CHAPTER XXI

FOR PRINTERS, BINDERS AND PAPER-MAKERS AND ALL WHO LOVE BOOKS [Sidenote: From Manuscript to Book] [Sidenote: Supply and Demand Interacting] “An author, even an immortal genius, is, from the economic point of view, a producer of raw material,” says the Britannica article PUBLISHING, and from the educational point of view, his product, until it has undergone the industrial and commercial processes of reduplication and distribution, is as undeveloped as the seed lying hidden in the winter soil. The history of civilization might, indeed, be divided into four stages: the period before writing; the period before printing, when libraries of manuscripts were almost exclusively the property of kings and priests; the period of costly, hand-printed books; and the period of the power-press, which began less than a hundred years ago. Of these four periods, the first is almost unimaginable. You are sometimes brought into contact with absolutely illiterate people. But they live in shadow, not in total darkness; they get the diffused light of our age of culture. The second period, the era of books in manuscript we can, however, to some extent reconstruct; and by one fantastic supposition we can even bring it into the focus of our 20th century. Let it be assumed that for some reason the printing of the new Britannica had been enjoined by the law courts, but that the original typoscript was available for consultation—say in a public library at New York or Chicago. Instead of your 29 volumes, weighing only 80 lbs. and occupying only about two cubic feet of space, the walls of a large room would be lined with partitioned shelves on which the 300,000 typed sheets and the 7,000 illustrations, on cardboard, would be ranged. What a mob of students there would be, waiting their turns to read the 40,000 articles, what a mass of notebooks would be filled each day! The impossibility of accomplishing, without the use of printing, all that the Britannica does, will present itself very forcibly to your mind, in another aspect, if you try to imagine 1,500 separate audiences, assembled each day to listen to lectures by the 1,500 contributors to the book. Any attempt to imagine the Britannica doing its work in any way but the way in which it does makes you realize, too, that if it were not for modern methods of _spreading_ knowledge, there would be no such system of _assembling_ and co-ordinating knowledge as finds its fullest development in the Britannica. It is not only for commercial reasons that the demand must be sufficient to justify the supply; the 1,500 specialists who laid aside their usual work in order to write these articles would never have combined their efforts if this vast public of all educated English speaking people were not to have been enabled to avail themselves of the result. The industrial arts which make it possible to produce books swiftly and to sell them at low prices are obviously subjects of interest not only to those who do the producing and selling, but to all who profit by the use of books. And, as the articles mentioned in this chapter show, these arts are in themselves among the most ingenious and curious of all processes; so that in a double sense they merit the attention of everyone to whom the chapters on _Literature_ in this Guide would appeal. As the warp of cloth carries the weft, so the raw material of printers’ paper and printers’ ink carries the “raw material” of the writer’s thoughts. The article on PAPER (Vol. 20, p. 725) is equivalent to 35 pages of this Guide and is illustrated with 15 diagrams. The article is divided into three parts: _History_, by Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, director of the British Museum; _Manufacture_, by J. W. Wyatt, author of _The Art of Making Paper_; and _India Paper_, by W. E. Garrett Fisher. [Sidenote: History of Paper] The history of paper, like that of so many other great inventions, dates back to an early period in China; and, as is the case with almost every great contribution to civilization which came from China, paper came to the Western world only after many years and only by chance. In the 8th century of the Christian era, when paper had been made in China for 1000 years, some Chinese paper-makers were taken captives in Samarkand by Arabs, who thus learned the methods of its manufacture. The Arabs and the Persians used linen as a base for the paper instead of the cotton the Chinese used; and the name “paper” was transferred from the Egyptian rush and the writing material made from its fibres to the new product. Paper was manufactured in Europe first by the Moors in Spain