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Letterpress
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable type into the "bed" or "chase" of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type, which creates an impression on the paper. In practice, letterpress also includes other forms of relief printing with printing presses, such as wood engravings, photo-etched zinc "cuts" (plates), and linoleum blocks, which can be used alongside metal type, or wood type in a single operation, as well as stereotypes and electrotypes of type and blocks. With certain letterpress units, it is also possible to join movable type with slugs cast using hot metal typesetting. In theory, anything that is "type high" and so forms a layer exactly 0.918 in. thick between the bed and the paper can be printed using l ...
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Wood Type
In letterpress printing, wood type is movable type made out of wood. First used in China for printing body text, wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was lighter and cheaper than large sizes of metal type. Wood has been used since the earliest days of European printing for woodcut decorations and emblems, but it was not generally used for making typefaces due to the difficulty of reproducing the same shape many times for printing. In the 1820s, Darius Wells introduced mechanised wood type production using the powered router, and William Leavenworth in 1834 added a second major innovation of using a pantograph to cut a letter's shape from a pattern. This made it possible to mass-produce the same design in wood repeatedly. In the twentieth century lithography, phototypesetting and digital typesetting replaced it as a mass-market technology. It continues to be used by hobbyists and artistic p ...
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Composition Roller
A composition roller is a tool used in letterpress printing to apply ink to a bed of type in a printing press. It consists of a cylinder made of a substance known as "roller composition" or simply "composition", a mixture of glue and sugar (in the form of molasses or treacle), with various additives such as glycerin depending on the particular recipe. Early recipes also included gypsum plaster and tar, though these were eventually found unnecessary. Before its invention, most inking of printing presses was done by manually pounding the type with ink balls, specially treated leather balls stuffed with wool. The difficulty and time involved in making and using ink balls led to various attempts to use cylinders, which could be rolled rather than pounded. Leather rollers (or "skin rollers") were attempted, and were used on the earliest steam-powered cylinder presses, yet these did not work as well as the ink balls, and the stitching seam would appear on the printed type. Eventuall ...
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Original Heidelberg Platen Press
The Original Heidelberg Platen Press was a letterpress printing press manufactured by the Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG () is a German precision mechanical engineering company with registered offices in Heidelberg (Baden-Württemberg) and headquarters in Wiesloch/Walldorf (Baden-Württemberg). The company offers products and service ... company in Germany. It was often referred to as the Heidelberg Windmill, after the shape and movement of its paper feed system. When introduced, it was also called the "Super Heidelberg" or the "Super Speed". History The ''Original Heidelberg Platen Press'' was introduced in 1914 and manufactured between 1923 and 1985. Although the ''Original Heidelberg Platen Press'' is no longer being manufactured, it is still in wide use for commercial and enthusiast letterpress printing. The company later also produced the ''Original Heidelberg Cylinder Press'' and today produces offset presses and printing related products. ...
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Movable Type
Movable type (US English; moveable type in British English) is the system and technology of printing and typography that uses movable components to reproduce the elements of a document (usually individual alphanumeric characters or punctuation marks) usually on the medium of paper. The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around AD 1040 in China during the Northern Song dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051). The earliest printed paper money with movable metal type to print the identifying code of the money was made in 1161 during the Song dynasty. In 1193, a book in the Song dynasty documented how to use the copper movable type. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type, Jikji, was printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo dynasty. The spread of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The development of the printing press in Europe may have ...
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Ink Ball
An ink ball, inking ball, or dabber was a tool used in printmaking and letterpress printing to apply ink to the plate or type to be printed. Ink balls had been used since the dawn of the printing press in the 15th century. In printmaking, they were used individually, to make the ink smooth and applying it. In letterpress printing, they were used in pairs: ink was placed on one of the two balls, which were then held together and worked around until a proper thickness, consistency, and uniformity was reached. The inker then "beat" the type to apply the ink, making sure to get neither too much nor too little ink on the form. An ink ball consists of a piece of specially-treated sheepskin stuffed with wool, with wooden cupped rod as a handle ("stock"). After the invention of composition (a mixture of glue, molasses, and tar) in the early 19th century, some ink balls began to be made from that until they faded from use. By the mid- to late-19th century, they had been largely supersed ...
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Printing Press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink, and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium. In Germany, around 1440, goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, which started the Printing Revolution. Modelled on the design of existing screw presses, a single Renaissance movable-type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by History of typography in East Asia, hand-printing and a few by scribe, hand-copying. Gutenberg's newly devised matrix (printing), hand mould made possible the precise and ra ...
