machines have now been invented which will do this work. In one of the
best of them the operator sits before a keyboard much like that of a
typewriter. When he presses key _a_, for instance, a mould or matrix
of the letter _a_ is set free from a tube of _a_'s, and slides down to
its place in the stick. At the end of the line, the matrices forming
it are carried in front of a slot where melted type metal from a
reservoir meets them. Thus a cast is made of the matrices, and from
this cast the printing is done. This machine is called a linotype
because it casts a whole line of type at a time.
Most book work is done on the monotype machine. When a manuscript
goes to the press to be set up in this way, the copy is given to the
keyboard operator who sets it up on a machine which looks much like
a typewriter. Instead of writing letters, however, the machine punches
tiny holes in a strip of paper which is wound on a roll. When the
roll is full it goes to the casting room where it is put on another
machine containing hot type metal and bronze matrices from which the
letters of the words are to be cast. The holes in the paper guide the
machine to make the type much as a perforated music roll guides a
piano to play a tune. The reason why the machine is called a monotype
is that the letters are made one at a time, and _monos_ is the Greek
word for _one_.
By the linotype and monotype machines type can be set in a "galley,"
a narrow tray about two feet long, with ledges on three sides. When a
convenient number of these galleys have been filled, long slips are
printed from them called "galley proofs." These have wide margins, but
the print is of the width that the page of the book will be. They are
read by the proof-readers, and all such mistakes as the slipping in
of a wrong letter, or a broken type, the repetition of a word, or the
omission of space between words are corrected. Then the proof goes to
the author, who makes any changes in his part of the work which seem
to him desirable; and it is also read by some member of the editorial
department. If there are many changes to be made, another proof is
usually taken and sent to the author.
The reason for this extreme carefulness is that it costs much less to
make changes in the galley proof than in the "page proof." This latter
is made by dividing the galley into pages, leaving space for the
beginnings of chapters and for pictures, if any are to appear on the
printed pages, and setting up the numbers of the pages and their
running titles. Page proof also goes to proof-readers and to the
author. Corrections on page proof are more expensive than on galley
proof because adding or striking out even a few words may make it
necessary to change the arrangement on every page to the end of the
chapter.
Years ago all books were printed directly from the type; and some are
still printed so. After printing, the letters were returned to their
compartments. If a second edition was called for, the type had to be
set again. Now, however, books are generally printed not from type,
but from a copper model of the type. To make this, an impression of
the page of type is made in wax and covered with graphite, which will
conduct electricity. These moulds are hung in a bath of copper
sulphate, where there are also large plates of copper. A current of
electricity is passed through it, and wherever the graphite is, a
shell of copper is deposited, which is exactly like the face of the
type. This shell is very thin, but it is made strong by adding a heavy
back of melted metal. From these plates the books are printed. A
correction made in the plate is more expensive than it would have been
if made in the galley or in the page, because sawing out a word or a
line is slow, delicate work; and even if one of the same length is
substituted, the types spelling it have to be set up, a small new
plate cast, and soldered in.
[Illustration: _Courtesy The Riverside Press._
WHERE THIS BOOK WAS PRINTED
The girls are feeding big sheets of paper into the presses, thirty-two
pages being printed at one time. The paper is fed into many modern
presses by means of a machine attached to the press. The pressmen see
that the printing is done properly.]
Printing one page at a time would be altogether too slow; therefore
the plates are arranged in such a way that sixteen, thirty-two, or
sometimes sixty-four pages can be printed on one side of the paper,
and the same number on the other side. Every page must come in its
proper place when the sheet is folded for binding. Try to arrange a
sheet of even sixteen pages, eight on each side, so that when it is
folded every page will be in the right place with its printing right
side up, and you will find that it is not very easy until you have had
considerable experience. If the sheet is folded into four leaves, the
book is called a "quarto," or "4to"; if into eight, it is an "octavo,"
or "8vo"; if into twelve, a "duodecimo," or "12mo." Books are
sometimes advertised in these terms; but they are not definite,
because the sheets of the different varieties of paper vary in size.
