Printing
Printing names 4 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Printing as usually understood
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
as usually understood, the production of reading matter or cuts on paper or other material by means of type and ink. The ancient Assyrians appear to have possessed the art of printing from tablets of burnt clay. As early certainly as the sixth century, the Chinese and Japanese printed passages from their religious books by means of movable wooden blocks. These they arranged as we do metal type. A few centuries later they used movable type of porcelain. The British Museum possesses books printed in Korea as early as 1337. The seal of Cicero's day, with which an impression was made in sealing wax, was, in its way, a kind of type. To go no farther back, William the Conqueror and other princes of his day had monograms engraved on blocks of wood with which to sign charters. They were used, no doubt, somewhat after the fashion of the rubber stamps now found in offices. During the Middle Ages books were made by hand. Writing, copying, and illuminating were fine arts . Printing from wooden blocks on silk cloth, vellum, and paper seems to have made its appearance in Europe as early as the twelfth century. Entire books were produced in this way. Each page was engraved on a block of wood. Sometimes one part of the page was devoted to a picture and the rest to text. Whether picture or text, each page was practically a woodcut. Playing cards were produced likewise from a set of blocks. Books produced in this way were not uncommon in 1400. Block printing may be regarded as the immediate ancestor of the art of printing as now practiced. The honor of inventing movable types is ascribed usually to Johann Gutenberg, who labored in secret at Strasburg and made his processes known in his native city of Mainz in 1456. Gutenberg's types were small blocks of wood. Peter Schoeffer, his assistant, is thought to have suggested metallic type cast in plaster molds. The various sizes of type were indicated formerly by names as great primer, English, pica, small pica, long primer, bourgeois, brevier, minion, nonpareil, agate, pearl, diamond, and brilliant. Toward the close of the nineteenth century, sizes were indicated more closely by numbers as follows: Nonpareil 6 point Minion 7 point Brevier 8 point Bourgeois 9 point Long Primer 10 point Small Pica 11 point Pica 12 point The body of the text in this work is printed in ten point. Many of the quotations are printed in eight point. The first printing presses were modifications merely of an old-fashioned wooden cheese press or cider press. The essential parts of the press were contained between two upright wooden beams. When ready for printing, the type, or form, as it is called, was placed, face upward, on a bed similar to that designed to receive cheese. It was then inked with a ball of soft leather. A sheet of paper was spread over the type. An upper surface, called a platen, was pressed down upon the paper by means of a wooden screw. When an impression had been made the screw was reversed, the sheet of paper removed, the type re-inked, and another sheet put in place. It is claimed that the printing done with these simple presses has not been surpassed for quality of workmanship. The press used by Benjamin Franklin in London in 1725 possessed a device for rolling the bed in and out to facilitate the handling of the paper. A press of this sort is shown in the patent office at Washington. In 1816 George Clymer, a Philadelphia manufacturer, devised a system of quick acting levers to take the place of the tedious screw. London printers suggested toggle-joints, a device by means of which a great pressure can be applied quickly. From this time on the improvement of printing presses went on very rapidly. The number of patents both in this country and abroad reaches into the thousands. Two improvements are especially notable. In the early part of the nineteenth century, a new press was produced in London. The form of type was placed, as before, on a flat bed and was covered by the sheet of paper, but the impression was produced by a rolling cylinder instead of by a flat platen. In 1845 Richard Hoe, a New York manufacturer of printing presses, conceived the plan of fastening the type to the outside of a large cylinder. He invented V-shaped rules, thick at one edge and thin at the other, by means of which the lines of type were spread farther at their outer end than at the inner, thus giving the body of type the curvature requisite to fit the form to the cylinder. The impression was produced as before by rollers. Paper was fed, in fact, between two cylinders, one smooth, the other bearing the type. Then came stereotyping. Without going into the details of the modern printing press, it may be said that any number of stereotyped forms may be taken from a single form of type, and that a number of presses may be set at work at the same time to bring out a large edition. The paper used in large newspaper offices is manufactured in enormous rolls or webs which are fed through the press. The revolution of the cylinders draws the paper through. Both sides of the paper are printed at once. As the web emerges behind the