
 205 
 
 sand proved the best. The coating of wax 
 was given to the particles of sand by stirring 
 up wax and sand together in an iron vessel 
 over a stove, stirring being continued until 
 the mixture was cold. As soon as the relief 
 was dry, the sand was dusted off or washed 
 out, when it was found that the little pits 
 produced by it were deeper in the thick 
 portions of the relief — that is to say the 
 shadows — and shallower in the thinner parts. 
 Of course, where the bare metal was ex- 
 posed, no sand had adhered, and the surface 
 was left entirely smooth. The plate thus 
 prepared was black-leaded, and an electro- 
 type taken in the usual manner. This 
 electrotype formed the printing surface 
 required. 
 
 Very fair results were produced by this 
 process, but it was found to be rather un- 
 certain in its action. It was difficult to 
 get entirely rid of the sand, and small non- 
 conducting particles were thus left in the 
 film. These formed either pin holes in 
 the finished plate, or nuclei from which 
 streaks and markings spread in the process 
 
2o6 Sawyer — Gey met. 
 
 of electrotyping. A variation in the 
 process was introduced by Mr. Sawyer, of 
 the Autotype Co., and was described by 
 him in a paper read before the Photo- 
 graphic Society in November, 1885. 1 Mr. 
 Sawyer prepared a tissue of the same 
 character as that ordinarily used for carbon 
 printing, but substituted granular plumbago 
 for the pigment. The result of this was 
 that the tissue itself became a conducting 
 material for electricity, while the granu- 
 lated effect of the Waterhouse process was 
 preserved. An electrotype from a surface 
 prepared in this manner forms a printing 
 surface of an excellent character, though 
 of course it requires a certain amount 
 of touching up by hand before it is ready 
 for the printing press. 
 
 Another process is that of Geymet, who 
 relied upon the natural reticulation of the 
 gelatine for obtaining the grain. In this 
 case a carbon print was developed in such 
 a manner as to give strong reticulation, for 
 which purpose Lieut. -Colonel Waterhouse 
 1 See Photographic Journal, vol. x. p. 28. 
 
Obernetter's Process. 207 
 
 recommends treatment with an alcoholic 
 solution of tannin. A relief thus produced 
 was plumbagoed, and a printing plate pro- 
 duced from it by electrotyping. According 
 to Lieut. -Colonel Waterhouse, who worked 
 a good deal at this process with moderate 
 success, the grain given by it was not quite 
 what was required, because, though it is 
 stronger in the shadows than in the lights, 
 and breaks the image well up, it has the 
 disadvantage of destroying the relief, and 
 giving a flat toneless print. 1 
 
 A process of a very original character, 
 quite unlike any other, is that of Obernetter. 
 Its results are highly spoken of by a writer 
 in the Photographic News? who also gives 
 a description. A positive transparency is 
 made by ordinary photographic methods 
 
 1 While these pages were passing through the press, 
 Mr. E. W. Foxlee showed the author some very 
 remarkable examples of work produced by a new 
 intaglio process, the details of which have not yet 
 been published. The depth and vigour of the blacks 
 is a special feature of Mr. Foxlee's process, which 
 is an etching one. 
 
 2 Photographic News 7 1 884, p. 67. 
 
208 Obernetter's Process, 
 
 on a gelatine dry plate, which ought to be 
 very rich in silver. The film is stripped 
 and treated with a mixture of perchloride 
 of iron and chromic acid, so as to convert 
 all the silver in the film into chloride. The 
 film thus charged with chloride of silver 
 is placed in contact with a copper plate, 
 and a chemical action is set up which 
 etches away the plate. The writer in the 
 News suggests other means for converting 
 the silver into chloride, and confirms Herr 
 Obernetter's results from his own experi- 
 ments. The energy of the action is, he 
 says, increased by moistening the film with 
 a weak solution of chloride of zinc. It 
 may be added that to get good results a 
 battery current appears to be almost essen- 
 tial. One pole of the battery is connected 
 to the plate to be etched, and the other pole 
 to a metal plate separated by some moist 
 porous material from the copper plate. 
 
 This process — to which Obernetter has 
 given the characteristically German name 
 " Lichtkupferdruck " — renders half-tones 
 in a fairly satisfactory manner, and gives 
 
Applications. 209 
 
 a plate which, after a little retouching, is 
 highly satisfactory. The grain is extremely 
 fine in general, but by using an emulsion 
 specially made with a coarse silver bromide 
 it is possible to control the grain very 
 completely. 
 
 As regards our special subject, the illus- 
 tration of books, the intaglio plate is of less 
 importance than the surface block. The 
 special application of all the photogravure 
 processes will be the reproduction, generally 
 on a large scale, of pictures. For this pur- 
 pose they have special values of their own : 
 
 "Engraving on copper or steel, even in the hands 
 of the most skilful exponents, does not aim at any 
 minute imitation of the painter's handling. It has 
 always been regarded rather as a translation than a 
 reproduction, and its exercise has been determined 
 by special laws and traditions, which may be said 
 to constitute a recognized convention of style. In 
 the first place, it is to be noted that, save in the 
 case of mezzotint, all engraving is executed by means 
 of line, and this fact serves, in itself, to distinguish 
 the reproduction from the original, and to make the 
 spectator sensible that the artist's invention has been 
 translated into another language. And even in the 
 finest examples of mezzotint, which so successfully 
 
2io A pplications 
 
 preserve for us the masterpieces of Reynolds and 
 Gainsborough, there is no attempt to suggest the 
 actual appearances of the picture. The necessities 
 of translation are still frankly and clearly acknow- 
 ledged, and although the subtle modulation of tone 
 comes nearer to the effect of painting than anything 
 that can be produced in line, the result nevertheless 
 ranks as the product of a separate art, which leaves 
 room for the assertion of the engraver's individual 
 style. But with these mechanical processes, based 
 upon photography, this is no longer the case. It is 
 the picture itself that is transferred to the plate, shorn 
 only of the grace and attraction of colour." 1 
 