Of late years, publishers have often given the length and width of
their books in inches.
After the sheets come from the press, they are folded to page size.
Sometimes this is done by hand, but more often by a folding machine
through which the sheet of paper travels, meeting blunt knives which
crease it and fold it. If you look at the top of a book you will see
that the leaves are put together in groups or "signatures." These
signatures usually contain eight, sixteen, or thirty-two pages. If
the paper is very thick, not more than eight leaves will be in a
signature; if of ordinary thickness, sixteen are generally used. The
signatures are piled up in order, and a "gatherer" collects one from
each pile for every book.
The book is now gathered and "smashed," or pressed enough to make it
solid and firm for binding. Next the signatures are sewed and the book
is trimmed so the edges will be even. If the edges are to be gilded,
the book is put in a gilding press and a skillful workman covers the
edges with a sizing made of the white of eggs. Gold leaf is then laid
upon them and they are burnished with tools headed with agate and
bloodstone or instruments of various sorts until they are bright.
Sometimes the edges are "marbled," and this is an interesting process
to watch. On the surface of a vat of thin sizing the marbler drops a
little of many colors of paint. Then he draws a comb lightly across
the surface, making all sorts of odd figures, no two alike. The book
is held tight and the edges are allowed to touch the sizing. All these
odd figures are now transferred to the edges of the leaves and will
stand a vast amount of hard use before they will wear off.
Thus far the book is flat at the edges of the leaves and at the back.
Books are sometimes bound in this way, but the backs are usually
rounded into an outward curve, and the fronts into an inward curve.
This is done by a machine. At each end of the outward curve a deep
groove is pressed to receive the cover. To make the covers of a
cloth-bound book, two pieces of pasteboard of the right size are cut
and laid upon a piece of cloth coated with glue. The edges of the
cloth are turned over and pressed down, as you can often see if the
paper lining of the cover is not too heavy. The cover needs now only
its decorations to be complete. A die is made for these, and the
lettering and ornamentation are stamped on in colors. If more than one
color is used, a separate die has to be made for each. If this work
is to be done in gold, the design is stamped on lightly and sizing
made of white of eggs is brushed on wherever the gold is to come. Gold
leaf is laid upon this sizing, and the cover is stamped again. The
same die is used, but this time it is hot enough to make the gold and
egg stick firmly to the cover. To put the cover on, a piece of muslin
called a "super" is glued to the back of the book with its ends
projecting over the sides, and a strip of cartridge paper is glued
over the super. Then the book is pasted into the cover. It is now kept
under heavy pressure for a number of hours until it is thoroughly dry
and ready to be sent away for sale.
So it is that a well-made cloth-bound book is manufactured.
Leather-bound books are more expensive, not only because their
materials cost more, but also because the greater part of the work of
binding and decorating has to be done by hand. If a book is to be
illustrated, this must also be attended to, the number and style of
the pictures decided upon, and the artist engaged before the book is
put in press, in order that there may be no delay in completing it.
Many publishers do not print at all, but have their work done at some
printing establishment. Where all the making of a book, however, from
manuscript to cover, is in the hands of one firm, there is a certain
fellow-feeling among the different departments, and a wholesome pride
in making each one of "our books" as excellent as possible in every
detail. As one of the women workers in such an establishment said to
me, "I often think that we become almost as interested in a book as
the author is."
VI
FROM GOOSE QUILLS TO FOUNTAIN PENS AND LEAD PENCILS
Whenever there was a convenient goosepond on the way to school, the
children of less than one hundred years ago used to stop there to hunt
for goose quills. They carried these to the teacher, and with his
penknife--which took its name from the work it did--he cut them into
the shape of pens. The points soon wore out, and "Teacher, will you
please mend my pen?" was a frequent request.
