Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/667

 ENGRAVING 655 of the United States, the national bonds, and the revenue and postage stamps, are all made in whole or in part by them. To insure great- er security, most of the currency is engraved and printed in three establishments, the same notes passing through two of the companies here and then going to Washington, where they are finished. The American bank-note engraver confines himself to line engraving on steel; stipple, mezzotint, aquatint, and other methods not being suitable for his purposes. In order to attain the greater security against imitation, the engravings are made elaborately fine, from drawings by the best artists, and the plates are decorated with geometric designs cut by machinery with an exquisite minuteness and regularity impossible to be accomplished by hand. Prominent among American de- signers of vignettes are the names of A. B. Du- rand, J. W. Oasilear, James D. Smillie, F. O. 0. Barley, and James Macdonough. The drawing of a vignette is made much larger .than the in- tended engraving, and it is finished with the most elaborate attention to detail. This de- sign is then reduced, by copying on a da- guerre9type plate, to the size required for the bank note. It passes now into the hands of the engraver, who traces with a steel point on the daguerreotype plate the outlines of the picture. An impression is then taken on paper from this plate, and while the ink is still fresh the outline engraving thus obtained is laid face downward on a softened steel plate and passed through the press. The exact outline is thus transferred to this plate, which is then treated like any other line engraving. After the en- graver's work is done the plate is hardened by restoring its carbon. This plate is never printed from directly, but is retained as a die, to be reproduced by the Perkins process. The cost of engraving an ordinary vignette is from $300 to $400, but large and elaborate ones are more expensive. The time required is from one to two months. The principal vignette engravers in the United States now are James Smillie, Charles Burt, Alfred Jones, W. W. Rice, F. Gursch, S. A. Schoff, Louis Del Noce, and James Bannister. There are usually from two to three vignettes on the face of a bank note, each of which is engraved originally on a separate plate. The machine work, technically called " counters," on which the denomination- al numbers are engraved, as well as the other lathe ornamentation, is done also on separate plates, which are hardened for dies. A bank-note company always has on hand a large number of these dies of vignettes and other designs, and new ones are continually produced. The designs made by the various machines in use cannot be imitated excepting by similar machines, and these cannot easily be procured by counterfeiters. The lathe in- vented by Spencer has been perfected to a de- gree undreamed of by him. A first-class lathe costs about $5,000. Many of its parts are as nicely constructed as the works of a watch. It 298 VOL. vr. 42 moves with the most accurate minuteness, and can be adjusted to engrave figures of almost microscopic delicacy of detail. In making new designs the operator experiments on smoked glass, which being held to the light shows the pattern produced. If satisfactory it is reproduced on soft steel, to be afterward hardened into a die. Parallel lines are en- graved by the plain ruling machine, which works also with mathematical accuracy. By the medallion ruling machine any coin oV medal, or any figure, whether cameo or in- taglio, may be^ reproduced on a plane surface. This machine is not used now, as cheaper ones that will do similar work are made in Ger- many. The cycloidal machine invented by Cyrus Durand, now also in disuse, is capable of doing very fine work. A machine called the "geometrical .pantograph," patented in this country in 1866, is the invention of Ed- mund Oldham, formerly an engraver in the bank of Ireland, but now of New York. It is remarkable for its capabilities, being able to reproduce any design either of the same size as the original, larger, or smaller. Like the me- dallion ruling machine, it is guided by the hand. After the lathe-work patterns have been cut on the soft steel, a part of the centre of the counter large enough for the denomina- tional figures is smoothed by erasing the de- sign. As this portion is then a little lower than the surrounding surface, it is forced up by blows of a hammer on the back, and the fig- ures are engraved on it by hand. The distinc- tive name of the bank and other large letters are also engraved by hand. In designing a new bank note, impressions from various vignettes and counters are made on paper, and the pieces are fitted together by the modeller in such a manner as to leave appropriate spaces for the lettering and signatures. When a sat- isfactory design is secured, the next process is to transfer the several plates which make up the note to the plate from which the notes are to be printed. The latter is -large enough usually to contain four notes, each of which is produced on it by successive rollings under the cylinders. This" large plate is not hardened like the original, but is printed from in its soft state, and is capable of producing about 60,000 impressions before becoming impaired by wearing. The printing of bank notes demands extreme care at every step. The ink must be nicely ground and mixed, and of the finest quality. Formerly the best black ink was made from Frankfort black, a charcoal ob- tained from grape and vine lees, peach kernels, and bone shavings ; but now it is usually pre- pared by calcining sugar in an air-tight iron vessel. If the notes were printed in black alone, they could easily be reproduced by pho- tography. To guard against this, many de- vices have been employed. At one time sev- eral colors were used, but it was found that all the tints could be removed chemically from the paper without destroying its texture. At last