Modern Methods of Illustrating Books (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. WOODBURYTYPE AND STANNOTYPE. ] HE Woodbury process is not a true printing process, though it might almost be classed as one. By its aid any number of what are really carbon prints can be reproduced mechanically, and it may therefore be considered to occupy a position between the ordinary process of carbon printing, in which each print is produced separately from the negative, and true printing processes, by the use of which copies are produced in ink and paper by means of a printing surface. The process itself had its origin in the invention of what is known as nature printing.38 Nature-printing. In the 1851 Exhibition,1 in the Austrian Department, there were shown some excellent pictures of plants, flowers, etc., which were printed in colours from copper plates. These copper plates were made direct from the object itself. If any small flat article, no matter how delicate, be placed in contact with a plate of metal?whether the metal be as soft as lead or as hard as steel?and the plate be passed through a rolling press or submitted to great pressure by other means, the object will be imbedded in the metal, and on its removal will leave an exact print of itself in the metal. The plate can then be used to give copies in a copper-plate press. So far the process would be of very limited application, but Mr. Woodbury extended it, and by his extremely ingenious invention, rendered it available for the reproduction of carbon prints, that is to say, of anyWoodburytype. 39 1 Earlier than this, in 1849, Dr. Branson, of Sheffield, obtained prints from fern-leaves in gutta- percha, and by electrotyping on this, he made plates stated to have been capable of being printed from. picture capable of being produced by photographic means. He found that if a g...