 As much cannot as yet be said of any 
 process which will give a relief block from 
 a painting, and until sufficient advance has 
 been made to bring the artistic qualities of 
 the block to a level with those of the plate, 
 the latter will still claim its place among 
 the resources of the illustrators of books, 
 certainly of books the illustrations of which 
 consist wholly or in part of copies of works 
 of art. The power of etching to different 
 depths, and consequently of giving different 
 
 1 Cantor Lectures on " Book Illustration," by J. 
 Comyns Carr, Journal of the Society of Arts, vol. 
 xxx. p. 1058. 
 
of the Processes, 
 
 211 
 
 values to his lines, remains in the hands of 
 the artist working on a photogravure plate, 
 and enables him to keep his advantage over 
 the wood engraver, or the maker of printing 
 surfaces akin to wood blocks, and therefore 
 we may expect to see photogravure continue 
 to be used for the production of copies of 
 pictures which will be employed for book 
 illustration, as well as for larger work. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the 
 use of intaglio plates produced by Klic's 
 method, for book illustration, by inserting 
 the prints into the text. Possibly publishers 
 may occasionally find it worth their while 
 to follow the example thus set ; but for the 
 most part pictures produced by photogravure 
 will only take the place of copper-plate en- 
 gravings, and these, except for the reproduc- 
 tion of paintings, are now but little used. 
 
 For the production of large plates, either 
 direct from original pictures, or from mono- 
 chrome sketches specially prepared by the 
 artist himself or by another hand, photo- 
 gravure is already largely employed, and its 
 use is rapidly extending. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Mechanical Processes. 
 
 j]LL the processes which have been 
 hitherto described have been of a 
 chemical nature, and most of them 
 have depended upon photography. Many 
 inventors, however, have attempted to pro- 
 duce printing blocks by purely mechanical 
 means, and these also deserve a short notice. 
 
 Some twenty years ago a good deal of 
 attention was attracted by the Graphotype 
 process, but it has long since fallen out of 
 use, having been entirely superseded by the 
 etching and other recent methods. Still, it 
 was sufficiently original and ingenious in its 
 idea to make it deserving of record. In it, 
 the drawing was made in an ink consisting 
 
Graphotype. 213 
 
 of glue and lampblack upon a block prepared 
 by compressing precipitated chalk into a 
 solid cake; in order to prevent the ink from 
 spreading, the surface was rendered non- 
 absorbent by size. After the drawing was 
 finished, the interspaces between the lines 
 were cleared out by a brush, the lines them- 
 selves, and the chalk below them, being 
 held together by the ink and so preserved 
 from disintegration. The result therefore 
 was that a block was produced with the 
 lines standing up in relief. This block 
 was then treated with silicate of potash to 
 harden it, and it was thus converted into 
 a compact mass of artificial stone. 
 
 It was at first thought that the chalk 
 blocks themselves might be used for printing 
 from ; but it was found they would not 
 stand the necessary amount of pressure, 
 and consequently it was necessary to take 
 either stereotypes or electrotypes from 
 them. Rough as the process appears in the 
 description, it was yet capable of turning 
 out very fine work, much finer indeed than 
 would readily be believed. In 1865 or 
 
214 
 
 Graphotypi 
 
 1 866 an edition of Watts' s Hymns, illustrated 
 by the graphotype process, was published 
 in order to show the capabilities of the 
 process. The illustrations for this book 
 were drawn by Holman Hunt, Du Maurier, 
 Marcus Stone, Florence Claxton, and other 
 well-known artists, several of whom ex- 
 pressed at the time their appreciation of 
 the process. It is of course impossible to 
 say how much after-treatment the blocks 
 received, but the work is certainly of a very 
 high order, quite as good as we should 
 expect to get from any process. It is to be 
 remembered indeed that these pictures were 
 specially got up to show the very best that 
 the process would do, and the ordinary 
 commercial work sent out by the Grapho- 
 type Company was of a very different sort. 
 
 An illustrated paper was also published 
 for some time, the illustrations in which 
 were produced by the graphotype process, 
 and they were not specially good. Still 
 for cheap work the process had many 
 advantages, and very possibly, but for the 
 improvements which were introduced into 
 
Dawson's Process. 
 
 215 
 
 the etching method, especially the device 
 of protecting the sides of the lines, and 
 thereby preventing their under-cutting by 
 the acid, graphotype would have been con- 
 tinued in use. 
 
 Those who are curious for further in- 
 formation on the subject may consult a 
 paper in the Society of Arts Journal of the 
 8th December, 1 865, by Mr. Henry Fitzcook, 
 in which a very full description of the 
 process is given. Some cuts printed in the 
 Journal give a good idea of the suitability 
 of the process for ordinary newspaper work. 
 
 A process by which a great deal of ex- 
 cellent work is now being done is that of 
 Messrs. Dawson, to which the inventors 
 have given the not very happy name of 
 " Typographic Etching." This is very 
 ingenious, and differs entirely from any of 
 the processes previously described. The 
 design is drawn with an etching needle of 
 special form on a brass plate covered with 
 a wax etching ground, in the same manner 
 as for an ordinary etching. The metal is 
 therefore bared at the lines, which are 
 
216 Dawson's Process of 
 
 separated by ridges and spaces of wax. 
 These spaces of wax are then reinforced by 
 the addition of further material, melted wax 
 being run upon them by the use of a heated 
 metal tool or pencil which supplies a thin 
 continuous stream of melted wax to the 
 parts where it is required. It is found that 
 the force of cohesion in the wax is sufficient 
 to prevent its running over on to the lines 
 themselves and filling them up, as might 
 have been expected. Instead of this being 
 the case, the lines are left perfectly sharp 
 and clear, the freshly added wax combining 
 with the cold wax on the plate, and running 
 up to the edges of the lines. The additions 
 are continued until the spaces between the 
 lines (which represent the whites of the 
 finished print) have been raised to a height 
 sufficient to give the necessary relief, when 
 an electrotype is taken. This electrotype 
 forms the printing surface. 
 