When people began to make pens of steel, they made them as nearly like
quill pens as possible, with pen and holder all in one. These were
called "barrel pens." They were stiff, hard, and expensive, especially
as the whole thing was useless as soon as the pen was worn out, but
they were highly esteemed because they lasted longer than quills and
did not have to be mended. After a while separate pens were
manufactured that could be slipped into a holder; and one improvement
after another followed until little by little the cheap, convenient
writing tool that we have to-day was produced.
A pen is a small thing, but each one is worked upon by twenty to
twenty-four persons before it is allowed to be sold. The material is
the best steel. It comes in sheets five feet long and nineteen inches
wide, and about one fortieth of an inch thick, that is, three times
as thick as the finished pen. The first machine cuts the sheet
crosswise into strips from two to three inches wide, varying according
to the size of the pen to be made. These strips are put into iron
boxes and kept at a red heat for a number of hours to anneal or soften
them. Then they pass between heavy rollers, a process which not only
helps to toughen them, but also stretches the steel so that it is now
fifty inches long instead of nineteen.
At least six or seven people have handled the material already, and
even now there is nothing that looks like pens; but the next machine
cuts them out, by dies, of course. The points interlap; and the
cutting leaves odd-shaped openwork strips of steel for the scrap-heap.
This part of the work is very quick, for the machine will cut
thousands of pens in an hour. Now is when the little hole above the
slit is punched and the side slits cut. To make the steel soft and
pliable, it must be annealed again, kept red hot for several hours,
and then cooled. Thus far it has looked like a tiny fence paling, but
at length it begins to resemble a pen, for it is now stamped with
whatever letters or designs may be desired, usually the name of the
maker and the name and number of the variety of pen, and it is pressed
between a pair of dies to form it into a curve. The last annealing
left the metal soft so that all this could be done, but too soft to
work well as a pen; and it has to be heated red hot again, and then
dropped into cold oil to harden it. Centrifugal force, which helps in
so many manufactures, drives the oil away, and the pens are dried in
sawdust. They are now sufficiently hard, but too brittle. They must be
tempered. To do this, they are placed in an iron cylinder over a fire,
and the cylinder revolved till the pen is as elastic as a spring.
The pen is of the correct shape, is tough and elastic; and now it is
put into "tumbling barrels" which revolve till it is bright and ready
for the finishing touches. If you look closely at the outside of a
steel pen just above the nib, you will see that across it run tiny
lines. They have a use, for they hold the ink back so that it will
not roll down in drops, and they help to make the point more springy
and easier to write with.
The pen must be slit up from the point. This is done by a machine, and
a most accurate one, for the cut must go exactly through the center of
the point and not reach beyond the little hole that was punched. Only
one thing is lacking now to make the pen a useful member of society,
ready to do its work in the world; and that is to grind off the points
and round them in order to keep them from sticking into the paper.
After so much careful work, it does seem as if not one pen out of a
thousand could be faulty; but every one has to be carefully examined
to make sure that the cutting, piercing, marking, forming, tempering,
grinding, and slitting, are just what they should be. These pens carry
the maker's name, and a few poor ones getting into the market might
spoil the sale of thousands of boxes; therefore the examiner sits
before a desk covered with black glass and looks at every pen. The
faulty ones are heated so that they cannot be used, and they go to
the scrap-heap.
Now the pens are ready so far as usefulness goes, but people have
preferences in color. Some prefer bronze, some gray, and some black;
so off the pens go to the tempering-room, their last trip, and there
are heated in a revolving cylinder till the right color appears; then
they are chilled and lacquered, put into boxes, labeled, packed, and
sold for such low prices that the good folk of a century ago, who
paid from twenty-five to fifty cents for a pen, would have opened
their eyes in amazement. When the typewriter was invented, some
people said, "That will be the death of the steel pen"; but as a
matter of fact, it has greatly increased its sale. The typewriter
makes writing so easy and so quick that many more letters are written
than formerly. All these letters have to be answered, and few people
compared with the whole number own typewriters, and therefore the pen
still holds its place.
