Printing

(print'ing.) [From It. imprenta, an impre ion.) The art of taking impre ions from wooden blocks, metal types, or plates, upon paper, silk, calico, or any other substance. It is that very important art by means of which copies of books are multiplied, and consequently knowledge and science diffused among mankind. It is understood to have been practised at least fifty years before the Christian era, in China; but Chinese P.differs e entially from European, and the merit of rendering the art truly valuable to the human race belongs to him who first introduced movable types. In their earliest e ays,Guttenberg and Faust, at Mentz, used wooden blocks, on which the letters were cut in the Chinese manner; and from the specimens that remain, it appears that they impre ed only one side of the paper, and then pasted the blank faces of overy two leaves together, to form but one, with print on either side. About the year 1450, they used single letters of wood; and at length, letters of metal. This last great invention is generally attributed to Schæffer, first the servant, and afterwards the partner and son-in-law, of Faust. As the Gothic or German letters, used in the earliest P., were such a complete fac-simile of the manuscripts which they copied, at the present day it often requires the aid of chemistry to determine whether a given volume is manuscript or a production of the pre ; particularly as the ornamental letters and the borders were filled in by hand, after the book was printed. The Roman type was first introduced by Sweynhein and Paunartz, at Rome; and the Italic by Aldus. The earliest complete Greek work was a grammar of that language, printed at Milan in 1476. The Pent a teuch, which appeared in 1482, was the first work printed in the Hebrew character; and the earliest known Polyglott Bible - Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldaic, Greek, Latin-i ued from the pre of Genoa in 1516. The art of P. was first introduced into England by William Caxton, who established a pre in West minister, some time betweon 1471 and 1474. The workmen by whom the art of P. is performed form two distinct branches: -1. Compositors, who range and dispose the letters into words, lines, pages, and sheets; and 2. Pre men, who apply the ink and take off the impre ions. Until a comparatively recent period, the P. pre was formed chiefly of wood; and for the first e ential modification of it the world is indebted to Earl Stanhope. The Stanhope pre is composed entirely of iron; the table on which the types rest, and the platen (or surface which produces the impre ion), are made perfectly level; a beautiful combination of levers is added to give motion to the screw, causing the platen to descend with increasing force, till it reaches the type, when a very great power is obtained. Various other iron pre es, more or le upon the principle of the " Stanhope," with such improvements as time and further experience suggested, were subsequently made; among which the ingenious inventions of Clymer, Ruthven, Cogger, and Cope deserve to be mentioned. They were altogether, constructed on the principle of a reciprocating, not a continual motion; and it is a remarkable fact that from the invention of P. to the year 1798, a period of nearly 300 years, no important improvement was introduced into this art. A new era had, however, arrived, when the demands for prompt circulation of political intelligence required powers of P. newspapers beyond the reach of the most expeditious hand pre work; and at length the automaticP. machine struggled into existence. A mere outline of the improvements which have taken place since the commencement of the present century would occupy many pages. The great triumph in the art has, however, been the introduction of cylindrical machinery. The suggestion of this important change belongs to W. Nicholson; but the first working machines were erected byKönig, a Saxon, who was engaged for several years in England in bringing his contrivances to perfection; and, at length, the reader of the " Times " was told, on Nov., 1814, that he held in his hand a newspaper printed by machinery, and by the power of steam. This machine produced 1,100 impre ions per hour, and subsequent improvements raised the number to 1,800. The next machine, also by König, was one that printed both sides of the sheet, by conveying it from one cylinder to another. This was made in 1815, and printed 1,000 sheets on both sides per hour. In the same year Cowper obtained a patent for curving stereotype plates, for the purpose of fixing them on a cylinder. These machines, though only adapted for stereotype P., first showed the best method of furnishing, distributing, and applying the ink by rollers. But it was reserved for an American inventor to make the first succe ful type-revolving machine. In 1847, Mr. Hoe, of New York, succeeded In Hoe's in perfecting his widely-known machine. machines the types are placed upon an horizontal cylinder of about six and a half feet in diameter. When put in motion, this cylinder, with the types thereon, is in succe ion carried to the corresponding horizontal impre ion - cylinders, where the sheets take the image of the letters, which, by a number of ingenious movements,have been previously covered with ink. The10cylinder pre es, such as are used in America and London by the leading journals, strike off 15,000 impre ions per hour. When this wonderful pre was invented, it was thought that the perfection of rapidity in the printing art had been reached. The Hoe pre is calculated to work off one side of the paper at a time; and efforts were made subsequently, as before,to devise a machine which would work both sides at once. The result is the celebrated Walter pre , used by the London Times, which prints from 10,000 to 15,000 sheets per hour; also, a new pre invented in Paris, of about equal speed; and, lastly, the pre invented by William Bullock of Philadelphia, which prints from 10,000 to 16,000 copies of a journal by the hour, both sides at once, and feeds itself from rolls of paper, from which about 10,000 perfect copies per hour of a newspaper are printed automatically, and delivered ready cut up, so that 2 men can do the work which 12 men used to be [s. 732]