![]() The concept was invented by Alois Senefelder in Germany in 1798 and brought to England in 1800. The image would then be transferred to paper pressed onto the stone. The ink would be applied with a roller but only adhere to the greasy ink, being repelled elsewhere by the water. The design areas were then marked with greasy ink and the remaining areas were treated with gum arabic and well moistened with water. Water absorbing limestone slabs were cut and made totally smooth for the designs to be drawn on them. Lithography is a mechanical planographic process (printing from a flat surface, or plane), in which the printing and non-printing areas of the plate are all at the same level. Lithography and photography, however, were the two developments to have most impact on printing. The final major development was offset presses in which three cylinders worked in unison, one inking, one carrying the image to be transferred onto the paper carried by the third.Īt the end of the day, however, the expense of any powered cylinder presses precluded use by most jobbing printers who would continue to use the flat bed presses or employed, at best, hand-powered cylinder presses to churn out handbills, calling cards, business cards and the like (atypical ephemera) from their back street premises. By the end of the century electricity was beginning to be introduced as a source of power. For the scale of operations involving newspapers the speed at which paper could be fed was critical and various improvements (the technicalities of which, for the purposes of this book, we will not go into) were made during the rest of the century. Flat bed presses were replaced with vertical cylinders called rotary presses, thereby further increasing print production. But these were still hand-presses.īy 1810 the German engineer Frederick Koenig had applied steam power to a traditionally constructed flat press and over the next two years developed a powered cylinder press with the Times newspaper being the first major concern to install one. Most popular in America from 1817 was the Columbian and in England from 1822 the Albion (with many of these still in use up to the beginning of the 2 nd World War. Metal letterpresses began to replace wooden ones from the turn of the century. ![]() Hand tinting, a labour intensive process, allowed colour to be added to pictures. With intaglio printing the raised surface is wiped clean leaving the ink in the hollows of the image to be forced out onto paper under pressure. With relief printing the ink is on the raised image and transferred to paper under pressure. ![]() bank notes and etc.) and wood cut was replaced by wood-engraving. Amongst these, copper plate was replaced by steel engraving (driven by security printing, i.e. During the last part of the Eighteenth Century and first part of the Nineteenth experiments were carried out which varied and improved methods. Printing by moveable typeface falls to relief printing, copper engraving and etching (along with a later development of mezzotint) fall to intaglio printing and give a better finish. From then until the mid-Eighteenth Century there were two main types of printing that were developed – relief and intaglio. The first printing presses were set up in Germany in the Fifteenth Century. The Victorians brought all the various elements together - read on!
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