press it is cut into sheets. The sheets are in turn folded neatly by an automatic machine and dropped, one by one, into a pile ready to be tied up into bundles for the mail bag or for the carrier. In the case of large newspapers requiring the union of several sheets, separate webs are sent through as many pairs of revolving cylinders mounted one above the other. The webs are brought together by the machine. Every clip of the automatic cutter cuts off a set of the sheets; small brushes running by machinery serve to paste the sheets together along the middle. They are folded and dropped into piles as before. Once the webs are in place and the machinery started, a press of the speedy type delivers from 50,000 to 75,000 papers an hour. Metropolitan daily papers find it necessary to use several such presses. The first printing press in America was set up in the city of Mexico in 1535. About 1584 one was established at Lima, Peru. The first in the American colonies was established at Cambridge in 1639. The first press in Virginia, 1681, was silenced by a royal command to "allow no person to use a press on any occasion whatever." According to the census of 1900 there were in the United States 22,312 printing and publishing establishments and seventy establishments engaged in manufacturing printing materials, this exclusive of paper. The total value of the work turned out from the printing presses and binderies of that year was returned at $347,054,430. The rapid growth of the American printing industry is shown by the following figures from the United States census report: 1905 1900 No. establishments.. 26,422 22,311 Capital. . . . . $385,008,604 $292,516,642 No. salaried officials, clerks, etc.. . . . . 64.969 37.799 Salaries. . . . . $63,036,582 $36,090,719 Wage earners, aver-age number. . . . . 185.180 162,992 Total wages. . . . . $108,882,518 $84,249,954 Men 16 years and over. . . . . 142.555 125.964 Wages. . . . . $95,744,540 $74,288,521 Women 16 years and over. . . . . 37,614 28,765 Wages. . . . . $12,267,443 $8,878,073 Children under 16 years. . . . . 5,011 8,263 Wages. . . . . $870,535 $1,083,342 Miscellaneous expenses. . . . . $102,466,410 $55,897,871 Cost of materials used. . . . . $123,470,804 $86,856,160 Value of products. . . . . $496,061,357 $347,054,430 Paper for newspapers and periodicals, pounds. . . . . 1,821,629,830 1,078,237,670 Newspaper products,. . . . . $256,816,282 $175,789,610 Advertising. . . . . $145,517,591 $95,861,127 Subscriptions and sales. . . . . $111,298,691 $79,928,483 See Gutenberg ; Aldus; Caxton ; Elzevir ; Book ; Paper ; Newspaper ; Periodical ; Typewriter ; Ink ; Lino-Type , etc.
Printing or Calico Printing
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
or Calico Printing, the process of impressing designs of one or more colors upon fabrics. Not only cotton, but woolen, silk, and linen textures, may be printed, as well as unwoven yarns. The methods employed for printing different textures are essentially the same. Printing is a complex process, enlisting the arts of designing, engraving, and dyeing, as well as the science of chemistry. While classed among the processes of manufacture, calico printing, as it is called, stands very close to the fine arts ; since the printer must understand how to arrange colors harmoniously, how to make various shades relieve each other, just which colors in a design should be clear and brilliant and which tints or shades are more effective. He must know how to make the pattern, or certain parts of the pattern, stand out more or less distinctly according to the tone of the ground color. In fact, he must know color as an artist knows it. It is supposed that the art of printing cottons and linens originated in the far East. Mention is made by historians, as early as 327 B. C., of the fine flowered chintzes of India, and it is probable that the art had been practiced to some extent for centuries. The printing of textiles was introduced into Europe toward the close of the seventeenth century. The pattern was laid upon the cloth with a mordant, that is, a substance which penetrates and sometimes has an affinity for the fibers, and at the same time possesses the property of forming an insoluble compound about the fibers with the coloring matter subsequently employed. If, therefore, a number of different mordants were used on different parts of the white cloth, the dye bath would produce different colors or shades in the result. The finished print was often both durable and beautiful, but the method was tedious. About the middle of the eighteenth century, Robert Peel, grandfather of Sir Robert Peel, the statesman, invented block printing. Wooden blocks were so engraved that the pattern stood out in relief. A block was prepared for each color. The blocks were furnished with handles, and with brass pins at the corners which served as guides in the regular distribution of the pattern and in bringing different parts of the pattern into exact juxtaposition, when several blocks were required for the several colors of the same design. The cylinder printing machine was invented in 1785, since which time improvements have followed each other in rapid succession until the process seems well nigh perfected. At Fall River, Massachusetts, twenty-five