Wisconsin School for the Deaf - Tattler Yearbook (Delavan, WI)

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Europe. One of Gutenburg’s Bibles is now in the Library of Congress in Washington. The first American press was set up in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the first half of the seventeenth century. These presses were clumsy, slow-moving and expensive. A wine pres had given Gutenburg the idea for making a machine for printing. Another art is wood block printing. Linoleum block printing is quite new. It started with the discovery of linoleum. The introduction of linoleum block printing gave a new idea for decorating things for the home. Some of the more common uses of this type of printing are for greeting cards, book-covers, prints for framing, letter heads, book plates, place cards, book marks and many others. The linoleum used for block printing is known as “battleship linoleum”. It is made in thicknesses up to one fourth of an inch. It is generally a natural brown, but it can be obtained in almost anv other color. The brown is best for cutting. If the surface of the linoleum is not quite smooth, it may be worked down by using a very fine sandpaper. Linoleum cuts, which are to be printed in a power press or a hand jobber, must be type high, which is 918 thousanths of an inch. The better blocks are made from five ply, laminated wood and three-eighths inch linoleum. It is always wise to select a wel-made block when one wants to print any number of copies. The prints should be dried before handling. They should not be placed in piles as the air can not reach the printed surface. When wet prints are piled up, they will lose their original hardness or thinness and become dirty. Good prints should be framed in plain block frames with clear glass, depending on the nature of the subject. Linoleum cuts can also be used in making plaques. When the cut is finished, it is painted with enamel, oil paint or poster paint and finished with shellac. It may be used as a wall plaque. The older boys of the Wisconsin School for the Deaf have done this type of work in the Art department and also in the printing classes. Paper By Royal W. Eklof THOUGH paper was made by the Chinese long before the Christian era, it was not until the eighth century that the art of paper making was brought to Europe. The spread of this new art was slow, and it was not until the fourteenth century that paper became common just in time to be of great use to Gutenburg’s invention, printing. It is very postponed

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and his brothers went to law to try to make Gutenburg take them into partnership in the dead man’s place. Gutenburg won the suit. In 1446 Gutenburg returned to his hometown of Mainz after having been an exile for more than twenty-five years. All his money was supposed to have gone into his work, and his wife paid the taxes for the same house in which his family used to live, lie borrowed a large sum of money from a merchant of Mainz named John Fust, to get his “tools”, and to purchase other materials for his printing so the printing stock belonged to Fust. They hired a skillful worker in metal named Schoeffer who was able to assist Gutenburg a great deal in carrying out his ideas in making movable type. Gutenburg said that If he wanted a hundred copies of the letter “A ”, he had to carve u hundred copies of the letter in wood. This method was too slow, and moreover, the wooden letters were loo soft, and weak to last. But JSchoefFer had a better idea. This was carving the letter on a piece of metal, and with this metal letter, he punched a mold in a softer metal. Then melted metal was poured into the mold, and copies of the letter were made. After this method had succeeded. Gutenburg determined to print a copy of the Bible. It took a long time to do it, and it was very expensive. It was completed in 1456, and the men agreed that it was “as clear as handwriting”. A great misfortune befell Gutenburg after his hour of triunph. Just when his work on the Bible ended, strife broke out. The wealthy Fust wanted all his money back which he had loaned Gutenburg. He knew that Gutenburg could not pay him after spending much money on publishing the Bible, and perhaps that was why Fust immediately pressed his claim. As Gutenburg was unable to pav it back. Fust seized all the printing plant. Poor Gutenburg was discouraged, but he refused to give up. He found a good friend later on who helped him set up another press from which he printed one or two books. He died in 1468, a poor man. thirteen years after the completion of the great work which made him one of the world’s famous men. Nearly four centuries afterward the citizens in Mainz erected a statue in his honor. Block Printing Geneva L. Broege THE Art of block printing goes back to the Chinese. They invented this about 1400. They had a kind of “printing” which began with the making of seals by pressing carved blocks of wood into soft clay. They pressed sheets of paper over slabs of wood on which designs had been carved and inked. To John Gutenburg of Germany is given credit for the largest part of the invention of movable type and the printing press in

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that the invention of the printing press would have been postponed for years if paper had not been available. In very early times people used stone walls, monuments, bones of animals, the smooth bark of trees, pieces of broken pottery, palm leaves, dried animal skins and soft clay as material on which to write. Papyrus was used by the Egyptians who wrote on it with pens of sharpened sticks or reeds and ink mixed from vegetable gum. soot, and water. Papyrus was made by laying thin slices of the stem of the papyrus plant with their edges overlapping across other slices laid at right angles. The whole was moistened with water, pressed down, and the rough places smoothed off with ivory or a smooth shell. The slices were glued together to form a tough white or ivory-colored sheet. Before real paper was invented, the waste left over from the making of silk thread could be washed and flattened into a kind of paste which, when dried and smoothed, was used for a writing surface. After years and years of experiments and improvements, using rags, wood pulp and minerals, smooth sheets of fine paper were made. Until the nineteenth century cotton and linen rags were the materials mostly used to make paper. They were cleaned, soaked, boiled, and reduced to a pulp by beating and grinding. The pulp was spread in thin layers and dried between sheets of felt to form paper. About the beginning of the nineteenth century the modern process of paper-making by machinery was invented. By far the greater part of the world’s output is now made from wood pulp. Linen and cotton rags, Hax waste and sweepings are still used for fine paper. The best tissue papers are made of hemp and rags. Wrapping papers are made of all kinds of fibers, straw, wood pulp, old rope and twine. Newsprint paper in countries where wood is plentiful, is made from wood pulps, rags, straw, etc. Most book papers are now made of wood pulp. While wood pulp remains the cheapest and most readily available material up to the present, probably necessity will drive us to the utilization of other plant fibers in its place. It takes more than five million cords of pulpwood each year to supply the paper needs of our country. In Northern and Central Wisconsin there are many paper-making plants where logs, cut into short lengths, are barked and trimmed. Then they are sliced up into small chips which are put into a huge tank along with a sulphite solution which softens them. Steam is forced in. When the chips have cooked for several hours in the solution, the fibers are separated, and a pulp is formed. After the thick creamy mass has been washed and filtered through screens, it is drawn into large tanks where a solution of bleaching powder makes the pulp white. China clay and coloring matter is added, and all is thoroughly mixed by machinery. The pulp is then spread on an endless copper screen so fine that the water drains off while the fibers remain. The pulp is then passed between rollers which force out any excess moisture, and paper is the result. 24