this tops the charts of t206 research. Great stuff

I'm gonna have to demur but what Pat & Steve have done is amazing. When they started out I thought there was no way they would be able to find so many cards with plate scratches. I was wrong. Great job Pat & Steve! Please post your most current sheet configurations when you can.

I backed off looking when I traded scans with Pat. I'd been hunting through scans on ebay and sometimes auction sites, and had a decent batch saved. Pat had about three times as many and it took me a while to realize he also had the actual cards. It finally sunk in when I realized all his scans were the same size.


I'm happy to have gotten the ball rolling, but Pat has done nearly all the heavy lifting on this one.

Steve B

Hi Scot,

I'm still collecting plate scratch cards and scans but I haven't worked on
or updated the sheets in a while but I will post the updated sheets
when I do.

So far there are 104 different subjects and 252 different plate scratches.
Here is a list of the subjects with the number of different plate scratches
found on each one.

Abbaticchio - 3
Ames - 3
Ball - 5
Bender - 1
Bergen - 1
Birmingham - 1
Bransfield - 3
Bresnahan - 1
Brown, G. - 1
Brown, M. (Cubs) - 3
Brown, M. (Port) - 1
Camnitz - 4
Chance - 1
Chase (Pink Port) - 1
Chase (White Cap) - 2
Cicotte - 5
Clarke, F. (Bat) - 1
Clarke, F. (Port) - 1
Clarke, J.J. - 2
Cobb (Bat On) - 4
Cobb (Port) - 2
Conroy - 5
Covaleski - 5
Crandall - 6
Crawford - 4
Criger - 2
Criss - 4
Dahlen - 1
Davis, G. - 2
Davis, H. - 2
Donlin (Fielding) - 4
Donlin (Seated) - 2
Donohue - 5
Dooin - 2
Doyle - 2
Durham - 6
Elberfeld - 2
Evers (Cubs Blue Sky) - 4
Ferris - 2
Flick - 1
Ganley - 2
Goode - 1
Hahn - 2
Herzog - 3
Hinchman - 2
Isbell - 2
Jacklitsch - 4
Johnson - 3
Jordan - 1
Joss - 3
Karger - 2
Keeler (Bat) - 2
Keeler (Port) - 1
Killian - 1
Kleinow - 5
Kling - 3
Konetchy - 5
Lake - 1
Leibhardt - 2
Lindaman - 3
Manning - 1
Mathewson (Port) - 1
Mathewson (White Cap) - 3
McGraw (Finger In Air) - 3
McGraw (Port) - 3
McIntyre - 1
Mullin - 3
Murphy - 3
Nicholls - 4
Niles - 5
Oldring - 3
O'Leary - 2
Overall - 1
Pastorius - 1
Pattee - 1
Pelty - 1
Plank - 1
Powell - 3
Powers - 2
Reulbach - 1
Schaefer - 1
Schulte - 4
Seymour - 5
Shaw - 2
Shipke - 5
Smith - 2
Stahl - 2
Stone - 2
Stovall - 2
Sullivan - 1
Tannehill - 1
Tenney - 1
Tinker (Hands On Knees) - 1
Turner - 1
Waddell (Port) - 2
Waddell (Throwing) - 3
Wallace - 3
Walsh - 1
Weimer - 2
Wilhelm - 2
Williams - 4
Willis - 3
Young (Bare Hand) - 6
Young (Port) - 1

Crandall, Durham and Young (Bare Hand) have the most different scratches
with six.

Attachment 280705
Attachment 280706
Attachment 280707Attachment 280708
Attachment 280709

The majority of the plate scratches have several examples of the same scratch.

Here are the ones I have of Sullivan and I have seen approximately 10 others.
Attachment 280710

Murphy Plate Scratch?
 

Pat,
I have been following along on the plate scratch thread as I find that project intriguing. I primarily collect Danny Murphy, doing back runs for any of his issues that have multiple combinations. I just picked up a MC throwing pose that has his name top and bottom. I noticed on the back it appears to have a plate scratch and this drew me to the card even more. It is piedmont 150. I was hoping long you could confirm this as an actual plate scratch. Pic are attached.