 For outline work, and for work of a dia- 
 grammatic character, the process is admirably 
 suited, and finished drawings of an elaborate 
 character can also be converted into blocks 
 
" Typographic Etching!' 217 
 
 by its aid. In this case the original drawing 
 is best made by the artist himself on the 
 prepared plate, and those who are familiar 
 with the use of the etching needle appear 
 not to find any difficulty in drawing on 
 Messrs. Dawson's plates. When this is not 
 done, the sketch has to be copied, a process 
 which is assisted by making a pencil tracing 
 and transferring it by pressure to the wax 
 surface. The process has the drawback 
 that it is not possible to take a proof, except 
 by the roundabout method of photographing 
 the drawing on the plate, or to make any 
 corrections. Neither is it quite so rapid 
 as the etching method, the necessity for 
 electrotyping standing in the way of great 
 speed. It is, however, a serious competitor 
 with those methods, the blocks it produces 
 are of the highest possible character, and 
 suited for any sort of printing, and the many 
 advantages of the process have brought it 
 into somewhat extensive use. 
 
 It will be understood from the description 
 that the process is quite capable of pro- 
 ducing any picture that can be engraved 
 
2 1 8 " Typog raphic Etching? 
 
 upon wood, provided that the artist is 
 sufficiently skilful. Artists, however, are 
 not apt to adopt new methods, and few 
 seem willing to go through the little train- 
 ing which would be required to make them 
 proficient in sketching on the prepared 
 surface with the special etching needle em- 
 ployed. The inventors therefore prefer to 
 reproduce elaborate work by the process 
 described in Chapter VI. 1 Some artists 
 who have adopted the process have pro- 
 duced satisfactory work by it, and they 
 have had the advantage that they can use 
 fine line with greater freedom than in wood- 
 cuts, so that their work possessed much 
 of the freedom and the general appearance 
 of an etching or a pen-and-ink sketch. 
 
 When maps or diagrams are to be pro- 
 duced, the lettering is done by stamping 
 type upon the wax plate after the drawing 
 is completed and before the "building up" 
 stage, the plate being for the purpose 
 warmed just sufficiently to render the wax 
 plastic. This is a special advantage when 
 1 See ante, p. 122. 
 
Glyphograpliic Process. 2 1 9 
 
 plans, etc., have to be considerably reduced. 
 In that case, as was before mentioned, 1 the 
 lettering is generally reduced to too small 
 a size. The effect too is very neat. 
 
 As regards the applications of the process, 
 it may be considered as standing on a par 
 with the etching process as applied to work 
 not requiring photographic reproduction. 
 It is free from the drawbacks mentioned as 
 inherent to the transfer process, but in many 
 cases its inability to show a proof before 
 the block is made is very inconvenient. 
 
 Without in any degree reflecting on the 
 merit or the originality of this invention, it 
 is interesting to point out that it has a prede- 
 cessor, though an unsuccessful predecessor, 
 in the " glyphographic " process, invented 
 and patented some forty years ago by 
 Edward Palmer. In this a plate of blackened 
 copper was coated with wax, and the design 
 traced thereon with an etching needle. 
 Additional relief was gained by painting 
 on a solution of wax dissolved in turpentine 
 over the highest lights. An electrotype was 
 1 See ante, p. 73. 
 
220 Copying Machines. 
 
 taken from the plate thus formed, and served 
 as a printing block. The process never 
 came into practical use, either from its cost, 
 or from its results not being sufficiently 
 good. It ruined its inventor, who gave 
 up a good business as an optician to attend 
 to it, and shortly afterwards found himself 
 in the Bankruptcy Court. 1 There is not 
 perhaps any special interest attaching to 
 Palmer's process beyond other unsuccessful 
 attempts to supersede wood-engraving, 
 except from the fact that the same idea 
 has been developed into the very excellent 
 process of Dawson, above described. 
 
 The inventions for the purpose of copy- 
 ing, or producing printing surfaces by the 
 
 1 Palmer's two Patent Specifications (No. 8987, 
 1841, and No. 9227, 1842) do not give details of the 
 method of drawing, which he does not seem to consider 
 important. He published a pamphlet on the subject 
 in 1843, a copy of which is in the Library of the 
 Royal Institution. It is not in the British Museum 
 library. A short account of the process will be 
 found in a paper on "Engraving and other repro- 
 ductive Art Processes," contributed by the late S. T. 
 Davenport to the Journal of the Society of Arts, vol. 
 xiii. (1865), p. 136. 
 
Saxton — Bate — Col las. 221 
 
 aid of pure mechanism, do not appear to 
 have been very numerous. Machines are 
 used for the purpose of ruling lines in en- 
 graving, to save the labour of cutting them, 
 and reference has already been made to the 
 use of similar lines on paper to be afterwards 
 drawn upon, 1 but these are of a different 
 character. A device by which engraved 
 plates, capable of being printed from, were 
 produced from small objects in low relief, 
 such as coins or medals, is described in 
 Bergeron's Manuel du Tourneur (1792), and 
 a practical machine for the purpose was 
 invented by Saxton about 1830. In 1832 
 also one on a similar principle was patented 
 by Bate, and these have had several suc- 
 cessors. 2 
 
 In Saxton's machine, which is quite a 
 
 1 See ante, p. 76. 
 
 2 M. De Lostalot, in his "Procedes de la gravure," 
 Paris, 1885, p. 147, gives an illustration of the work 
 produced by the machine of M. Collas, but professes 
 ignorance as to the means by which it was ac- 
 complished. The picture represents a medal about 
 two inches and a half diameter. It has obviously 
 been produced by a machine similar to the one 
 described in the text. 
 
