In 1799, Allesandro Volta, of Pavia, in Italy, constructed the first
electric battery, which came to be called the Voltaic pile.
Improvements in the form of Volta's battery were made almost
immediately by William Cruickshank, in England, who discovered in
experimenting with it that he could by its power electrolyze or
chemically decompose the salts of certain metals in solution. Both
copper and silver, he found, could be precipitated from their salt
solutions and deposited upon a plate immersed in the solution.
This observation was the first step in the process of electroplating,
which is electrotyping when applied to the art of typography.
In 1837, thirty-eight years after Volta's discovery, Mr. Thomas
Spencer of Liverpool, England, accidentally stumbled upon the first
realization of the electrotyping process.
While experimenting with a modification of a Daniell battery, he used
an English copper penny as one of the poles instead of a plain piece
of copper. A deposition of copper from the solution in the battery
took place upon the penny, and upon removing the wire which attached
the penny to the zinc plate a portion of the copper deposit was pulled
off the penny also.
This first copper electrotype shell Spencer found to be an exact
duplicate or mold of part of the head and lettering on the coin. _It
was as smooth and as sharp as the original._
It was some time later, however, before this suggested to him any
useful application of the process. Another accident made him
appreciate the full value of his discovery. This time he carelessly
dropped some varnish on a strip of copper which he was going to use in
the same way he did the penny. Upon removing the copper from the
battery he observed that there was no deposition of copper on those
parts of the strip where the varnish had dropped.
Spencer then conceived the idea of applying this principle to the arts
by coating a piece of copper with varnish or wax and engraving a
design in the coating, thus exposing the copper strip in the engraved
lines. He did this, and then deposited copper in the design so
engraved. Upon removing the coating the design was exposed in relief
on the piece of copper.
On September 13, 1839, Spencer read a paper before the Polytechnic
Institution of Liverpool, which he accompanied with specimens of both
electrotypes made by this process and of printing from these
electrotypes. The publication of this paper acted like an electric
shock upon society.
Developing his process, Spencer first used lead as the plastic medium
in which to mold printing surfaces, and it is to be noted in this
connection that in doing so he anticipated Dr. Albert's lead mold by
considerably over three quarters of a century.
Spencer impressed a form of type on a planed piece of sheet-lead and
subjected both of them to the action of a screw-press. A perfectly
sharp mold of the type form was thus made in the lead. This lead mold
was placed in a battery, and at the end of _eight days_ a copper shell
one eighth of an inch in thickness had been deposited. It was then
removed from the apparatus and the rough edge of the deposited copper
filed off. Being subjected to heat, the copper shell loosened from the
lead-mold. Spencer called this a "copper stereotype."
[Illustration]
The next step in developing the electrotyping process, after Spencer
had demonstrated the practical application of the electro-chemical
deposition of a copper shell on a mold, was made by a Mr. Robert
Murray. Mr. Murray was the first to use plumbago, or black-lead, to
give the surface of non-metallic bodies electro-conductive properties.
He discovered that he could coat a mold of bees-wax with black-lead
and deposit thereon a copper shell. This was in 1840.
In the same year Smee's battery was invented. This was a marked
improvement and was a most important step towards making electrotyping
a commercial possibility.
Thus in 1840, four hundred years after the probable date of the
invention of printing from individual movable cast-metal type, and
over forty years after the foundation of electrotyping was laid by
Volta, electrotyping, as a practical method of reproducing a
commercial typographical printing surface, came into existence.
Mr. E. Palmer, in England, using Spencer's method, was the first to
receive a patent for producing a metallic printing plate with the
printing surfaces in relief. This patent is dated 1841. Palmer
followed this in the succeeding year by a further patent for engraving
through a wax-coated matrix-plate to form the printing surfaces in the
_positive_ electrotype taken from it. This process was termed by
Palmer, "Glyphography."
The "whites" or low spots in Palmer's Glyphographs were "built-up" in
the wax mold through adding wax by hand, assisted by various
ingeniously constructed tools which were heated. After "building-up,"
the wax was black-leaded and the copper deposition on the surface of
the wax mold was obtained. This copper deposit, or shell, was then
tinned on the back, backed up with lead, mounted on wood, and trimmed
type-high. These processes are the essentials used today in
electrotyping.