yards of cloth can be printed with patterns involving sixteen colors in the space of one minute. At the present time methods and processes of printing vary according to material, style, and quality desired. Some firms purchase the raw cotton and put it through all the various processes,--spinning, weaving, bleaching, singeing, shearing, mercerizing, printing, together with the numerous washings, steamings, and dyeings which fabrics must undergo before they are ready for the market. In most cases, however, the cloth is woven elsewhere and received at the "print-works" in its unbleached state--"in the gray" as it is called by manufacturers. The cloth is first singed, then bleached. It must be bleached until chemically pure, or the action of the dye might be interfered with. After bleaching, the cloth is sheared or cropped. The next process is starching, which is done to fill up the spaces between the threads, so that the pattern will be imprinted more plainly. The patterns are engraved on copper cylinders about three and a half feet long by six inches in diameter. A different cylinder is required for each color of the pattern. If the pattern is to be printed in one color, the entire design is engraved on one cylinder. If two or more colors are desired, a part of the design only is engraved on each cylinder, the work being done so carefully that when the cloth is carried over one cylinder after another, the various parts of the pattern will come into exact juxtaposition, producing a complete and perfect design. These cylinders are placed in a printing machine which will carry any number up to twenty. Each cylinder is fed with its own color by a roller which revolves in a dye trough or "color box." In simple patterns, as stripes, three colors may be produced from two printings, or the use of two cylinders. This is done by allowing the two colors to overlap, thus forming a third color. In printing, the white cloth is wound on a huge drum and fed to the press like a roll of paper. As the web passes through, it receives the imprint in color from each cylinder and emerges as "print." The colors are not always apparent at first. Certain processes may be necessary to bring them out. This is due to the fact that a mordant has been used with the color, or must be used after the colors are imprinted, to cause the dye to unite permanently with the fiber. In other instances the mordant is printed upon the goods, and may be in part or wholly invisible until subsequent dyeing and washing gives color to the design imprinted with the mordant and leaves the remainder of the fabric white. According to the most common method of printing, called technically the "steam style," each color or dye is mixed with its own particular mordant before printing. After leaving the printing machine the cloth is subjected to the action of live steam , which causes the chemical combination of color and mordant, and induces the absorption of this compound by the fiber. The steaming process requires experience, care, and judgment, as no fixed rules can be laid down as to the length of time the goods should be steamed, the amount of moisture used, etc. Various other methods of combining mordant and dye to produce different effects are in use. They are named from the dye with which they were first used, as "Madder style," "Indigo style," etc., or from some distinctive feature of the process, as "Discharge style," "Resist style," or "Bandana style." The old block method of printing is used in place of the cylinder machines for printing very sheer textures, such as netting and chiffon; also for some mixed goods and for cloth over forty inches wide. It is also used in warp printing to produce effects impossible to obtain by printing directly on cloth. In warp printing, the warp is mounted on the loom as for ordinary weaving. A few wefts are woven into it at distances of a few inches apart. It is then removed from the loom, stretched on tables, and the open warp printed in designs by the block process. The warp is returned to the loom and is woven as usual. The design is, of course, less distinct than when printed on a woven web, but the process produces a peculiar and pleasing effect. See Singeing ; Weaving ; Bleaching ; Calico ; Dyeing ; Mordant ; Bandana
Printing the art of producing impressions from characters or figures
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the art of producing impressions from characters or figures on paper or any other substance. Printing from movable types was, according to Professor Douglas, probably practiced in China as early as the 12th or 13th century, as there are Korean books printed from movable clay or wooden types in 1317. The great discovery was that of forming every letter or character of the alphabet separately. The credit of inventing this simple yet marvelous art is contested by the Dutch and Germans. Printing was brought to England in 1476 or 1477 by William Caxton. The first printing press set up in America was introduced by the Viceroy of Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza, and the first book printed by it in the New World was "The Ladder de S. Juan Climaco" (1536). The earliest press in the British-American colonies was brought over for Harvard