at Xativa, Valencia and Toledo in the 12th century; and into Italy also it seems to have been brought by the Arab occupation of Sicily. Among other interesting points in regard to the history of paper are: water-marks as a sign of age; old papers; variation in prices of paper; blotting-paper, wrapping paper, etc. The articles PAPYRUS (Vol. 20, p. 743) and PARCHMENT (Vol. 20, p. 798), both by Maunde Thompson, deal with these earlier writing materials. PALIMPSEST (Vol. 20, p. 633) describes the processes by which writings which have been scraped or washed from sheets of vellum, so that the material might be used again, can sometimes be chemically restored and deciphered. [Sidenote: Paper Manufacture] In taking up the study of paper manufacture, the first article to be read is FIBRES by C. F. Cross, the well-known analytical and consulting chemist, and especially the section in it on _Paper-making_ (Vol. 10, p. 312). This describes the treatment of cotton and flax for writing and drawing papers, wood pulp, esparto, cellulose and cereal straws for printing-paper, etc. See also the article CELLULOSE (Vol. 5, p. 606) by C. F. Cross. The section on _Manufacture_ in the article PAPER, already mentioned, should next be read. Here it is stated that rags, linen or cotton, were the principal materials used for paper in Europe until the middle of the 19th century; and then when prices rose, because the necessarily inelastic supply was no longer sufficient, esparto-grass, wood and straw began to be used as substitutes. The change from hand-making to machinery began in France in 1798 and was accomplished in England in 1803, with the result that hand-made paper is now used only where great durability is the chief requisite, as for bank-notes and drawing paper. Actual paper manufacture may be divided into two processes: the preliminary cleaning and reduction to pulp; and the methods of converting pulp to paper—including beating, sizing, colouring, making the sheet or web, surfacing, cutting, etc. Reduction to pulp is described in the treatment of esparto, straw and wood, and there are cuts showing rag-boiler, rag-breaking engine, esparto boiler, press-pâte or half-stuff machine, esparto bleaching and beating plant, and the Porion evaporator and the Yaryan multiple-effect evaporator for soda recovery. Paper-making proper, after the pulp has been prepared, is next described. The first process is beating; and besides the esparto bleaching and beating plant, described under bleaching, there are drawings of the Taylor and Jordan beaters and a description of them and of the Kingsland beater. Sizing, loading and colouring are then explained. The other main topics of the section on manufacture are: hand manufacture (with two illustrations), paper machine, with pictures of the paper machine, of the dandy roll, of super-calender and of reel paper cutters, and paragraphs on straining, forming the sheet, shake, water marking and couching, pressing and drying, surfacing, machine power, tub-sizing, glazing or surfacing for better grades, cutting, sheeting, sizes (with table), standards of quality, the paper trade, and a list of the best books on paper. [Sidenote: India Paper] The article PAPER closes with a brief history and description of India paper, which is of particular interest because of the adoption and successful use of this paper in the new Encyclopaedia Britannica. In this true India paper, “the material used is chiefly rag,” but “the extraordinary properties of this paper are due to the peculiar care necessary in the treatment of the fibres, which are specially beaten in the beating engine.” The first India paper was brought to England from the Far East in 1841 by an Oxford graduate, and the name India was used merely to express this Oriental origin, as in “Indian ink” or in the name “Indians” as applied to the American aborigines when their home was thought to be a part of the East. Just where the paper came from is not known. It was given to the Oxford University Press and was used in printing a very small English Bible in 1842. This book was only one-third the usual thickness, and attracted much attention by its lightness and by the opacity of the thin tough paper. In 1874 a copy of this Bible fell into the hands of Henry Frowde, and experiments were instituted at the Oxford University paper mills at Wolvercote with the object of producing similar paper. On the 24th of August 1875 an impression of the Bible, similar in all respects to that of 1842, was placed on sale by the Oxford University Press. The feat of compression was regarded as astounding, the demand was enormous, and