222 
 
 Saxtoiis 
 
 small affair, only occupying a space of about 
 ten inches by five, the object to be copied, 
 which may be a medal, a seal, a plaster 
 cast, or something of a like nature, is 
 clamped down on a little frame. A tracing 
 point is mounted on an arm which slides 
 on a bar above so that it is capable of 
 moving to and fro over the face of the 
 object. As it passes over the surface of 
 the object, it is lifted by any projecting 
 parts of that surface. The motion it thus 
 receives is transmitted to a pencil or a 
 tracer (generally with a diamond point) 
 mounted in similar fashion at the other 
 end of the machine, but in the transmission 
 it is changed, by a very ingenious system 
 of levers, from a motion in a vertical plane, 
 or up and down, to a motion in a horizontal 
 plane, or backwards and forwards. 
 
 The result of this is, that the relief of 
 the object is represented by a curved line, 
 drawn by the tracer upon the surface fixed 
 below it. This surface might be a plate of 
 metal covered with an etching ground, and 
 it is probably not incorrect to assume that 
 
Machine. 
 
 223 
 
 this was the plan used by the inventor, as 
 in such machines it is not found practicable 
 to incise the lines direct on the metal. 
 When one line has been drawn, the object 
 and the surface on which the copy is being 
 taken are both shifted forward a minute 
 distance, by the turn of a screw, and 
 another line is drawn. The first tracer 
 thus gradually travels over the face of the 
 object, and a series of lines is drawn 
 by the second tracer, which, in their en- 
 tirety, represent the whole surface of the 
 article to be copied. It is evident that the 
 apparatus can only be used for objects, not 
 only in very low relief, but of which the 
 relief is very gradual, since the tracer must 
 have a gentle slope to travel up ; if it 
 comes to any sudden rise, its progress is 
 checked. 
 
 An excellent example of the work which 
 can be effected by machines of this class 
 is the little vignette on the title-page of 
 Babbage's " Economy of Manufactures," 1 
 which was made by Bate's machine. They 
 1 Published in 1832. 
 
224 Ruling Machines, 
 
 will produce satisfactory work without call- 
 ing for much skill in using them, but their 
 applications are limited, and the purposes 
 for which they were intended can now be 
 more readily attained by other means. 
 
 In some recent engravers' ruling machines 
 a similar device has been added, so that the 
 machine can be used for copying medals, 
 seals, etc. The chief employment of such 
 machines is for preparing plates for printing 
 cheques, bank notes, and similar subjects. 
 The ruling machine, in its simplest form, 
 consists of a frame some three feet or so 
 in length, along which a carriage slides, 
 carrying a tracer. This tracer has a 
 diamond point, though it is only used for 
 drawing lines on an etching ground, which 
 can be afterwards etched. The plate on 
 which the lines are to be ruled is secured on a 
 table below the frame. By means of a screw, 
 the tracer can be shifted in a direction at 
 right angles to that of its travel, in order 
 to form the interspaces between the lines, 
 and according as the tracer is shifted a 
 smaller or a greater distance, so are the 
 
Riding Machines. 225 
 
 lines nearer together or wider apart. In 
 ruling the lines to form a tint, it is of course 
 necessary that they should come sharp up 
 to the edges of any objects represented in 
 the picture, thus, in a sky, the lines must 
 run up to the edges of trees, roofs, or other 
 objects shown as standing out against the 
 sky. In practice t/his is generally managed, 
 not by carefully ruling the lines exactly to 
 the required point, as this would necessitate 
 very slow working, but by ruling them so 
 that they slightly overlap the edges, go a 
 little beyond, that is, where they ought to 
 stop, and then, before the etching, carefully 
 going over the outline with stopping-out 
 varnish, so that the ends of the lines, where 
 they exceed the proper length, are practi- 
 cally obliterated. The workman can thus 
 go on rapidly with his work, without stop- 
 ping to see that it is accurately finished in 
 the first instance. 
 
 When it is desired to rule a waved line, 
 instead of a straight one, a more complicated 
 machine is required. In this case the tracer 
 has an oscillating motion imparted to it, 
 
 i5 
 
226 Ruling Machines. 
 
 and it is thus caused to draw a wavy line 
 as it travels along. The precise form of 
 the wave is controlled by a little wheel, the 
 rim of which is fluted in accordance with 
 the shape it is desired to give to the wave. 
 An arm resting on the rim is moved up and 
 down, and by a system of levers this motion 
 is transmitted to the tracer, so as, as in 
 Saxton's machine, to give it an oscillating 
 motion in a horizontal plane. By a little 
 further modification, the tracer can be caused 
 to follow the outline of any object in relief, 
 and thus to produce a copy of it on a flat 
 surface. 
 
 The machine used by wood-engravers is 
 similar in principle, but very different in 
 construction, since it has to plough out the 
 line in the wood, instead of merely tracing 
 it on the prepared surface of the metal. It 
 is therefore much heavier and stronger, and 
 the tool is driven forward by a wheel, instead 
 of being merely run along by hand. In 
 using it the workman has to stop his lines 
 at the points where they are to end, or else 
 to complete his work by hand. 
 
Shanks' Engraving Machine. 227 
 
 Of the devices for producing pictures 
 simply by the use of mechanism, the engrav- 
 ing machine of Mr. Shanks may certainly 
 claim to be the most ingenious and the best. 
 For some purposes to which it was applied 
 on its first introduction, it has been super- 
 seded by the etching processes, but there yet 
 remain various and important uses for it. 
 