The lacquer on a steel pen protects it until it has been used for a
while. After that, it will rust, if it is not wiped, and it will wear
out whether it is wiped or not. All that the gold pen asks is not
to be bent or broken, and it will last almost forever. It has the
flexibility of the quill, but does not have to be "mended." Gold pens
are made in much the same way as are steel pens; but just at the point
a tiny shelf is squeezed. Upon this shelf a bit of the alloy of two
exceedingly hard metals, iridium and osmium, is secured by melting
the gold around it; and it is this bit which stands all the wear of
rubbing on the paper. When gold pens were first made, tiny bits of
diamonds or rubies were soldered on for points; but they were
expensive, and they had a disagreeable fashion of falling off.
A century ago, writers would have thought it the height of luxury to
have a gold pen; but now they are not satisfied unless they can be
saved the trouble of dipping it into an inkstand, and they look upon
the fountain pen as their special friend. The fountain pen carries its
supplies with it. The pen itself is like any other gold pen, but the
barrel is full of ink. A little tube carries the ink to the point, and
the slight bending back of the pen as one writes lets it run out upon
the paper. At the end of the slit, at the back of the pen, is a hole
to let air into the barrel as the ink runs out. A perfect fountain pen
ought to be prepared to write--without shaking--whenever the cap is
taken off, and not to refuse to work so long as a drop of ink remains
in the barrel. It should never drop ink at the point and, whether the
point is up or down, it should never leak there or anywhere else.
The stylographic pen is quite a different article. There is no pen to
it; the writing is done with the end of a needle which projects
through a hole at the point. The barrel and point are full of ink; but
even if the pen is held point down, it will not leak because the
needle fills up the hole. When you press the point on paper to write,
the needle falls back just enough to let out what ink is needed. The
flow stops the instant the pen ceases to touch the paper. The special
advantage of the stylographic is that the mere weight of the pen is
sufficient pressure, and therefore many hours of writing do not tire
the muscles of the hand. The advantage of the fountain pen is that it
has the familiar action of the gold pen, and that it will adapt itself
to any style of handwriting.
A pen of almost any kind is a valuable article, but for
rough-and-ready use we should find it hard to get on without its
humble friend, the lead pencil. A lead pencil, by the way, has not a
particle of lead in it. The "lead" is all graphite, or plumbago. Years
ago sticks of lead were used for marking, and made a pale-gray line.
When graphite was introduced, its mark was so black that people called
it black lead, and the name has stuck. No one who has ever tried to
use a pencil of real lead could fail to appreciate graphite, and when
a graphite mine was discovered in England, it was guarded by armed men
as watchfully as if it had been a mine of diamonds. That mine was
exhausted long ago, but many others have been found. The best graphite
in the world comes from Ceylon and Mexico.
When graphite was first used for pencils, it was cut into slabs and
these slabs into small strips. The broken and powdered graphite was
not used until it was discovered that it could be mixed with clay and
so made into sticks. In a lead pencil there are only three substances,
graphite, clay, and wood, but a really good one must be manufactured
with as much care as if it were made up of twenty. First of all, the
graphite is ground and ground and ground, until, if you take a pinch
of it between your thumb and finger, you can hardly feel that anything
is there. It is now sifted through fine silk and mixed with water and
finely powdered clay, and becomes a wet, inky mass. This clay comes
from Austria and Bohemia and is particularly smooth and fine. The
amount put in is carefully weighed. If you have a hard pencil, it was
made by using considerable clay; if your pencil is soft, by using very
little; and if it is very soft and black, it is possible that a little
lampblack was added.
This inky mass is ground together between millstones for several
weeks. Then it goes between rollers, and at length is squeezed
through a die and comes out in soft, doughy black strings. These are
the "leads" of the pencils. They have been thoroughly wet, and now
they must be made thoroughly dry. They are laid on boards, then taken
off, cut into pieces the length of a pencil, and put into ovens and
baked for hours in a heat twenty times as great as that of a hot
summer day. They certainly ought to be well dried and ready for the
wood. The red cedar of Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama is
the best wood for pencils because it is soft and has a fine, straight
grain. It is cut into slabs about as long as one pencil, as wide as
six, and a little thicker than half a pencil. Every piece must be
examined to make sure that it is perfect, and it must be thoroughly
seasoned and kiln-dried to free it from oil. Then it goes through a
grooving-machine which cuts out a groove half as deep as the lead.