in a very short time 250,000 copies of this “Oxford India paper Bible” had been sold. Many other editions of the Bible, besides other books, were printed on the Oxford India paper, and the marvels of compression accomplished by its use created great interest at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. Its strength was as remarkable as its lightness; volumes of 1500 pages were suspended for several months by a single leaf, as thin as tissue; and, when they were examined at the close of the exhibition, it was found that the leaf had not started, the paper had not stretched, and the volume closed as well as ever. The paper, when subjected to severe rubbing, instead of breaking into holes like ordinary printing paper, assumed a texture resembling chamois leather, and a strip 3 in. wide was found able to support a weight of 28 lb. without yielding. The success of the Oxford India paper led to similar experiments by other manufacturers, and there were, in 1910, nine mills (two each in England, Germany and Italy, one each in France, Holland and Belgium) in which India paper was being produced. India paper is mostly made upon a Fourdrinier machine in continuous lengths, in contradistinction to a hand-made paper, which cannot be made of a greater size than the frame employed in its production. In addition to technical information in regard to paper the student of the manufacture of books must know something about ink. [Sidenote: Ink] The necessary information he will find in the article INK (Vol. 14, p. 571) with special descriptions of writing inks, tannin inks, China or Indian ink, logwood ink, aniline ink, copying ink, red and blue ink, marking ink, gold and silver inks, indelible or incorrodible ink, sympathetic ink, and, of the most importance for our present purpose, printing inks. The process of putting ink on paper is a subject which in the Britannica takes much more ink and paper than the subject of ink or of paper. [Sidenote: Printing] This topic is treated in two main articles: one dealing with type and the other with presses. The former, TYPOGRAPHY (Vol. 27, p. 509), is a good sized treatise in itself, being equivalent to more than 135 pages of this Guide. It is divided into two parts: _The History of Typography_, by John Henry Hessels, author of _Gutenberg: an Historical Investigation_; and _Modern Practical Typography_, by John Southward, author of _A Dictionary of Typography and its Accessory Arts_, and Hugh Munro Ross, editor of _The_ (London) _Times Engineering Supplement_. The former part of the article, and the longer, is a very important and elaborate contribution to the knowledge of early printing. On these first developments the student should read the same writer’s article GUTENBERG (Vol. 12, p. 739) and should notice the great difficulty surrounding the whole question of the “invention,” obscured by the fact that so many of the documents on Gutenberg exist only in copies, while others seem to be forgeries by two librarians of the city of Mainz who were eager to prove the claims of their fellow citizen Gutenberg to be the inventor of printing with movable metal types. See also Mr. Hessel’s article on JOHANN FUST (Vol. 11, p. 373). The honour of the invention of typography, Mr. Hessels decides, belongs to Lorens Janszoon Coster of Haarlem and its date was somewhere between 1440 and 1446. In Mexico printing was established in 1544, in Manila in 1590, and in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1638 or 1639. The early printers had only a few types of each character in a fount, and they printed books, even small quartos, page by page. This whole treatment of the history of typography is too elaborate to be summarized here, but it is interesting to note that the article gives information about the history of the earliest types—Gothic, Bastard Italian, Roman, Burgundian, etc., with fac-similes of 13 different and characteristic faces between 1445 and 1479; and of different styles and alphabets—Italic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Coptic, Samaritan, Slavonic, Russian, Etruscan, Runic, Gothic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Irish, Music, Characters for the Blind, Initials, Ornaments and Flowers. [Sidenote: Practical Typography] The second part of the article TYPOGRAPHY, on _Modern Practical Typography_, will be of more value, probably, to most students of printing and book-making. It deals with the following topics:— Material characteristics of Type. Fount may consist of 275 “sorts” or characters. Numbers of sorts vary with different languages—and with different styles and