 It is in principle an application of the 
 eidograph, the well-known device by which 
 drawings can be reduced or enlarged. In 
 the eidograph a tracing point is mounted 
 at one end of a system of levers, at the 
 other end of which is a pencil ; when the 
 tracing point is moved over the lines of the 
 drawing to be copied, the pencil draws a 
 facsimile, larger or smaller, according as 
 the fulcrum on which the system of levers 
 turns is nearer the original or the copy. In 
 Mr. Shanks' machine the plate to be drawn 
 upon is moved under the drawing imple- 
 ment, which is a rapidly revolving cutter, 
 instead of the implement being moved over 
 the plate, and the plate, or rather the carrier 
 which holds it, is therefore mounted on the 
 
228 
 
 Shanks" 
 
 end of the system of levers. The carrier 
 is mounted in the same way as the slide rest 
 of a lathe, so as to have motion in two 
 directions, one at right angles to the other, 
 and consequently by a combination of the 
 two, of motion in any direction in the same 
 plane. If, now, a plate of a suitable sub- 
 stance, such as hardened plaster of paris, 
 be mounted on the carrier, and the tracing 
 point at the other end of the lever moved 
 over the lines of a drawing, the cutter will 
 be caused to plough a little furrow which 
 will follow the lines of the drawing. When 
 the process is finished, the lines of the 
 drawing will be represented by furrows of 
 uniform depth (since the point of the 
 cutter is always at the same spot, and the 
 plate has been moved about under it in 
 a horizontal plane), the outlines of which 
 are, if the operator has done his work ac- 
 curately, identical with the outlines of the 
 drawing. Means are provided for raising 
 the cutter out of action to enable it to pass 
 over spaces which are to be left blank. 
 When a broader line is required, it can be 
 
Engraving Machine. 229 
 
 obtained by setting the cutter a little "out 
 of truth," so that, instead of rotating on 
 its own axis, it describes a very small 
 circle, or by using a cutter, the point of 
 which is not quite in the centre, when the 
 same effect will be produced. 
 
 When the plate is finished, a stereotype 
 is taken from it, and that forms the printing 
 surface required ; or, if the type with which 
 the block is to be printed is stereotyped, 
 a cast is taken in fusible metal, and from 
 this a stereotype is produced by the ordinary 
 paper process. The cutter is formed with 
 a pyramidical point, and consequently the 
 grooves it forms are V-shaped. In the 
 stereotype, therefore, the section of the 
 lines is an inverted V. These lines, stand- 
 on a broad base of metal, are in consequence 
 very strong, and well suited for rough print- 
 ing. They will even stand the very severe 
 test of being printed on a cylinder machine, 
 such as is now-a-days used for all daily 
 newspaper printing. 
 
 From the description it will be seen that 
 the machine is not intended for fine or 
 
230 Shanks" Engraving Machine. 
 
 delicate work ; its chief application has 
 hitherto been for newspaper work, such as 
 the weather diagrams, sketch maps, and 
 outline sketches, published by most, if not 
 all the daily papers. There is, however, 
 one class of illustration for which it is 
 specially suitable. When the same outline 
 has to be repeated several times, with 
 slightly differing details, as, to take a 
 familiar instance, with the weather charts 
 in the Times newspaper, a block with the 
 recurring outlines is first made, and plates 
 moulded from this ; the details alone then 
 require to be separately cut upon these 
 plates. Statistical or other diagrams, with 
 curves plotted out upon them, may thus 
 be readily and rapidly prepared, and in 
 cases where a number of such similar, but 
 not identical, diagrams are required for 
 purposes of comparison, this process affords, 
 to the best of the writer's knowledge, by far 
 the cheapest method of providing them. 
 
 Work of a certain amount of elaboration 
 has been done on the machine, but for most 
 purposes it cannot compete with the etching 
 
Sketching on Vulcanite. 231 
 
 methods. Its principal advantage is in the 
 great speed with which it can turn out clear 
 and simple diagrams for newspaper work. 
 The clean-cut lines produced by the machine 
 are excellently suited for stereotyping, but 
 so far as the illustration of books is con- 
 cerned, there does not seem any probability 
 of its use extending beyond the applications 
 named above. 
 
 A very simple method of preparing plates 
 which can be printed in the same manner 
 as copper plates, and give results precisely 
 similar to an ordinary etching, has been 
 devised by Mr. G. Dawson. A thin plate 
 of vulcanite is covered with a white ground, 
 in order to enable the artist to see what 
 he is doing. A sketch is made on this 
 with an etching needle, sufficient pressure 
 being used to scratch the surface of the 
 vulcanite. Very little pressure is required, 
 and it is found the needle readily makes a 
 nice clean cut in the vulcanite quite deep 
 enough to hold the ink. The white ground 
 is then removed, and the plate is ready 
 without further preparation for printing. 
 
232 Opaque Films 
 
 This appears to be the simplest method 
 known of producing a printing surface, and 
 it ought to prove a very convenient plan 
 for etchers who are in the habit of drawing 
 direct from nature. There seems no reason 
 why the plates should not stand a reasonable 
 amount of work, and the results they give 
 are quite satisfactory. 
 
 Similar effects may also be attained by 
 employing a sheet of gelatine for drawing 
 upon. The gelatine has the advantage of 
 not yielding to pressure. Vulcanite might 
 be expected to stretch and flatten out under 
 pressure, but this gelatine does not do. On 
 the other hand, the gelatine is not so easy 
 to work upon, and does not give such a 
 good line. Both methods may be recom- 
 mended to those who can etch. 
 
 A very simple and satisfactory device for 
 reproducing drawings will be found to be 
 the employment of a glass plate covered 
 with an opaque film, on which the drawing 
 can be made with a needle point. The 
 glass may then be treated precisely as if 
 it were a photographic negative, and 
 
for Sketching upon. 233 
 
 positives printed from it, by the ordinary 
 photographic printing processes ; or if a 
 printing surface be required, it may be 
 produced by any of the methods described 
 in the preceding pages. The only difficulty 
 is to obtain a film which is thoroughly 
 opaque to light, and will give sharp lines 
 without chipping. The best film for the 
 purpose is one devised by Sir John Scott, 
 and described in Holtzapffel's book on 
 Turning, and elsewhere ; 1 but sufficiently 
 good results can generally be obtained by 
 mixing some suitable colouring matter with 
 an old sample of collodion, and adding 
 also a few drops of water, sufficient to give 
 a crapey appearance to the film. 
 