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Flong
In relief printing, a flong is a temporary negative mould made of a forme of set type, in order to cast a metal stereotype (or "stereo") which can be used in a rotary press, or in letterpress printing after the type has been broken down for re-use. The process is called ''stereotyping''. Types of flong Strictly speaking only moulds of the so-called papier-mâché wet process are flongs, but the term was applied more widely to moulds for stereos. The following have been used for moulding type to create stereos: *Clay. Invented by a French printer, Gabriel Valleyre in 1730. He pressed the set-up forme in clay or another earthy substance to make a reverse image, and then poured molten copper into the mould. His copies were not very good, due either to the clay he was using, or the softness of the copper. However, the method was later revived, improved, and used by Government Printing Office in Washington. Hoe & Company included for use with the process in their 1881 catalogue. *Pl ...
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Hot Metal Typesetting
In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mold that has the shape of one or more glyphs. The resulting sorts or slugs are later used to press ink onto paper. Normally the typecasting machine would be controlled by a keyboard or by a paper tape. It was the standard technology used for mass-market printing from the late nineteenth century until the arrival of phototypesetting and then electronic processes in the 1950s to 1980s. History Hot metal typesetting was developed in the late nineteenth century as a development of conventional cast metal type. The technology had several advantages: it reduced labour since type sorts did not need to be slotted into position manually, and each casting created crisp new type for each printing job. In the case of Linotype machines, each line was ca ...
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Electrotype
Electrotyping (also galvanoplasty) is a chemical method for forming metal parts that exactly reproduce a model. The method was invented by Moritz von Jacobi in Russia in 1838, and was immediately adopted for applications in printing and several other fields. As described in an 1890 treatise, electrotyping produces "an exact facsimile of any object having an irregular surface, whether it be an engraved steel- or copper-plate, a wood-cut, or a form of set-up type, to be used for printing; or a medal, medallion, statue, bust, or even a natural object, for art purposes." In art, several important "bronze" sculptures created in the 19th century are actually electrotyped copper, and not bronze at all; sculptures were executed using electrotyping at least into the 1930s. In printing, electrotyping had become a standard method for producing plates for letterpress printing by the late 1800s. It complemented the older technology of stereotyping, which involved metal casting. By 1901, ste ...
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Stereotype (printing)
In printing, a stereotype, stereoplate or simply a stereo, is a solid plate of type metal, cast from a papier-mâché or plaster mould taken from the surface of a forme of type. The mould was known as a ''flong''. Background In the days of set movable type, printing involved placing individual letters (called type) plus other elements (including leading and furniture) into a block called a chase. Cumulatively, this full setup for printing a single page was called a forme. Ink was then applied to the forme, pressed against paper and a printed page was made. This process of creating formes was labour-intensive, costly and prevented printers from using their type, leading, furniture and chases for other work. Furthermore, printers who underestimated demand would be forced to reset the type for subsequent print runs. ... while Nathaniel Hawthorne's publishers assumed that ''The Scarlet Letter'' (1850) would do well, printing an uncharacteristically large edition of 2,500 copies, p ...
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Wood Engravings
Wood engraving is a printmaking technique, in which an artist works an image or ''matrix'' of images into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and prints using relatively low pressure. By contrast, ordinary engraving, like etching, uses a metal plate for the matrix, and is printed by the intaglio method, where the ink fills the ''valleys'', the removed areas. As a result, wood engravings deteriorate less quickly than copper-plate engravings, and have a distinctive white-on-black character. Thomas Bewick developed the wood engraving technique in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century. His work differed from earlier woodcuts in two key ways. First, rather than using woodcarving tools such as knives, Bewick used an engraver's burin (graver). With this, he could create thin delicate lines, often creating large dark areas in the composition. Second, wood engraving traditionally uses ...
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Relief Printing
Relief printing is a family of printing methods where a printing block, plate or matrix, which has had ink applied to its non-recessed surface, is brought into contact with paper. The non-recessed surface will leave ink on the paper, whereas the recessed areas will not. A printing press may not be needed, as the back of the paper can be rubbed or pressed by hand with a simple tool such as a brayer or roller. In contrast, in intaglio printing, the ''recessed'' areas are printed. Relief printing is one of the traditional families of printmaking techniques, along with the intaglio and planographic families, though modern developments have created others. In the relief family of printing, the matrix was historically made subtractively, by removing material from the surface of areas not intended to be printed. The remaining surface would then receive ink. The relief family of techniques includes woodcut, metalcut, wood engraving, relief etching, linocut, rubber stamp, foam pri ...
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