Thanks,
Ron

Murphy plate scratch
 

Plate scratch on top left on back?

Hi Ron,
Thanks for posting your Murphy double name. It's definitely a plate scratch.
Here's another Murphy with the same scratch. Yours shows more of the scratch
because of the higher cut on the top but they're the same scratch.
Attachment 281630Attachment 281631

And here's the Murphy scratch that was above the one you have.
Attachment 281632Attachment 281633
Attachment 281634

Almost three years ago Steve pointed out in this thread that the upside
down back of White matched up with a Doyle back.

At the time I searched and couldn't find a Doyle or Stone (Doyle and
Stone share the same position on a plate scratch sheet) that had a print
flaw that is on the smaller portion of the second back on the upside down
White.

This Doyle that sold on ebay recently has that mark.
Attachment 319281Attachment 319282
Attachment 319283
Attachment 319284
So far Doc White hasn't been found with a plate scratch but if
one is eventually found it should allow us to figure out the exact
size of this plate scratch sheet based off the upside down White.


If the link works it should be a scan of that sheet that can be enlarged.
https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...ts/C-D%201.jpg

That's great work again Pat. Exciting to see pieces continue to fall into place.

Was at a card show yesterday and picked up a P150 that has a back scratch. I’ll get it scanned and posted in the next few days. In the meantime, the blog post below has my video where I show it. Hopefully it’s a new discovery!

CARD SHOW ACQUISITIONS: PLANO CARD SHOW 6/10/18

Thanks for the video link Kin.

There are five different confirmed Covaleski scratches and the one
you picked up at the show is one of them.

Attachment 319443

Yours is the bottom scratch of a triple Covaleski vertical scratch.

Attachment 319444

Well dang! Ah well, it's going to be tough to find new ones. Thanks for the note!

-kin

This is currently on ebay (not mine). I am sure you are aware of it, but I figured it cant hurt to pass this on as part of the plate scratch project.

The picture is poor (again, its on ebay) but the scratch runs from above the A in "Ball" down to the right (through the "m" in Piedmont) and leaves the card between the bottom right corner and the "VA"

The reason they appear only on the 150 cards is because Knapp and Pancoast were finally granted a patent in Feb. 1910 that finally fixed a major defect in the lithographic printing presses at ALC.

The blue lines on the cards are called gear streaks. They occur due to uneven pressure on the rubber rollers of the printing press.

The T206 cards were printed using a "web" (meaning paper roll) offset lithography press. This was new technology at the time, replacing the old sheet fed presses. Allowing for greater production numbers.

Because they were printed on an offset press, the cards never came in contact with the metal printing plate at all. The image was transferred to the card via rubber roller.

https://image.ibb.co/eTV4VJ/litho1aa_1.gif
(In this simplified diagram, the ink gets transferred from the printing plate, to a rubber "blanket" roller, and then to the card.)

https://image.ibb.co/kvEj9o/CMYK.jpg
(CMYK printing for T-206. First the black border and name. Then yellow, cyan and magenta. Then the back in blue.)

The problem at the time was that the rubber rollers were made of pure rubber (instead of a harder, more durable synthetic material), which didn’t hold up well to high production numbers and tended malform, snagging the paper and changing thickness easily, causing uneven tension in the press, which would then lead to the paper moving out of position in a diagonal direction, shown below:

https://image.ibb.co/hnDi28/beforeafter.jpg

Basically a paper jam. One that would move in a circular path as it went around and around (based on what the printing machine probably looked like – a big circle). As the rubber would swell up slightly due to the pressue, it would make contact with the inked plate, causing the streak on the paper (and also scratching and damaging the plate).

In order to combat this, Knapp and Pancoast devised a fix by inserting a middle section of the web feed (highlighted in yellow above) that would control the tension and keep the paper pressure even most of the time. At least, that’s what it looks like based on the illustration and the explanation in the patent application.

Not sure exactly how the mechanism worked, but it had something to due with keeping the tension balanced with the fabric (I believe this was the term for the “blanket”, and I’m not sure if they’re referring to the rubber roller or a blanket wedged between the paper and the roller.)

That's interesting.