writers; Dickens draws heavily on vowels, Macaulay on consonants. Bill of type or scheme—how computed. Logotypes or word character as distinct from letters. Parts of a type—face, stem, serif, beard, shoulder, shank, belly, back, counter, nick, kern, feet, burr and batter. Species of letter—short, ascending, descending, long, superior, inferior, fat-faced, lean-faced, bastard. Sizes: classification by names and by point-system. Varieties of face: Roman, sanserifs or grotesques; black; script; old style; Caslon; influence of William Morris and the Kelmscott Press; Vale Press. Manufacture of type: type metal; punch, drive and matrix (with illustrations); type-casting—by hand and machine; inventions of Bruce, Barth, Wicks, with description and picture of the Wicks rotary type-casting machine. Type-setting by hand. Type case, with illustration. Composition, justifying. Imposition. Signatures. Forme, quoin, side-stick, foot-stick, shooting-stick. Distributing. Type-setting by machine. Linotype and Monotype. Earlier machines—the Paige (in which Mark Twain lost a fortune). Distributing machines—Delcambre, Fraser, Empire, Dow, Thorne, Simplex (with cut). Linotype—with diagrams and description. Monotype (the machine used for the Encyclopaedia Britannica) with illustrations of perforated strip. Electrotyping and Stereotyping. Shells. Turtle, Flong. Wood’s Autoplate process. See also the articles ELECTROTYPING (Vol. 9, p. 252) and ELECTROPLATING (Vol. 9, p. 237). The reader should next turn to the articles ENGRAVING (Vol. 9, p. 645), LINE-ENGRAVING (Vol. 16, p. 721), WOOD-ENGRAVING (Vol. 28, p. 798)—special reference to America where this method is still used for some book and magazine illustration—to LITHOGRAPHY (Vol. 16, p. 785) including offset printing; and PROCESS (Vol. 22, p. 408), for further information in regard to “printing” apart from (and before) actual press work. The last-named of these articles is by Edwin Bale, art director of Cassell & Company, Ltd.; it would occupy about 20 pages of this Guide; and it is illustrated by a plate showing the three-colour process. The article describes: (1)—relief processes, line blocks, swelled gelatin process, typographic etching, halftone processes, three colour blocks, colour filters; (2)—intaglio processes, monotype, electrotype, steel-facing, blanketing, changes in machinery; (3)—planographic processes, including woodburytype, stannotype, collotype or phototype, heliotype and photolithography. In relation to lithography there is further information in the biographical sketch of Senefelder, its inventor. [Sidenote: Press-Work] The article PRINTING (Vol. 22, p. 350) deals entirely with the subject of press-work, thus using printing in the narrower and more correct sense of the word. In length this article is equivalent to 25 pages of this Guide; and it contains 9 illustrations of presses. The article is by C. T. Jacobi, author of _Printing_, and _The Printer’s Handbook of Trade Recipes_. The article gives a history of the printing press, which was practically unchanged for a century and a half, until the Dutch map-maker Blaeu greatly simplified it. The first important metal press—earlier ones were of wood—was invented by Lord Stanhope nearly two hundred years later. It had greater power with smaller expenditure of labour, and its workings, as well as that of the Blaeu press, and of the Albion, which was used by William Morris at Kelmscott, may be readily understood from the illustrations in the article. Another hand press is the Columbian, invented in 1816 by a Philadelphian, George Clymer, and still in use for heavy hand work. Power presses began to be made at the end of the 18th century, but the presses invented by William Nicholson (1790) and Friedrich König (adopted by the London _Times_ in 1814) printed only on one side at a time, as did the “double platen” machine of a little later date. The cylindrical eight feeder built by Augustus Applegath in 1848 for the London _Times_ and the Hoe Type Revolving Machine are described in the section on the history of power presses, which closes with the story of Bullock’s machine (1865) for printing from a continuous web of paper. [Sidenote: Modern Presses] The closing section of the article on printing is devoted to a description of modern presses. It opens with a list of the principal types of presses still in use, which are classified under the following seven heads:— (1)—iron hand-presses like the Albion or Columbian, for proof-pulling or limited editions; (2)—small platen machines for job or commercial work; (3)—single cylinder machines (“Wharfedales”) printing one side