 1 There is an error in the formula as given by 
 Holtzapffel, 60 drachms being substituted for 6. The 
 following is correct, and will be found to give excellent 
 results : — 
 
 Negative collodion, Joz. ; 
 
 Alcohol and Ether, each 6 drachms ; 
 
 Shellac, 30 grains ; 
 
 Aurine, 2 grains ; 
 
 Judson's ruby dye, 30 drops ; 
 
 Water, 30 drops. 
 
 — Holtzapffel, Turning, etc., vol. v. p, 287. 
 It should be poured on the glass like ordinary collodion, 
 and allowed to dry. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 Preparation of Drawings for 
 Reproduction. 
 
 The following are the detailed instruc- 
 tions (referred to on p. 72) issued by the 
 Indian Survey Office for the guidance of 
 draughtsmen in the department. They 
 were reprinted in the Photographic News, 
 1882, p. 482. 
 
 1. — The drawings should be made on white smooth- 
 surfaced paper, fresh tracing cloth, or, best of all, fine 
 Bristol board. When possible, the drawing should 
 remain stretched on the drawing board, and in any 
 case should be kept as clean as possible, and free 
 from pencil marks, creases, and wrinkles. Little 
 defects, which may scarcely be noticed on the 
 original, frequently attain undue prominence in the 
 photograph. 
 
 2. — The best ink to use is Indian ink, which should 
 be freshly and evenly rubbed down, and be sufficiently 
 thick to give a good full black line. A little yellow 
 
Appendix I. 235 
 
 pigment, such as gamboge, or preferably burnt sienna, 
 is sometimes added, and Capt. Hannot recommends 
 rubbing down the ink in a very weak solution of 
 bichromate of potash. In adding yellow to the ink, 
 care must be taken to use some substance which will 
 not spread beyond the lines, especially when drawing 
 on tracing cloth. 
 
 3. — The lines should be firmly and clearly drawn, 
 not too fine or too close together. Even the finest 
 lines must be quite black. Light effects must be 
 produced by making the lines thinner, and increasing 
 their distance apart, and not by the use of pale ink. 
 In removing pencil marks after the drawing has been 
 inked in, great care must be taken not to destroy the 
 blackness and firmness of the lines by too much 
 rubbing ; otherwise they will appear quite rotten and 
 broken when reproduced. 
 
 4. — Cross-hatching and shading should be open, 
 and in firm clear lines, not too close together, or 
 confused by fine lines. Intensity of shade should be 
 shown by an increase in the thickness of the lines 
 rather than by their being placed close together. It 
 must be borne in mind that throughout the process 
 there is a tendency for the lines to thicken, so that 
 if they are too close they are liable to block up in 
 the printing, and the work will appear heavy and 
 unsightly. This rule also applies while shading, the 
 darker portions of which should be drawn in thick 
 distinct lines, but not crossed and recrossed with fine 
 lines. 
 
 5. — In drawing maps it is better to leave river 
 courses, coast lines, lakes, ponds, or tanks, blank, 
 and not filled in with fine lines. They may be indi- 
 cated on the original by a pale wash of blue, without 
 detriment to their reproduction. 
 
236 Appendix L 
 
 6. — Similarly in mechanical or architectural draw- 
 ings, ruled tints and shades are better left blank on 
 the original, or shown by light tints of blue, violet, 
 or aniline red. Engraved tints in lines or dots can 
 be transferred on the stone afterwards, and will have 
 a much neater effect than tint lines reproduced directly 
 from the original. 
 
 7. — Washes of any colour, except pale blue, violet, 
 aniline red, or other colours which will not reproduce, 
 are absolutely inadmissible in drawing for reproduction 
 by photolithography. If necessary, outlines may be 
 drawn in some pigment which will reproduce black, 
 such as strong red, brown, yellow, orange, or green. 
 Details required to be shown in the original, but not 
 in the copy, may be drawn in pale blue, aniline, 
 violet, or red. Spots, stains, and details not required 
 to be reproduced, can be painted out with Chinese 
 white. 
 
 8. — Whenever possible, the original drawings should 
 be on a larger scale than the reproduced copy. Defects 
 in drawing are lessened by reduction, and the result 
 generally is finer and sharper than a reproduction to 
 scale would be. 
 
 9. — In preparing drawings for reduction, care must 
 be taken that the lines, lettering, and detail are drawn 
 of sufficient thickness and size relatively to the scale 
 of reduction, so that they may be clear and distinct, 
 and in proper proportion together when reduced, 
 and not be so small as to be either quite lost 1 or 
 illegible. Thus, if it be required to reduce a drawing 
 to one-fifth the scale of the original, every line must 
 be drawn five times as thick, and the writing and 
 details five times as large as required in the reduced 
 copy. Sufficient space must also be left between lines 
 of shading or cross-hatching to prevent their blocking 
 
Appendix L 237 
 
 up and running together in transferring and printing. 
 Practically, it is sufficient to draw the original from 
 about one and a half to twice as large as the copy to 
 secure all the advantages of reduction, and the 
 originals will also serve for reproduction if necessary. 
 
 10. — It will save confusion and mistakes if the 
 scale on drawings intended for reduction is shown in 
 terms of a single unit of measurement, as inches, feet, 
 miles, etc., and not as relative to any second unit, as 
 inches to a foot, mile, etc. It should be shown simply 
 as scale of feet, miles, etc. 
 
 11. — Drawings or tracings intended for reproduction 
 should not be folded, but kept flat or rolled. Folding 
 causes creases, which give shadows on the negative in 
 reproduction, and these may obscure and spoil other 
 details. It is a good plan to pass a creased drawing 
 through a copper-plate or lithographic press before 
 copying. 
 
