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

[steve B]

Originally Posted by 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.

That was the original form it took, sometimes called direct lithography. Stone gets wet and inked and the paper contacts the stone directly.

There are/were some proofing presses that still do that, as well as a few places that print art.

Later flatbed presses were offset lithography, where the stone was inked, and transferred the image onto a rubber roller that transferred the image to the paper.

The stones for that needed non-reversed images.

And the way they were laid out was interesting. a smaller stone had the master image, and it was wet and inked with a very thick tarlike ink. That was printed onto basically tissue paper, making a transfer. Similar to the early 60's Topps iron on transfers.

Those transfers were applied to the stone, and then the thin paper was removed using some solvent. Once they were all down, the etching process went on as usual.

"Modern" presses were also offset, but the plates were thin aluminum coated with a limestone like surface. That had a thin wax layer that was light sensitive so they could be exposed using a photographic negative, than developed, in the etching process.

There are newer versions that computer generate the plates on the press. I've read a bit about them, but haven't seen one in person.

[steve B]

This patent and the press Brett was apparently using fall in between the 1875 rotary offset presses that used cardboard as the offset mat, and Rubels 1901 press.

https://www.aptpressdirect.com/blog/...printing-press

This press is using a solid roller as the plate, and arranging multiple watering/inking systems around a fairly large central cylinder that the paper travels on. Each inking station has it's own "plate" and prints a different color. Very similar to a non- lithographic press Hoe made back in the mid 1800's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_printing_press

As a practical arrangement, making adjustments etc to more than 2-3 inking stations would be a challenge, and those adjustments in inking and watering are usually made while the press is running. Which would make more than 2-3 stations more than a bit dangerous.

Newer multi color presses are pretty much just multiple regular presses built on the same frame so the paper goes into each one sequentially. Even then the operator sometimes has to reach between two somewhat closely spaced running presses to adjust things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhPgr6nIgJ0&t=3s

These setups can be something like 10 colors.