The lead is laid into one piece, another is glued on top of it; and
there is a pencil ready for work.
[Illustration: _Courtesy Joseph Dixon Crucible Co._
HOW THE LEAD GETS INTO A PENCIL
(1) The cedar slab. (2) Planed and grooved. (3) The leads in place.
(4) Covered with the other half of the slab. (5) The round pencils cut
out. (6) The pencil separated and smoothed. (7) The pencil varnished
and stamped.]
Such a pencil would be useful, but to sell well it must also be
pretty; and therefore it goes through machinery which makes it round
or oval or six-sided, as the case may be, rubs it smooth, and
varnishes it, and then, with gold leaf or silver leaf or aluminum or
ink, stamps upon it the name of the maker, and also a number or letter
to show how hard the lead is.
The pencil is now ready for sale, but many people like to have an
eraser in the end, and this requires still more work. These erasers
are round or flat or six-sided or wedge-shaped. They are let into the
pencil itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap,
so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard
to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit
his taste, for a single factory in the United States makes more than
six hundred kinds of pencils, and makes so many of them that if they
were laid end to end they would reach three times across the continent.
There are many exceedingly cheap pencils, but they are expensive in
the end, because they are poorly made. The wood will often split in
sharpening, and the lead is of poor materials so badly mixed that it
may write blacker in one place than another, and is almost sure to
break. Good pencils bearing the name of a reliable firm are cheapest.
VII
THE DISHES ON OUR TABLES
If any one should give you a lump of clay and ask you to make a bowl,
how should you set about it? The first thing would be, of course, to
put it on a table so you could work on it with both hands. You would
make a depression at the top and push out the sides and smooth them as
best you could. It would result in a rough, uneven sort of bowl, and
before it was done, you would have made one discovery, namely, that if
the table only turned around in front of you, you could see all sides
of the bowl from the same position, and it would be easier to make it
regular. This is just what the potter's wheel does. It is really two
horizontal wheels. The upper one is a disk a foot or two in diameter.
This is connected by a shaft with the lower one, which is much larger.
When the potter was at work at a wheel of this sort, he stood on one
foot and turned the lower wheel with the other, thus setting the upper
wheel in motion. This was called a "kick-wheel." As wheels are made
now, the potter sits at his work and turns the wheel by means of a
treadle.
Almost any kind of clay will make a dish, but no one kind will make
it so well that the addition of some other kind would not improve it.
Whatever clays are chosen, they must be prepared with great care to
make sure that not one grain in them is coarser than any other.
Sometimes one will slip through, and you can see on the finished dish
what a bad-looking place it makes. Even for the coarsest earthenware,
such as flower-pots, the moist clay is forced down a cylinder and
through a wire sieve; and for stoneware and porcelain it has to go
through several processes. When flint and feldspar are used, they are
ground fine at the quarry. On reaching the factory, they are mixed
with the proper quantities of other clays--but in just what proportions
is one of the secrets of the trade. Then they go into "plungers" or
"blungers," great round tanks with arms extending from a shaft in the
center. The shaft revolves and the arms beat the clay till all the sand
and pebbles have settled on the bottom, and the fine clay grains are
floating in the water above them. These pass into canvas bags. The
water is forced out through the canvas, and on every bag there is left
a thin sheet of moist clay. If this is to be used for the finest work,
it is ground and pounded and washed still more, until it is a wonder
that any of it survives; then it is sifted through a screen so fine
that its meshes are only one one hundred and fiftieth of an inch
across. Now it becomes "slip," and after a little more beating and
tumbling about, it is ready to go to the man at the wheel.