Category: Stereotyping

Conforming to the chronological order of this booklet, a report is now due on two methods known as Polytyping and Logography. Polytyping is the art of producing by mechanical means, from engraved plates or otherwise, any number of plates capable of multiplication. The “sister arts” Stereotyping and Polytyping are so connected, and the processes, which […]

A great advance in the newborn art of stereotyping was effected by William Ged, (born 1690, died 1749). We owe the following data concerning Ged to his own book entitled: “Bibliographical Memoirs of William Ged, including a particular Account of his Progress in the Art of Block-Printing. 1781. London.” By birth a Scotchman, Ged was […]

During the same period when Ged was working out his stereotyping process, a French printer, GABRIEL VALLEYRE by name, invented in 1730 a method of casting plates in molds, which he used for making calendars which were placed at the opening page of church books. The method discovered by Valleyre was the so-called clay process. […]

The first experiments at stereotyping in the sense of the definition placed at the beginning of this chapter were made in Europe in 1701. JOHANNES MUELLER, clergyman of the Reformed Church in Leyden, Holland, discovered a new way of utilizing the art of printing by employing movable types. After the pages had been composed, corrected […]

It appears that the first attempt known to exercise a crude sort of stereotyping was made in China; however, the method used was later lost and never introduced in Europe. In the year 1041 a Chinese blacksmith, named PI-SHENG, invented a method of printing with plates, called “ho-pan”, or with plates formed of movable types—this […]

There is a controversy concerning the first discoverer of the art of printing as just defined. The Dutch city of Haerlem, the German city of Mentz, and the Alsatian city of Strasbourg attribute it to their own countrymen. The dispute, however, is turned rather on words than on facts; it seems to have arisen from […]

In the year 1795 the celebrated French printer and type-founder, FIRMIN DIDOT of Paris, coined the name “STEREOTYPE” for printing from solid lead plates. Stereo, in Greek, means rigid, solid, and the Greek word typos means type, letter, character. Hence the combined word stereotype means a rigid, solid plate made of types. Stereo-typing is the […]

In Europe about ninety percent of all book printing and plate making is done by stereotyping and only about ten percent is electrotype work. In America the reverse is the case. In Europe practically all newspapers that stereotype are using dry mats; in America it was only about two years ago that the dry mat […]

In completing this booklet, we come to the equipment necessary to handle the present day methods of stereotyping. The plaster pot disappeared when the Frenchman Genoux invented papier-mache mats for stereotyping, and the paste pot and steam table began their journey to ultimate oblivion when the dry mat cold process was invented. The brush beating […]

Present day dry mats are integral homogeneous units, delivered in sheet form of one standardized size, twenty by twenty-four inches. They are made in any thickness between the limits of twenty-four thousandths and forty thousandths of an inch to meet the preferences and needs of stereotypers under varying conditions, and for use in all kinds […]