 12. — It must be borne in mind throughout that 
 photography will only produce a facsimile, and that, 
 as a rule, the original will not be in any way improved 
 upon. Rough, coarsely-drawn work will not appear 
 like fine engraving, or bad writing like letter-press or 
 copper-plate, and therefore in making drawings for 
 publication, care must be taken to give them the 
 requisite degree of neatness and finish before they are 
 copied, so that the result may be fit for immediate 
 issue, and not require alteration and touching up, 
 which causes delay and expense, besides deteriorating 
 the work before it is printed. 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 Books of Reference. 
 
 The following list of books dealing with 
 subjects to which allusion has been made 
 in the preceding pages may be useful. 
 
 The only other English sources of in- 
 formation on Photo-mechanical printing 
 processes are, to the best of the writer's 
 knowledge, the pages of the two Photo- 
 graphic newspapers, the Photographic News 
 and the British Journal of Photography, 
 
 Special reference should be made to the 
 series of articles on Photo-lithography by 
 Lieut. -Colonel Waterhouse in the volumes 
 of the Photographic News for 1882-3-4-5, 
 and to the series on Photolithography and 
 Photo-mechanical Printing by T. Bolas in 
 the Journal during 1878 and 1879. 
 
 There are several text-books in French and 
 German. L6on Vidal has written some 
 in the former language ; J. Husnik, J. 
 Allgeyer, L. Berndt, L. Mosk, J. Schnauss 
 in the latter. 
 
Appendix II 239 
 
 History of Wood-engraving. By J. Jackson 
 and W. Chatto. 2nd edition, 1861. 
 Besides a history of the art, the authors give an 
 account of the methods, tools, etc., employed. 
 
 Etchers and Etching. By P. G. Hamerton. 
 2nd edition, 1876. 
 In an Appendix Mr. Hamerton gives full instruc- 
 tions for the process of plate-etching, and describes 
 the tools, chemicals, presses, etc., required. " The 
 Etcher's Handbook," by the same author, supplies 
 similar information. 
 
 Grammar of Lithography. By W. D. Rich- 
 mond. 1878. 
 
 Intended as a guide to the practical lithographer. 
 Full practical details are given, and information of 
 every sort likely to be useful in the workshop. A 
 most valuable book for its purpose. 
 
 The Art of Chromolithography. By G. A. 
 Audsley. 1883. 
 This contains a magnificent series of plates, show- 
 ing the design on each stone, and the effect of each 
 successive printing. The example selected is a most 
 remarkable reproduction of a piece of Japanese 
 lacquer-work, requiring twenty-one printings. The 
 text gives a brief but sufficient account of the process. 
 
 Treatise on Photography. By Capt. W. de 
 
 W. Abney. 1878. 
 Instruction in Photography. By Capt. W. 
 
 de W. Abney. Seventh edition, 1886. 
 
 The photographic processes referred to in Chapter 
 II. and elsewhere will be found fully described in 
 
240 Appendix II 
 
 Captain Abney's well-known treatises. The first- 
 named book (one of Longman's "Text-books of 
 Science") is intended for the general reader; working 
 instructions are given in the second. 
 
 The Application of Photography to the 
 Production of Printing Surfaces and 
 Pictures in Pigment. By T. Bolas. 
 1878. 
 
 Recent Improvements in Photo-mechanical 
 Printing Methods. By T. Bolas. 1884. 
 Two. series of Cantor Lectures delivered before 
 the Society of Arts and published in the Society's 
 Journal, vol. xxvi. and vol. xxxii. ; also as separate 
 pamphlets. They form the best treatise on the subject 
 in the language, in fact the only one in which a trust- 
 worthy account of the different processes is given. 
 Unfortunately they are very brief. 
 
 Guide to Art Illustration. By J. S. Hodson. 
 1884. 
 
 Gives a useful series of examples of some of the 
 principal methods. 
 
 Zincography. By Josef Bock. Translated 
 byE. Menken, n.d. (published 1886). 
 A brief but clear description of the method of 
 making etched blocks. Working details are given. 
 
 Photo-engraving . . . and Photolithography. 
 By W. T. Wilkinson. 1886. 
 This book is announced for publication, but has not 
 yet appeared. 
 
INDEX 
 
 A tier age, Process of, 5. 
 
 Albumen process for etched blocks, 103, in. 
 Anastatic process, 80. 
 Annan's photogravure process, 200. 
 Appendix I. (Preparation of drawings for reproduc- 
 tion), 234. 
 
 Appendix II. (Books of Reference), 238. 
 Asser's starch process, 145. 
 ' 6 Autotypes," 33. 
 
 Babbage's "Economy of Manufactures," 223. 
 Bate's copying machine, 221. 
 Bichromatised gelatine, etc., properties of, 27, 49. 
 Bitumen process for photolithography, 70; of Niepce, 
 
 107 ; for etched blocks, 103, 108. 
 Books of Reference (Appendix), 238. 
 
 16 
 
242 
 
 Index. 
 
 Bolas's Cantor Lectures, referred to, 121, 165, 167, 168. 
 Borland's swelled gelatine process, 147. 
 Brown, Barnes, and Bell's phototype process, 161, 169. 
 Bullock's photolithographic process, 152. 
 
 Carbon printing, 27. 
 
 Carr, Comyns, quoted, 185, 209. 
 
 Chemical engraving, 23. 
 
 Choice of processes, 27, 35, 44, 59, 78, 130. 
 
 Chromolithography, II, 
 
 Chromoxylography, 12. 
 
 Collas's copying machine, 221. 
 
 Collotype, 53. 
 
 Colour printing from stone (chromolithography), 1 1 ; 
 from wood (chromoxylography), 12 ; from collo- 
 type plates, 59. 
 
 Coloured pictures, photographing, 194. 
 
 Colours to be used in drawings for photographic 
 reproduction, 73, 178, 236. 
 
 Common's photograph of nebula in Orion, 174. 
 
 Copper for etching, 96, 159. 
 
 Copper plates, engraving and printing, 2 ; etching, 3 ; 
 
 steeling, 5. 
 Copying machines, 221. 
 