Here's the patent, which was assigned to ALC.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US...p+and+Pancoast


The "fabric" mentioned in the patent is not the Blanket, which was the covering on one of the main press rollers or anything wedged in between, but that does refer to the web itself.

Even if there was some sort of creasing damage to the blanket, that wouldn't produce solid lines of color. In fact it would generally produce the exact opposite, white unprinted lines. (Generally, as there's a possibility of some marks I've seen coming from a wrinkle but I can't say for sure that's what caused them. )
A sideways slip of the web would only produce wrinkles in one direction, along the web, and these scratches do exist in both directions, with a few cards showing an intersection.

There is some solid evidence that Some T206s were printed using a flatbed lithography press that printed from stones.
Have you found anything solid that indicates a multi color web press? It's possible, and I've seen a few things that make me think that a two color press may have been used for some of the production, but not much indication that it would have been a web press.

I can elaborate, but I'll probably have to draw some sketches, and it might be more appropriate in it's own thread.

What do you think Guys? Get into it here or in it's own thread?

I'd love to see this have its own thread.

Doesn't really seem possible logically (imo) that the Print Scratches could be "gear streaks". The scratches sometimes stretch the length of the sheet diagonally, and they make abrupt changes of direction. Definitely interested to hear more about the gear streaks, but unless I'm not fully understanding the term, I don't think that's what we are looking at here.

Steve,

I guess it's possible to also do offset lithography with a stone plate cylinder.

Doing research on this a while back, I came to the conclusion that the half-tone patterns on the T206 faces were simply "Ben-Day Dots" and that it was likely easier to produce plates from metal using acid etching instead of stone. Given the large number of player subjects and cards produced, I think this is likely the case.

I think the early 19th century color litho cards were done on flat stone. They have a distinct look and feel.

Knapp was known for his designs of multi-color rotary presses. It would've been a very odd business decision if ALC printed T206 cards using flat stones and old hand-presses.

The streaks go diagonally in a straight line. Something that would happen when you have paper between two spinning cylinders, and one cylinder is spinning faster than the other with pressure on one side.

A helix of ink around a cylinder is created - like a spinning barber shop pole.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...er-pole-01.gif

If the stripes were ink, they would produce diagonal lines on a piece of paper.

https://render.fineartamerica.com/im...a-jasiczak.jpg

I'm not trying to be argumentative, just interested in the idea and would like to understand it better. Here are the two main reasons why I don't think we are looking at "gear streaks"

1. The lines are definitely not "straight". They follow a general direction but are not a straight line.

2. The Plate Scratches follow the exact same pattern every time. For two of the Plate Scratch patterns, there are two different sheets with the exact same pattern on the back, but a completely different set of fronts. The backs allow us to re-create what the sheet looks like, which Pat has done.

If it was just a random malfunction of the press, I can't imagine that the pattern would be exactly the same every time.

Note: I edited my post above to add the barber shop illustration. Apologies if you replied before you saw it.

1. They're straight, but sometimes shaky. I've seen most of the photos posted on this thread and the shaky lines could possibly be due to vibration. They're definitely straight lines more often than not.

2. Do you mean that the lines appear on the backs only and not on the front? I think this is because the last stop (or first) on the press was the printing plate for the back design.

No. The term "gear streaks" sounds like they are random streaks on a sheet.

The Plate Scratches are a pattern that was repeated over and over on each sheet.

Pat has stacks of the same player with the same exact Plate Scratch on the back.

Well, I think it's more explanatory than "plate scratch," since the printing plates were relief and not intaglio. A scratch on a relief plate would be void of ink.

Hi Manny,

The gear streak information is interesting thanks for posting about them.

I agree with Steve and Luke I don't think that's what caused the
plate scratch marks. From what I understand the gear streaks
wouldn't be repetitive and the plate scratches are. As Luke pointed
out the same exact scratch can be found on the same subject multiple
times and on some sheets they same exact scratch can be found on
two different subjects.

Attachment 320974
Attachment 320975

Attachment 320976
Attachment 320977

Pat,

Perhaps they're not "gear streaks" as I understood the term from the definition I found. There may be another term for the streaks in pressman nomenclature. One of these days if I have time I'll venture off to a printing forum and ask there what the streaks are called.