College in 1638. "Bay Psalm Book" (1640) was its first important work; but in 1639 it printed the "Freeman's Oath" and an almanac. In Philadelphia a press was set up in 1685, in New York in 1693. The earliest improvement on the printing press was made by the celebrated Earl Stanhope, who constructed a press of iron of sufficient size to print a whole surface of a sheet. A multitude of im- Among those which gained a large share of approbation was the Columbian press, press was taken to Great Britain in 1818 by George Clymer of Philadelphia, and patented. The pressing-power in this instance was procured by a long bar or handle acting upon a combination of exceedingly powerful levers. Printing is now executed by one or other of the varieties of cylinder presses, moved generally by electricity, or steam. Printing machines may be divided into two distinct classes-those for printing books, in which accurate register is required, and those for printing newspapers, in which register is not sought for, and speed is of first consequence. The printing business is divided into three departments-those concerned respectively with jobbing or commercial work, with book work, and with news work. Jobbing work is chiefly done on small platen machines invented by G. P. Gordon, about 1868. Larger work is done on machines having one or more cylinders. It has been found, since machines have been brought to their present degree of perfection, that they give far superior results to those from presses -their impression is stronger, more solid, and more uniform, and the sheets can be laid on them with a precision unattainable with handpresses. Paper is not now made spongy and stretchable by being wetted, and the result of working it dry is that the type is brought up with greater brightness, and the delicate lines of engravings are printed finer, clearer, and cleaner. The colored supplements of the pictorial journals are often admirable reproductions of works of high art. A single color press built in 1898 contained between 50,000 and 60,000 individual parts. Books are generally printed in sheets of 16 pages, or multiples of 16 (32, 64, 128); in the latter case they are cut into sheets of 16 after being printed. Several very ingenious machines have been invented for setting type which have been successful. They are worked something after the manner of typewriting machines. Several of the latest of these cast and set the type by one movement. This saves the labor of redistributing the types, as when done with they are melted again. The latest achievement in printing machines is the combination color octuple rotary perfecting press. Four-roller distribution on the color portion insures fine work, and special oil-fountain arrangements take care of the offset. The printing is done from both stereotype and electrotype plates. The combination half-tone and color pictorial electrotype perfecting press is designed especially for printing, from electrotype plates, high-grade periodical work, with halftone and color illustrations.
Printing Printing mould surfaces is a process requiring more than
The Encyclopedia of Founding (1892)
Printing mould surfaces is a process requiring more than ordinary judgment and dexterity on the part of the moulder to do it well. It is usually practised in foundries that make a specialty of fine register and stove-plate work, where the patterns are very thin, with more or less decorative work on their front surfaces. Any attempt to fasten the blacking on these surfaces successfully with the brush or tools is next to impossible, and it is certain that returning the pattern for that purpose is not only productive of better work, but more expeditious also. A heavy lead or charcoal that adheres well to the sand is first dusted over the surface and the dust allowed to subside. In the mean time the moulder has brushed his pattern, and perhaps warmed it a little; a dusting of lighter blacking is applied, and the pattern returned, rapped down, and withdrawn, leaving a thin coat of carbon evenly distributed on every part, and having no other blemishes than are contained in the pattern. See RETURN-FACING.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account ends with the web-fed rotary press and stereotype plates, and takes for granted that words become metal before they become print. That chain has been broken twice since: hot metal composition all but vanished in the 1970s and 80s (the New York Times set its last Linotype page in 1978), and letterpress printing from raised type gave way to offset lithography, in which an inked image is transferred from a flat plate to a rubber blanket and then to paper. Since PostScript and the desktop-publishing software of the mid-1980s, most pages are composed as digital files and either plated photographically or printed directly by inkjet or laser machines, which makes single-copy print-on-demand possible in a way no stereotype foundry could manage. Two things Aiton wrote have held: the point system he tabulates is still the standard measure of type, and scholars still credit Gutenberg with the decisive step, though they now believe he cast his types in metal himself rather than cutting them from wood as this account states.
Written for this edition, 2026.