only; (4)—perfecting machines, usually two cylinder, printing both sides, but with two distinct operations; (5)—two-revolution machines with one cylinder; (6)—two-colour machines, with one cylinder usually, but two printing surfaces and two sets of inking apparatus; (7)—rotary machines for printing from curved plates upon an endless web of paper—principally for newspapers or periodical work. These seven classes are next described in detail and the article illustrates them all. A cut of an Albion press is given in an early part of the article, and the other six presses shown in the cuts are: The Golding jobber platen machine Payne & Sons’ Wharfedale stop-cylinder machine Dryden & Foord’s perfecting machine The Miehle two-revolution cylinder machine Payne & Sons’ two-colour single cylinder machine Hoe’s double-octuple rotary machine The article closes with a discussion of the following very practical topics: the preparation or “make ready” for printing; recent development in printing with cross references to the article PROCESS; and a paragraph on the management of a printing house. [Sidenote: Proof-Reading] From this closing paragraph and the article on PRINTING, the student is referred to the article PROOF-READING (Vol. 22, p. 438) which is by John A. Black, head press reader of the 10th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and John Randall, sub-editor of the _Athenaeum_ and of _Notes and Queries_ and former secretary of the London Association of Correctors of the Press, so that this article, like all the other articles on the subject of book-making, is written by eminent practical authorities on the subject. [Sidenote: Bookbinding] The same is true of the article BOOKBINDING (Vol. 4, p. 216), which naturally follows in a systematic course of study. This is by Cyril J. H. Davenport, assistant keeper of books in the British Museum and author of _History of the Book_, etc. This article is illustrated with 14 figures, including 8 in halftone, showing typical fine bindings. The other illustrations show machines and processes used in binding. Besides a historical sketch of book-binding the article treats of the following topics: Modern methods and modern binding designers; machine binding, machine sewing, rounding and backing, casing, wiring, and blocking. A case-making machine, a casing-in machine and a blocking machine are shown in the illustrations. A bookbinder or a student of the subject will find a great deal of very valuable information elsewhere in the book, particularly in the article LEATHER (Vol. 16, p. 330) by Dr. J. Gordon Parker, principal of the Leathersellers Technical College, London, and author of _Leather for Libraries_, etc. The article occupies the equivalent of 55 pages of this Guide; and the possessor of the Britannica will be interested to know that the leather bindings used for its volumes were all made according to specifications drawn up by Dr. Parker, the greatest authority in the world on tanning, curing and dyeing leather for book-bindings. [Sidenote: Publishing and Book-Selling] The last stages in getting the author’s raw material “from him to the ultimate consumer” are those in which the publisher and bookseller play their part; and for a description of their functions the student should refer to the articles on publishing and book-selling in the Britannica. The article PUBLISHING (Vol. 22, p. 628) explains that publishing and book-selling were for a long time carried on together since “booksellers were the first publishers of printed books, as they had previously been the agents for the production and exchange of authentic manuscript copies.” The separation of publishing from book-selling is due to “the tendency of every composite business to break up, as it expands, into specialized departments.” As publishers became a separate class the work of their literary assistants also broke up into specialized departments—proof-reading and the reading of manuscripts submitted by authors—or the work of _printers’_ readers and _publishers’_ readers. The importance of the work of the publisher’s reader is dwelt upon in this article which sketches besides the growth of the Society of Authors in England and of the formation there of the Publishers’ Association and the Booksellers’ Association. The article also outlines the methods of publishing in the United States and gives particular prominence to the effect on the British market of the introduction of American books and of American book-selling methods. [Sidenote: Historical and Miscellaneous Articles] Among other articles of interest to the manufacturer of books are the following: BOOK (Vol. 4, p. 214) by Alfred William Pollard, assistant keeper of books in the British Museum, gives a general historical description of books and in particular calls attention to the great change in book-prices in the last thirty years. “About 1894 the number of medium-priced books was greatly increased in England by the substitution of single-volume novels at 6s. each (subject to discount) for the three-volume editions at 31s. 6d.... The preposterous price of 10s. 6d. a volume had been adopted during the first popularity of the Waverley Novels and had continued in force for the greater part of the century.” To-day, well printed copies of these novels sell for 1s. in England and for 35 cents in the United States. It may be added that one of the most striking lessons to be learned from the Britannica, in relation to the improvements and economies effected by the application of the most modern processes to the manufacture of books, is supplied by the consideration of the Britannica itself. The extent of the composition and machinery involved, the accuracy of the proof-reading, the novel employment—upon a large scale—of India paper and flexible bindings, the beauty of the illustrations, and, above all, the low price at which the product is sold, form a combination of the very latest perfections of every department of the industry. Read too BOOK-COLLECTING (Vol. 4, p. 221) also by A. W. Pollard; the article BOOK PLATES (Vol. 4, p. 230) by Egerton Castle, illustrated with ten cuts of book plates (which are so well chosen that book plate collectors have not infrequently asked the publishers of the Encyclopaedia Britannica for extra copies so that they might include them in their collections); the article BOOKCASE (Vol. 4, p. 221) from which the reader may be surprised to learn that “the whole construction and arrangement of bookcases was learnedly discussed in the light of experience by W. E. Gladstone in the _Nineteenth Century_ for March 1890;” and the article BIBLIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOLOGY (Vol. 3, p. 908) by A. W. Pollard, supplemented by the article INCUNABULA (Vol. 14, p. 369). The following alphabetical list of articles and sections of articles, although it does not profess to be complete, will give the student some idea of the large number of topics connected with the general subject of the manufacture of books: Albion Press Aniline Ink Applegath, Augustus Autoplate Process Backing Barth, Henry Bastard Letter Batter Bibliography and Bibliology Bill of Type Binding Black Type Blaeu Press Blanketing Bleaching Blocking Blue Ink Boiling Book Book-Binding Bookcase Book-collecting Book-Plates Bookselling Bourgeois Breaking Brevier Bruce, David Burr Case-making Machine Casing Casing-in machine Caslon Type Casting Cellulose China Ink Chinese Paper-makers Chiswick Press Clymer, George Collotype Colour Filters Colour Process Columbian Press Composition Copying Ink Coster Couching Cutter Dandy Roll Delcambre Machine Distributing Distributing Machines Dow Machine Drive Drying Electroplating Electrotyping Empire Machine English Type Engraving Esparto Evaporator Face Flong Forme Fount Fraser Machine Fust Glazing Golding Machine Gold Ink Goodson Gutenberg Half Stuff Half-tone Heliotype Hoe, Robert Imposition Incunabula Indelible Ink Indian Ink India Paper Ink Intaglio Process Italic Type Jordan Beaters Justifying Kelmscott Press Kern Kingsland Beater König, Friedrich Lanston Monotype Leather Line-Engraving Linotype Lithography Logwood Ink Machine Presses Marking Ink Matrices Miehle Press Minion Monoline Monotype Morris, William Nicholson, William Nick Nonpareil Octuple Rotary Machine Off-set Printing Old-style Type Paige Composing Machine Paper Papyrus Parchment Pearl (type) Perfecting Machine Photolithography Phototype Pica Planographic Process Platen Point System Porion Evaporator Power Presses Pressing Press Plate Press-work Primer Price of Paper Printing Printing Ink Process Proof-reading Publishing Pulp Punch Quality, Standards of Paper Rag Red Ink Reel Paper Cutter Relief Process Roman Type Rotary Presses Rounding Ruby Scheme of Type Senefelder Serif Sewing Shake Sheeting Shells Signature Silver Ink Simplex Machine Sizes of Paper Sizing Soda Recovery Stanhope Press Stannotype Steel-facing Stem Stereotyping Straining Super Calender Surfacing Swelled Gelatin Process Sympathetic Ink Tachytype Tannin Ink Thorne Machine Three Colour Process Tub-sizing Turtle Type-case Typograph Typography Vale Press Water mark Wharfedale Presses Wicks, Frederick Wiring Woodbury Process Wood Engraving Wood’s Autoplate Writing Ink Yaryan Evaporator