I still think my theory is correct. If you believe the Library of Congress' classification of T206 cards as relief prints, and you also assume that the owners of American Lithographic stuck to their area of expertise and operated a multi-color offset press, then the only valid explanation is that the scratch was on the rubber blanket roller and not the printing plate.

The Occam's razor explanation is that some kind of machine feed malfunction caused the rubber roller to bounce up suddenly, grazing the surface of the relief plate at a high speed, thus causing a scratch on the surface of roller which would hold ink and transfer to the card in the same spot each time. Either that, or simply that the roller became worn and scratched with use.

Because of the constant spinning of the roller, the scratches took the form of a helix wrapping around the cylinder, which translated into diagonal lines on the paper. The steepness of the scratch I guess depended on the speed of the press when the scratch occurred.

A few comments on a couple points.

T206s are lithographed for sure. Other types of printing come across a lot differently.
There are two main sorts of lithography, direct and offset.
Both use either a specially prepared block of limestone, or a plate that can retain water. Commercially, the plates have been mostly metal for around a century. But a "lithograph" plate can be paper. In fact you can make a lithograph at home using some porous paper, a crayon, a brayer and some oil based ink. (Getting it to come out any good isn't all that easy)

T206s were not done with a modern CMYK process. The typically quoted thing is six colors, but it's usually more like 8, possibly more.

Recess printing is essentially like Intaglio, and the result is much different than lithography. Feel a new banknote, you'll be able to feel the raised in since it mostly sits on top of the paper.

The multi color press shown doesn't appear to be an offset lithography press, as the inked rollers are shown printing directly to the paper.

The stones were heavy, and had to be laid out by hand from transfers. Making them and resurfacing them was a specialty, and making a stone cylinder with the proper surface would be harder and more expensive. I've never heard of a press that printed from a stone cylinder.

Here's a small shop from around 1917. The big press on the left is a flatbed lithographic press, the small ones center and right are letter press presses. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped..._Room_1917.jpg

ALC was a huge company, and owned a wide range of presses. They were also pretty tight with RS Hoe company that made presses. (Not that a place like ALC wouldn't be on great terms with a few press makers. ) Hoe had web fed typographic presses - a totally different process- in the 1800s that were used to print newspapers. They also had web fed presses, but none of their literature that I've found mentions web feed combined with lithography.
They also in around 1910 sued a couple guys who had sold them on a photographic way of making lithographic plates, which apparently turned out to be a scam as the process didn't work and never would. And was also "sold" to other companies as far away as England. So photographically transferred halftones were very cutting edge at the time.
A book about printing processes from 1917 mentions metal plates, but still has them being laid out by hand from transfers, so photographic reproduction wasn't being done on a large scale.

Steve,

That shop in the photo looks like an old school Kinkos store instead of a large operation.

ALC was a large sophisticated operation with rotary machines. They had to be. T206 cards alone were printed in the millions. Let's say 300 million cards were printed, at 34 cards per sheet, that's 8.8mm+ sheets. Plus all the other stuff they printed. I doubt that the press was anything other than a modern offset litho press with durable metal plates.

The technology was available at the time. My guess by looking at the T206 cards under magnification is that a half-tone screen was placed over the silhouette of the player on the printing plate. Think of it like a screen door on a frame with a stylus. The engraver would press down on the screen lightly for half-tones and press down harder for shadows. The underside of the mesh was inked, which was to be the acid resist for the relief engraving.

https://legionofandy.files.wordpress...nal-w-text.jpg

https://legionofandy.files.wordpress...nal-w-text.jpg

This was very simple technology so I'm not sure how Knapp was fooled.

Here, read through this blog and all the sections. I think you will enjoy it.

Is it possible the backs were printed in bulk and then the fronts were printed as needed? There’s no “personalization” on the back that would necessitate that back and front be printed together or need to stay together (unlike the T205 which had fronts that had to stay with backs due to the bios/stats).


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think there was way more than 34 cards on all of the T206 sheets.

here's one that using the plate scratches makes it at the least 240 cards.
https://imageevent.com/patrickr/upda...=Sheet%203.jpg

That may be how the master for a particular color was made.

