411
single letters was pursued, as it is to this day. Timswe see that in 1811 there were lour foundries in theUnited States . During the preceding ten years the news-papers increased from 200 to 360, of which 27 were dailypapers. It is estimated there were at least 500 printing- .offices in the country; indeed so great m us the demand jfor type in 1811, that it advanced in price 25 per cent, on iwhat it cost in 1806. In 1818, Messrs. D. and G. Bruceestablished another foundry in New York , which soonbecame a stereotype foundry, of which we shall speak inanother place. In 1818, and within a very few yearsafter, type and stereotype foundries were set up inBoston, Cincinnati, Buffalo, St. Louis, Louisville , See.The business soon became overdone, and the price of typereceded to the old standard of 1806, and caused manyfailures.
In 1828, Mr. William M. Johnson took out a patentfor the invention of a machiue for casting type, by whichhe was enabled to give a sharper outline and better faceto the letter by using a pump to force the liquid metalinto the mould. This idea subsequently uuderweut manymollifications and improvements by different individuals. ,Several pateuts for improvements in the machinery for ,casting printing types have been issued within the lastten years, so that at present all obstacles to this mode ofproducing types seem to have been surmounted, and thispractice is now in general use—in large establishments jchiefly by the aid of steam. By these improvements ithree times the quantity of type is produced by a casterin a day that n - as cast by Binny and Konaldson’s improvedmould, and five times the quantity that was produced by
the hand-mould half a century ago. On the first of June1850, there were 2,800 neM'spapers in the United States ,with an average circulation of 1,785 copies, giving theenormous aggregate of422,600,000 copies printed annually.There were 350 daily and 2,000 weekly newspapers.The whole number of printing-offices is now not less than4,000. Hence the demand for printing types is constantlyand rapidly increasing. There lias been a correspondingincrease in type anil stereotype foundries. There arenow four foundries in Boston, seven in New York , threein Philadelphia, one in Buffalo, one in Albany , two inj Connecticut, one in Baltimore, and one in St. Louis .
| These tM'enty establishments give employment to about800 persons, and produce daily 4,400 pounds of type.By the recent improvements in machinery, type is atpresent produced at a cheaper rate by 25 per cent, thanin 1841. These twenty foundries supply not only theUnited States, and a great part of Canada , but exportlargely to the British, Spanish , and Danish West IndiaIslands, Mexico, and South America . The exports ofprinting-presses and types for the year ending June 1851,amounted to 71,401 dollars. The quality of the American type Mill, it is said, bear a favourable comparison withthat of Europe , aud it is cheaper. The metal used is amixture of lead, antimony, and tin, in proportion to thekind of type required. The average of lead is 75 percent.
A statement of the prices of types for the last half-century may be interesting, we therefore give a tableof them from the last Official Report, naming only someof the principal sorts.
1801
1800
1311
1319
IS27
1831
1S11
1850
1S50
Names of Indies.
Dollars.
Dollars.
Dollars.
Dollars.
Dollars.
Dollars.
Dollars.
Dollars.
Pica - - —
• 35
•44
• 55
•44
■42
•36
•38
•30
.s. fl.
1 3
Small Pica -
•40
•48
•58
•48
•46
•38
•40
•32
1 4
Long Primer -
•47
• 56
•G6
•56
•50
•40
•42
•34
1 5
Bourgeois -
• 56
•66
•76
•66
•58
•46
•46
•37
1 6J
Brevier — -
•67
•76
•86
•76
•70 i
•56
• 54
•42
1 0
Minion - -
_
1*03
1-13
1-00
■88
•70
•66
•48
2 0
Nonpareil —
1-12
1-40
1-75
1-40
i-ao ;
•1)0
•84
•58
2 5
Agate - -
—
—
—
—
1-44
1-10
1*08
2 11
l’eavl - -
_
-
—
1-75
1-4U
1*40
DOS
4 5 -
Diamond - —
—
~
*~
**•
■“
—
1-60
6 7i
The application of electrotyping to the formation ofmatrices is another improvement deserving mention, 4 in-asmuch as it saves much labour and tends to the reductionof price. The process is probably the same as that |employed in England and France, but in America it is jmuch more extensively used, in consequence of no law of ;registration being in existence there as in the former icountries. It is found that the Patent and the Copyright jActs do not reach this case, as there is no date-mark onthe type to identify it. The consequence is, that themoment any new or improved letter or ornament is pro-duced either in Europe or even in the United States , it isat once electrotyped and reproduced by all the otherfounders. This seems unjust, although it tends to renderthe types more uniform throughout the country.
A patent has very recently been granted—10th Decem-ber 1S50—to Mr. George Mathiot, for an ingenious devicefor preventing the electrotype cast from adhering to theoriginal plate. Many ways have been tried to obviatethis difficulty, but the present is considered to be adecided improvement upon them. On the 20th of August1850, a patent was granted to Mr. Luke Vander \ anNewton for a new process of plating or coating the surfaceof metallic printing types, stereotype plates, and otherprinting plates, whether cast or engraved, with an addi-tional coat of metal by means of galvanic electricity'.This process of coating types with copper is asserted tobe of great practical utility, and is said to add much to
the durability of the types.* We are indebted to Mr.Ewbank’s Official Patent Office Reports for 1S51 for mostof the facts stated.
Among the American exhibitors of types were Messrs.Hobart and Rodins, of Boston (390, p. 1462); and Mr.T. Tobit, of Ncm' York (394, p. 1462); the latterexhibited combinations or logotypes, which he statesare unequalled for rapid composition, although it is wellknown that in the “ Times” newspaper office they weredisused many years since, as presenting no advantagesover separate or single types. Lord Stanhope also triedlogotypes without greater success.
Stereotyping
is one of the means for making fac-similes in type-metalof pages of types, woodcuts, &c., for surface printing.At the commencement of printing, the idea of stereotypemust have occurred from seeing the reproductions inrelief of legends upon bells cast in the middle ages; it isprobable, however, that many attempts failed from theimperfect means used. As early as 1735, all the pages ofBibles in German and French , set up in moveable types,were kept standing by many printers. In the last centurySamuel Luchtmans obtained plates by a process of clichage ,