Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 12.djvu/451

 u s. xii. DEC. 4, 1915 ] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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of the Church in Madras, would be able to give some particulars about this chaplain, with the date of his death. It is presumed that he was one of the chaplains of the Madras establishment of the East India Company. PENRY LEWIS.

THE WATER OF THE NILE. Joinville, in his account of the Nile, tells that the people of Egypt make the Nile water potable by grinding almonds or beans and soaking these in it for a night thus, it would appear, ridding it of its impurities. Is he correct ? If so, what are the impurities which could be thus eliminated ? Is there any other record of this contrivance ? and is it or anything analogous to it practised at the present day ? PEREGRINUS.

ANASTATIC PRINTING. (US. xii. 359, 403.)

THIS was the invention of Rudolf Appel, a Silesian, about the year 1840, but a similiar process was being used in England before or about this date. The earliest specimen I can find of anastatic printing done in England is a child's story written by Mrs. R. Lee (also known as Mrs. T. E. Bowdich), which was printed by the new method at Cowell's Anastatic Press in Ipswich. Compared with all other existing specimens of anastatic printing, this is the crudest, and although it is undated I see evidences that it was one of the earliest. It was probably printed about 1840.

On 25 April, 1845, Michael Faraday lectured to the Royal Institution upon this new invention, which was then regarded as revolutionary. The lecture is reported in The Athenaeum, 3 May, 1845, and reprinted in Littell's Living Age, vol. vi. pp. 144-5. It gave a great impetus to the new method, and for a time there was wide interest taken in it, and some concern shown by bankers and others, who feared that signatures to cheques would be forged thereby. An instance of the alarm created may be found in Chambers' s Journal, quoted in Littell's Living Age 5 April, 1845, p. 56 :

11 Speaking of this new wonder, Chambers' 8 Journal says : ' In contemplating the effect of these astonishing inventions, it is impossible to foresee their results upon the ordinary transactions of life. If any deed, negotiable security, or other legal instrument, can be so imitated that the writer of, and subscriber to it, cannot distinguish

his own handwriting from that which is forged, new legislative enactments must be made, and new modes of representing money, and securing property by documentary record, must be resorted to. A paper currency and' copyhold securities will be utterly useless, because they will no longer fulfil the objects for which they, and instruments of a like nature, are employed. Again, the law of copyright as respects literary property will have to be thoroughly revised. Let us, for an instant, view the case in reference to The Times newspaper. Suppose an early copy of that powerful journal to be some morning procured, and anastatyped in a quarter of an hour. The pirated pages may be subjected to printing machinery, and worked off at the rate of 4,000 copies in each succeeding hour, and sold to the public, to the ruinous injury of the proprietors. The government newspaper stamp would be no protection, for of course they could be imitated as unerringly as the rest. This, too, is an extreme case against the imitators ; for a newspaper would have to be done in a great hurry. Books, maps, prints, and music, could be pirated wholesale, and at leisure.' "

There are many definitions of anastatic printing, to which I will refer. The following is by Philip H. De la Motte, who practised the art and improved it :

" Anastatic printing is a peculiar process discovered a few years since in Germany, by which any design made on paper with an oily material, is transferred to a plate of zinc or other metal. From the impression so transferred, any number of copies can be taken on paper by the same process as in ordinary zincography or lithography. The original design on paper, from which the zinc plate is to receive its impression, may be produced either by printing (from types, copperplate, wood, stone, &c.) or by the manual process of writing or drawing. The only re- quisite is, that the vehicle for this design be of an oleaginous nature."

Other descriptions of the method which I have within reach at the moment and have consulted are in Bigmore and Wyman's in the ninth edition of ' The Encyclopaedia Britannica,' by J. T. Walker, upon ' Survey- ing,' in which is a very good paragraph included under the sub-heading ' Map Printing ' ; and in ' N. & Q.,' 1 S. xii. 154 (there was a brief discussion of the subject in the First Series of ' N. & Q.').
 * Bibliography of Printing ' ; the article

The principal promoter of anastatic printing was S. H. Cowell (d. 1875), whose press still exists at 10, Buttermarket , Ipswich. Cowell was one of the few who took the method up commercially. Many editions were issued of his pamphlet :

" A brief description of the art of Anastatic printing and of the uses to which it may be applied, with full directions for using the anastatic ink and making drawings for transfer. Ipswichl Price sixpence.

This gave full directions as to the method, and very numerous specimen illustrations