The actual plates/stones were probably laid out with transfers printed from the masters. If they weren't, each position on the sheet would have a slightly different halftone. There are very few differences in the halftone areas, and the ones I've seen are usually in different series.

ALC was indeed huge, and would have had a wide variety of presses. The shop I worked at was fairly small, but did do one job while I was there that was for about 1.5 million bank deposit slips. We didn't have high speed anything, all sheetfed presses. Start to finish was under a month, and If I remember it right the job was in the pressroom for only 3-4 days. From what I've been able to find, the rate we could print at was only about 4-5x the speed of a flatbed press.

That's an interesting thought Matt.

I think it's possible that was done for the more popular brands. Piedmont and SC, maybe not for other brands. Running the job on multiple presses would make sense for the sort of production Piedmont required.

The existing evidence suggests that it wasn't done.
We have no examples of blank fronts, or of other cards with a T206 back.
We do have a decent number of blank backs, and cards with multiple things printed on the back of the card.
So we can say that fronts were certainly printed on stock that hadn't had backs printed yet. But without a surviving example or something else like a workers diary or company documents, the opposite isn't certain.

It's been almost 4 years since anyone posted in this thread, once again I want to thank Steve for starting this thread 9+ years ago and pointing out the plate scratches. They have provided more valuable information about T206 sheet(s) layouts then I think anyone would have imagined.

They provide accurate and sometimes predictable information ( I have a card on the way that was a prediction based off the plate scratches).

Now that the site supports bigger images it should be easier for some people to see the scratches better.

I still need to make a few small changes to some of the sheets

Here's the first sheet, this one is found with two different sets of fronts
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...1A%20Front.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...1B%20Front.jpg[/IMG]
one of the two fronts has Sheckard next to Goode which is also supported by this SC150/30 miscut
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...kard-Goode.jpg[/IMG]
Here's the back of the sheet you should be able to enlarge the image to it's original size
https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...et%201A-1B.jpg

Here's the second sheet also used on two sets of fronts
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...0Sheet%20A.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...s/2B%20new.jpg[/IMG]
The Wagner strip matches up exactly to one of the fronts
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...er%20strip.jpg[/IMG]

Back of sheet 2
https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...ts/C-D%201.jpg

Sheet number 3 one set of fronts
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...%203%20_2_.jpg[/IMG]

Cicotte an Seymour are next to each other on this sheet and there is also a front print flaw that links them together
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...mour%20_5_.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...Copy%20_2_.jpg[/IMG]

Back of sheet 3
https://photos.imageevent.com/patric.../Sheet%203.jpg

Sheet number 4
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...0Sheet%204.jpg[/IMG]

Back of sheet 4
https://photos.imageevent.com/patric.../Sheet%20G.jpg

Hi Pat,

Great work as always!

In regards to the second sheet, with the Honus Wagner on the proof sheet lining up to the first "?", is there any chance that the 2nd "?" spot could be the Eddie Plank? It's a portrait, which goes along with the rest of the cards. Also, didn't the old story of the broken printing plate mention something about Plank being at the end (corner?) of a sheet?

Hi Steve, It's not Plank, Plank does have a plate scratch but it doesn't match up to any of the plate scratch sheets.

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...ank%201a_1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...a%20back_1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...ank%201b_1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...b%20Back_1.jpg[/IMG]

That is one of the spots that I'm still searching for a plate scratch for. I think it might be Doc White that should have that plate scratch but it could be another subject. Doc White was definitely on that sheet but I haven't found a plate scratch on any yet.

I have more of a general question (about something specific).

In the first image of post #331, the red column (third from right) sticks out like a hugely sore thumb. How certain are you of that placement? All of the colors on the various sheets shown in that post are pretty consistent and balanced with the other cards...except for that red column, which would have fit in more perfectly with all of the red cards on the Young/Waddell/Cobb sheet. If the positioning is correct, do you imagine it was just a weird anomaly when they laid out the sheet? Is there any possibility in your mind that the column is misplaced?

Thanks.

If it's Criger that you're talking about Darren I'm pretty certain of the placement.

There is more than one scratch on that sheet but I just posted the main scratch, there's actually two more partial scratches on that sheet.