 Daguerreotype plate converted into printing surface, 
 190. 
 
 Dawson's gelatine process, 122 ; intaglio-plate process, 
 188; wax process, "Typographic Etching," 215 ; 
 method of sketching on vulcanite, 231. 
 
Index. 
 
 243 
 
 Day's shading medium, 77. 
 Defects in etched blocks, 127. 
 
 Drawings for reproduction, preparation of, 71, 128, 
 176, {Appendix) 234. 
 
 Editions, producing new, by photolithography, 79 ; 
 
 by anastatic process, 80. 
 Eggis's phototype process, 167. 
 Ehrard's electro-deposition process, 189. 
 Elastic films, enlarging or reducing by, 75. 
 Electric light, photographic printing by, 113. 
 Electrotypes from wood blocks, 6. 
 Engraving, copper-plate, 2. 
 Engraving machines, 221. 
 
 Eosine used for ortho- chromatic photography, 196. 
 Etching copper plates, 3 ; intaglio plates, 183, 196 ; 
 
 processes for type-blocks, 93. 
 Etching-fluids, 98, 160, 199. 
 
 Foxlee's photogravure process, 107. 
 
 Galvanic etching, 115. 
 
 Gelatine, properties of bichromatised, 27, 49, 142. 
 Gelatine sheets, sketching on, 232. 
 Gelatino-bromide paper, 23. 
 Geymet's photogravure process, 206. 
 Glass, etching on, 119 ; with opaque film for sketch- 
 ing on, 232. 
 Glyphography, 219. 
 
244 Index. 
 
 Goupil's typogravure process, 159 ; photogravure 
 process, 202. 
 
 Grain or stipple, methods of obtaining, 141, 142, 146, 
 
 147, 148, 150, 153, 154, 156, 159, 161, 164. 
 Graphotype, 212. 
 
 Grove, Sir William, method of converting daguerreo- 
 type plate into printing surface, 190. 
 
 Half-tone negatives, blocks from, 132 ; plates from, 
 191. 
 
 Half-tone paper, 76. 
 
 Hamerton, quoted, 172. 
 
 Handwork in photogravure plates, 191. 
 
 Heliogravure, 191. 
 
 Honey process for etched blocks, 112. 
 
 India-rubber sheet, enlarging or reducing by, 75. 
 
 "Ink-photo" process, 148. 
 
 Intaglio plates, methods of producing, 182. 
 
 Iron salts, photographic printing in, 25. 
 
 Ives' relief-block process, 163, 165. 
 
 Klic's photogravure process, 200. 
 
 Lithographs printed with type, 78. 
 Lithography, process of, 7 ; progress of, 15. 
 
 Maps, reproduction of, 68, 74, 218, 230. 
 
 Mechanical processes, 212. 
 
 Medals, copying, 221. 
 
 Meisenbach's relief-block process, 156. 
 
Index. 
 
 245 
 
 Metal, photographing objects of, 60. 
 Metals for etching, 96, 159. 
 Mezzotint, 3. 
 
 Nature printing, 37. 
 
 Negatives for photolithography, etc., character of, 
 
 65, 104. 
 Negatives, reversed, 34, 61. 
 
 Niepce de St. Victor, bitumen process of, 107, 188. 
 Niepce, Nicephore, inventions of, 107. 
 
 Obernetter's Lichtkupferdruck, 208. 
 Opaque films for sketching on, 232. 
 Orthochromatic photography, 195. 
 
 Palmer's " glyphographic " process, 219. 
 Paper, unequal stretching of, 69, 106. 
 Photogravure, 191. 
 Photolithography, 63. 
 
 Phototype blocks, methods of producing, 83. 
 Photozincography, 63. 
 Platinotype, 25. 
 
 Portraits, use of photography to painters of, 1 70. 
 Pretsch process, 142. 
 
 Prints, cleaning old, 77 ; reproduction of old, 80, 185. 
 
 Reference, books of {Appendix), 234. 
 Relief-blocks, methods of producing, 83. 
 Reversed negatives, 34, 61. 
 Ruling machines, 224. 
 
246 
 
 Index. 
 
 Sawyer's photogravure process, 206. 
 
 Saxton's copying machine, 221. 
 
 Scientific pictures, value of photography for, 174. 
 
 Shanks's engraving machine, 227. 
 
 " Silver line " etching process, 113. 
 
 Silver prints, 21. 
 
 Sprague's "ink-photo" process, 148. 
 
 Stannotype process, 42. 
 
 Starch process, Asser's, 145. 
 
 Steeling copper plates, 5. 
 
 Surfacerblocks, methods of producing, 83. 
 
 Swan's photolithographic process, 154. 
 
 Swelled gelatine, blocks from, 120. 
 
 Talbot's " Pencil of Nature," 21 ; etching process for 
 copper plates, 198. 
 
 Transfer process in lithography, 9 ; for photolitho- 
 graphy, 64 ; for etched blocks, 94. 
 
 Type-metal for etching, 96. 
 
 "Typographic Etching," Dawson's, 215. 
 
 "Typogravure," Goupil's, 159. 
 
 Vulcanite, sketching on, 231. 
 
 Waterhouse's articles on photolithography, 66 ; in- 
 structions for preparing drawings, 72, {A ppendix) 
 234 ; method of obtaining grain, 204. 
 
 Warnerke's etching process. 117. 
 
 Wax process, Dawson's, 215. 
 
 Wet-plate process for negatives, 65, 104. 
 
Index. 
 
 247 
 
 " White-line Etching," 93. 
 
 Wood blocks, process of printing from, 5 ; photo- 
 graphing on, 91 ; " lowering," 136. 
 Woodburytype process, 37. 
 
 Woodbury's relief-block process, 163 ; photogravure 
 
 process, 202. 
 Wood-engraving, various styles of, 18, 84. 
 
 Zinc for etching, 96. 
 Zincography, 10. 
 
 Zuccato's relief-block process, 168.