Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/20

8 ed to Mr. Foulis and Mr. Tilloch, which expired in 1798. Several works were stereotyped by these gentlemen; but Mr. T. having settled in London, the concern was dropped; and Lord Stanhope (upon the recommendation of the late Mr. Elmsley, the bookseller), entered into a treaty with Mr. Foulis, and ultimately purchased from that gentleman whatever information it was in his power to communicate respecting the stereotype art. It was his lordship’s intention, in making the purchase, to communicate this valuable art to the public, without what we found Ged had met with, that our efforts would experience a similar opposition from prejudice and ignorance, we persevered in our object for a considerable time, and at last resolved to take out letters patent for England and Scotland, to secure to ourselves, for the usual term, the benefit of our invention: for the discovery was still as much our own as if nothing similar had been practised before; Ged’s knowledge of the art having died with his son, whose proposals for reviving it, published in 1751, not having been followed with success, he went to Jamaica, where he died. The patents were accordingly obtained, nay, they are even expired; and yet we hear people who only began their stereotype labours yesterday, taking to themselves the merit of being the first inventors.” Again Mr. T. says (speaking of Didot’s claim to the merit of this invention), “The facts I have stated shew with how little justice this claim is made. It is true, he may have discovered, for himself, the secret of the art; but it is hardly credible that he could be ignorant of Ged’s progress, and of our’s, especially as it is well known, that when patents are obtained, a specification of the undefined is obliged to be put upon record, of which any one may obtain an office copy at a small expence.”

There is at least great inaccuracy (to say nothing more) in this statement. It appears Messrs. Tilloch and Foulis were not ignorant of Ged’s progress in 1781, nor of the difficulties which he had encountered in prosecuting his invention; but the knowledge of having died with his son, they determine to take out letters patent to secure the benefit of their own (our) invention: in order to obtain which, they must, first, distinctly state the invention itself, of which they swear themselves to have been the first and original inventors. Secondly, specification of the process is obliged to be put upon record. The invention itself is stated in the patent in the following words:

“Now know ye, that, in compliance with the said proviso, we, the said Andrew Foulis and Alexander Tilloch, do hereby declare, that our said invention of a method of making plates for the purpose of printing by or with such plates, instead of the movable types commonly used, which is performed by making a plate or plates for the page or pages of any book or other publication, and in printing of such book or other publication at the press, the plates of the pages to be arranged in their proper order, and the number of copies wanted thrown off, instead of throwing the impression wanted from movable types, locked together in the common method.”

If this description amounts to any thing intelligible, it is a claim of the invention of making plates for printing, instead of printing with movable types. The patentees then describe the process as follows:

“And such plates are made either by forming moulds or matrices for the page or pages of the books or other publications, to be printed by or with plates, and filling such moulds or matrices with metal, or with clay, or with a mixture of clay and earth; or by stamping or striking with these moulds or matrices the metal, clay, earth, or mixture of