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...%20updated.jpg[/IMG]

The area I circled is another scratch that puts Criger next to Hahn here's that plate scratch pairing I just scanned them by lining up the scratches to scan the fronts and they line up perfectly by doing that.

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...ets/img731.jpg[/IMG]

And here's the backs

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...ets/img733.jpg[/IMG]

It's also possible the short scratch is duplicated columns. The left end seems to line up pretty well with the right end of the longer one.

Now wouldn't that complicate things.

I have to say I'm very happy how things have worked out. Pat has done the bulk of the heavy lifting. At one point I thought I'd gotten pretty far, with my little jigsaw puzzles where I drew in the scratches and lined them up.
Then Pat sent me scans of something like double the amount I'd found to that point. That he's included stuff where a back flaw and front flaw match consistently is a big bonus.

I'm not sure we'll ever get to knowing the size of any sheet, but having things taken so far is cause for hope.

In stamps, it's called "plating" where through study we can know exactly where on what sheet a stamp was. It usually takes decades to really get it down, and even the heavily studied ones still have new discoveries made nearly 100 years after the first published results. And that's with the sheet size being known
To have an approximate size and layout without knowing the sheet size is some amazing work. Probably one of the best I've seen in any of my hobbies.

You have mentioned this before Steve, I don't think it does but I could be wrong. When you have time to work on it let me know and I will send you large scans of all the scratches from that sheet.

I have a card coming that I thought would be here today that could tell us the absolute minimum size of sheet 2 A/B if my thinking is correct.

Hey Pat,
I was scanning some cards last night and noticed a possible scratch mark…

https://photos.imageevent.com/cardsa...ge%20_400_.jpg
https://photos.imageevent.com/cardsa...ge%20_401_.jpg


Let me know what you think.

Be well Brian

Hey Brian,

I have seen a few PD350's with partial scratches like that but nothing like the 150's. I haven't found enough to even put a pair of subjects together with
any of the 350 marks.

Okay the card I was waiting for came today and it refers to sheet #2
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...0Sheet%20A.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...e/2B%20new.jpg[/IMG]


8 years ago Steve A posted in this thread about a Doc White with an upside down back

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/09.jpg[/IMG]

Besides the partial scratch mark on the main back there was another print mark on the second back


[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/12.jpg[/IMG]

Steve eventually found a Doyle that matched the main upside down Doc White back


[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/13.jpg[/IMG]






I eventually found a Doyle with the same mark as the partial second back on Doc White
[QUOTE=Pat R;1785697]Almost three years ago Steve pointed out in this thread that the upside
down back of White matched up with a Doyle back.

At the time I searched and couldn't find a Doyle or Stone (Doyle and
Stone share the same position on a plate scratch sheet) that had a print
flaw that is on the smaller portion of the second back on the upside down
White.

This Doyle that sold on ebay recently has that mark.
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/14.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/15.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/16.jpg[/IMG]
So far Doc White hasn't been found with a plate scratch but if
one is eventually found it should allow us to figure out the exact
size of this plate scratch sheet based off the upside down White.

After several years of searching I finally found a George Stone with this mark
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/17.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...hsheets/18.jpg[/IMG]


It would be great to find a Doc White with a plate scratch then we would know for sure the exact number of horizontal subjects on this sheet but I think we can now say it's pretty likely that it's a minimum of 20 subjects wide.

The plate scratches show that this back plate was used for two front sheets, every position has two subjects with the same scratch

http://[IMG]https://photos.imageeven...201%20Back.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...1%20Back_1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...g%20Back_1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...y%20Back_1.jpg[/IMG]

There are only two positions with an undiscovered scratch, the matching scratches for Reulbach and G. Brown If Doc white is the missing scratch for Reulbach that would mean the sheet was 20 subjects wide
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...Copy%20_2_.jpg[/IMG]

If he is the missing scratch for George Brown the sheet would be 22 subjects wide.
[IMG]https://photos.imageevent.com/patric...20-%20Copy.jpg[/IMG]

It's also possible that like some of the plate scratch sheets the scratch on this one didn't go all the way across the sheet and Doc White is in another position which would make the sheet larger than 22 subjects wide.