Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/54

44 which keeps them parallel, and regulates the width of the space to be left for the back. A strip of paper is pasted into the back, the edges of the cloth are laid in, and the boards are passed between a pair of india-rubher rollers, by the pressure of which any air-spaces between the cloth and the millboards are squeezed out. They are then hung up to dry previous to receiving title and ornamentation. The ornamentation on book cases consists of embossing or blind tooling, black or colour printing, and gilding; and the machines in which the work is done are the same in principle. They are powerful presses, worked either by long lever handles or by power with heavy fly-wheels. Blind patterns, or gilded work and titling, are done at one operation, the dies containing the pattern being heated either with steam or gas. In the case of ornaments to be printed in ink, the pattern is first blocked in the blind with a heated die, and subsequently ink-printed in the same press with the die cold.

The gathering, collating, and stitching of the sheets differ in no way from the same processes already described for leather work. Machinery has been adapted for folding, but, for the working of folding-machines, guide points require to be printed on the sheets, as books must be folded by the type and not by the edge of the sheet. A machine of American origin, besides folding 8vo sheets, will cut, fold, and insert the half sheet of a 12mo. This machine, attended by a single girl, is sufficient to fold from 1200 to 1500 sheets in an hour. The folded sheets are sometimes condensed in another American machine called "The Smasher," which is similar in its action to the embossing press. After stitching, books which are to be cased up with uncut edges have their face and tail cut square by means of a trimming-machine. The principle of this machine consists in a revolving circular knife driven with a treadle or handle; a table (containing the gauge, press bar, and rest), upon which the books are placed, glides across the axis of the knife, and the parts requiring cutting off, coming in contact with the revolving knife, are cut away. When the edges are to be gilt they are cut in some of the numerous forms of guillotine cutting-machines. The commonest form of guillotine is a heavy knife fixed in a strong framework, and having a diagonal motion in its descent by which it cuts with a kind of shearing action. In another machine the knife acts with a punching motion, and cuts the three edges in one descent; and there is in use a most ingenious American machine, with a revolving table, in which each edge of the book is in succession drawn in a slanting direction up against a fixed cutter. The edges are gilt as in ordinary binding, but instead of each volume being operated on singly, a number are placed evenly in a lying press and gilt simultaneously.

After trimming or gilding, as the case may be, the backs are glued up, and when dry they are rounded, generally with the hammer. Several machines have been devised to perform this operation, and one patented in 1865 by Messrs Cope and Bradbrook has come into extensive use. In this machine the book is clamped up between a pair of horizontal cheeks on a table which moves backwards and forwards under a heavy roller adjusted in a frame over the table. The pressure of the roller against the back gives the required "round," which can be varied by raising or lowering the pitch of the roller. From the rounding process the volume goes to the backing-machine, by which the joint or groove along the back in which the boards lie is formed. The backing-machine is worked by the hand, and its action is somewhat similar to that of the rounding-machine. The book is seized between a pair of jaws, which only leave about a quarter of an inch projecting above them. The workman brings down a roller on this projecting part of the volume, and its pressure forces the free portion of end sheets over the sides of the jaws, thus forming the joint to receive the boards. With the backing the part of the work done by machinery ends. The backs are next coated with glue, pieces of calico for pasting down are laid on, and the entire back is covered with paper. "When dry, the volume is fitted into its cases and "pasted up," and the operations are finished by piling the cased books in a hydraulic press between boards, so as to leave only the backs projecting.

A kind of binding in which the process of sewing is dispensed with, and the backs coated with a rapidly-drying solution of india-rubber, was patented by Mr William Hancock in 1836, and is still used to some extent. The sheets in this binding must either be cut into single leaves or folded as folios, as they all require to be agglutinated by repeated coatings of the india-rubber solution. The india-rubber backing is convenient for volumes of plates, music books, and any volumes made up of large separate sheets.

Although cloth casing is found sufficient for the greater proportion of the literature which now circulates so extensively, books of reference and works in public libraries require the more secure and workmanlike binding accomplished by hand. At the same time, while ornaments stamped from dies may be very pretty and effective, they have no claim to rank as works of art, and for the collections of bibliophiles the hand-tooling of bibliopegic artists is in as great demand and as handsomely remunerated as was the art of the most accomplished binders of the 16th century.

 BOOK-KEEPING.—The object of book-keeping is to exhibit a distinct and correct state of one's affairs, and to enable companies, firms, and individuals in trade, or otherwise occupied, to ascertain at any time the nature and extent of their business, the amount of their profits or available income, or, as the case may be, the extent of their losses.

To those engaged in trade or commercial pursuits book-keeping is absolutely necessary, as by it all transactions should be regulated, and their results exhibited. The more simple the system the better; but care must be taken that the plan adopted is sufficiently comprehensive and explanatory, to satisfy not only the person keeping the books, but those who may have occasion to refer to them; for, however satisfactory it may be to a trader to follow a system which is intelligible to himself alone, circumstances might arise to render the inspection of others necessary, and from their inability to follow out transactions in the books, suspicions would probably be engendered for which there was no real foundation. Hence the necessity for the adoption of certain recognized and approved systems, which, being plain and easily understood, must prove satisfactory to all concerned.

Book-keeping, when conducted upon sound principles, is invaluable; it not only shows the general result of a commercial career, but admits of analysis, by which the success or failure, the value or utter worthlessness of its component parts, or each particular transaction, can be easily ascertained. In a word, on the one hand it promotes order, regularity, fair dealing, and honourable enterprise; on the other, it defeats dishonesty, and preserves the integrity of man when dealing with his fellows.

It would be difficult, and perhaps of little importance, to trace the origin of book-keeping. It was certainly known to the ancients (see Pliny, lib. ii. cap. 7); and Cicero seems to have had bill transactions between Rome and Athens when he arranged for his son's education without the necessity of having to remit money (see Epis. ad Att. xii. 24; xv. 25), which infers some kind of book-keeping. Kelly, however, who wrote on the subject in 1805, asserts, and it is not disputed, that a friar, named Lucas di Borgo, whose work on algebra was the first to appear in print, was the first to write a treatise upon book-keeping, and this was published at Venice in 1495.

This work was followed by many others, possessing considerable merit, but so complex as to make them useless. After a time the mercantile community became alive to the fact that a practical system would be preferable to the theoretical suggestions of writers who were utterly ignorant of commercial matters; and men, more or less connected with trade, began to write on the subject. The incubus of prolixity, however, still clung to them, conciseness of style seeming an impossibility, and the great fundamental principles of the art were so smothered by rules and explanations—the volumes sometimes containing 500 or 600 pages—that the difficulty was how to apply them; hence the need of still greater simplicity and improvement.

In 1796 Mr E. T. Jones of Bristol devised a plan "for keeping books correctly," breaking the ice with a treatise which is still held in very high estimation. After that a great improvement is visible in the writings of authors on this important subject, as in those of Benjamin Booth (1789), Hamilton (1820), Jones (2d treatise, 1821, 3d treatise, 1831), C. Morrison (1823), W. and R. Chambers, Edinburgh,—the most of them, those of Jones excepted, being elementary works, more particularly adapted to schools, and illustrating the principles of the science by the example of one set of books adapted to foreign trade. In F. H. Carter's Practical Book-keeping, adapted to Commercial and Judicial Accounting (3d ed. 1875), which gives a great variety of forms and sets of books, the recognized