If You're Interested in Lithographic Printing You Should Read This

[Pat R]

Posting this for future reference in case the link disappears.

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[jggames]

And here is the lower numbered patent just in case

[FrankWakefield]

Cylinders... not plates.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by FrankWakefield

Cylinders... not plates.

I'm not sure what your implying Frank.

[steve B]

In more modern presses the plates were thin enough to wrap around a cylinder.
That cylinder has grippers and adjusters to move and tension the plate.

It looks like this is a system using a tube as a plate, I'll have to look it up to see if it was coated after casting or if they just applied the design straight onto the zinc. It would probably be set up by laying out transfers just as a stone would be.

It also sounds similar to the press Brett Litho had.

[steve B]

Overall, this is pretty amazing news.

I've suspected a two color press being used for at least some T206s for a few years now. Many color missing cards are missing two colors, and where there are registration issues the colors are often well registered in pairs.

It's certainly not all of every press run, but that ALC did actually have a license for a multi color press makes one being used far more certain.

The closest I came in the past to even so much as modern style plates was ALC suing a couple guys from Britain for selling them a process for photographically produced plates that was apparently totally useless if not fake altogether.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by steve B

In more modern presses the plates were thin enough to wrap around a cylinder.
That cylinder has grippers and adjusters to move and tension the plate.

It looks like this is a system using a tube as a plate, I'll have to look it up to see if it was coated after casting or if they just applied the design straight onto the zinc. It would probably be set up by laying out transfers just as a stone would be.

It also sounds similar to the press Brett Litho had.

This is way over my head Steve this is mentioned in the patent but I'm not sure if it's for what you're referring to.

Edited to add I could be wrong but the way I read it American Lithograph bought the patent so they may have been the only ones using this type of press for years later.

[FrankWakefield]

American Lithograph could have bought that to use it, or to deny it to competitors.

Lithography to me means printing from a stone. Smooth, polished flat surface. Wax, fat or oil is placed where they wanted the stone to remain, and then an acid on all of it eats away the unwaxed surface, then it's all cleaned. What's left is a stone plate. I am unsure of the timing, but I think in the late 1800s they got away from stones and started using metal plates.

That sheet that depicts rollers, with faces across the middle one, has the word 'transfer' in the caption. Transfer rollers could have been getting their ink from a stone, or a metal plate.

Old school lithography is a work of beauty, it's art. Until lithography came along, anyone with art on their walls would have had original art. Currier and Ives is a name some of us recognize. That's because they got art, lithographic art, into the homes of their subscribers and patrons. They could print that horse drawn sleigh hauling a happy family across a snow covered bridge and lane and through the woods on their way to grandmother's house. All of these little cards we collect were, and ARE, works of art.