One of the earliest works illustrated by the Palmer process is "The
History and Antiquities of Brentford, Ealing, and Chiswick," by T.
Faulkner, published in 1845, and the word "Glyphography" occurs at the
foot of many illustrations contained in it.
In 1839 the first attempt was made at commercial electrotyping in
America. In that year, Joseph A. Adams, a wood-engraver connected with
Harper & Bros. in New York, experimented along lines similar to those
Spencer had pursued, but using a wood-cut from which to mold. His
electrotypes were made by taking an impression from the wood-cut in an
alloy of soft metal of which bismuth was probably the chief
ingredient, and immersing the metal mold in an ordinary Voltaic
battery for the deposition of the copper shell. In making the
impression, however, the wood-cut was destroyed so, that this method
of making an electrotype was not commercially practical.
[Illustration]
The year following Adams took advantage of Smee's battery and made an
electrotype which was used in Mape's Magazine in 1841. He also
employed this process for making illustrations for Harper's Family
Bible, issued between 1842 and 1844.
The first successful commercial electrotyper in America was John W.
Wilcox, of Boston. A wood carver named Chandler, told Mr. Wilcox that
if he could repeat what Adams of New York had done with a wood-cut in
1839 that he, Chandler, would lend him the necessary wood-cuts for
experimental purposes. In less than sixty days in 1846, Mr. Wilcox had
put into practical use every essential principle known for the next
twenty-five years in electrotyping.
In 1855, Mr. Gay of New York first used tin-foil for the purpose of
soldering the copper shells to the metal backing.
During the same year, a Mr. Adams of Brooklyn, New York, invented the
dry-brush black-leading machine.
Steven D. Tucker, of New York, developed and patented in 1866 the type
of dry-brush black-leading machine which is in common use today.
In 1871, Silas P. Knight, of Harper & Bros., New York, invented the
wet black-leading process, and in 1872 took out another patent for an
improvement on this process. Mr. Knight's method of wet black-leading
was not generally adopted by the electrotypers of that time and
gradually became almost unknown.
Undoubtedly, the cause of this was that the method of dry
black-leading was good enough for type and woodcut work. The half-tone
had not been invented at that time, and it was only after the
invention of the half-tone that a better method of black-leading
became necessary.
Thirty-seven years after Mr. Knight had successfully used his process
of wet black-leading a patent was granted to Frank L. Learman, of
Buffalo, New York, for a wet black-leader. Since that time numerous
patents have been taken out on different methods of using the wet
process, which is universally recognized today as the best method of
graphiting the surface of a mold.
In 1870, Joseph A. Adams patented a process for covering the surface
of the mold after it had been black-leaded with powdered tin. This was
for the purpose of quickening the deposition of the copper shell when
the molds were in the batteries, and from this undoubtedly came the
oxidizing process of coating the surface of the molds with chemical
copper invented by Silas Knight, which has long been and is now in
use.
Perhaps one of the greatest forward steps in the development of
electrotyping was made when the plating dynamo was invented. The first
adoption of a dynamo in place of Smee's battery took place in 1872.
With the Smee type of battery it required from thirty to forty-eight
hours to deposit a copper shell thick enough for commercial use. With
the invention of the plating dynamo and its improvements, the time of
depositing the shell was reduced so that now two hours is the common
time that a mold is kept in the tubs or batteries. This quickening of
the time required to deposit the shell was one of the most essential
features in the development of commercial electrotyping.
From the first hand-screw presses, which were successfully used for
molding, to the modern high-power, motor-driven, hydraulic presses,
for working either in wax or lead, is a far cry.
The invention of the half-tone, together with the invention of the
modern two-revolution cylinder press which has brought printing into
its present state of perfection, made necessary radical improvements
in the machinery for making electrotypes. These improvements have been
steady in their development, but the fundamental points of the process
are practically those which have been in use from the start of
commercial electrotyping.