Chapter XLIX: Part 49

Welsh substantives do not vary in their terminations, but the cases are distinguished by prepositions changing their initial letters, if mutable, according to their dependance on the preceding word; as, N. tŷ, _a house_; G. dodrefn fy nhŷ, _the furniture of my house_; A. prynodd dŷ, _he bought a house_; Ab. allan o’i thŷ, _out of her house_.

DEG, ten, and PYMTHEG, _fifteen_, before BLYNEDD, _years_, not only change the initial of the following word into its corresponding liquid, but likewise suffer a variation themselves; thus, for DEG BLYNEDD and PYMTHEG BLYNEDD we find DENG MLYNEDD and PYMTHENG MLYNEDD; and for PUMP BLYNEDD we read PUM MLYNEDD, _five years_.

_Authorities._--Dr. Pughe’s Welsh Grammar, 2d edit. Denbigh, 1832.--Rev. W. Gambold’s Welsh Grammar, 3d edit. Bala, 1833.--Dr. Prichard on the Celtic Languages, London, 1831.

WELL.

On the bottom side of the two cross bearers in the middle of a frame, on which the inner ends of the lower cases rest, there is frequently a bottom nailed of thin deal; this, when the ends of the cases are close together, forms a receptacle in which the compositor puts copy and other articles, and it is named a _Well_. To obtain access to it he slides one of the cases a little away from the other.

WETTING PAPER.

In quoting my old pressman’s observations again, it will be perceived that he is speaking of the practice when pelt balls were in use.

“When a pressman is engaged to work in a strange office, if there be no balls for him, he puts an old and a new pelt into the pelt pot, and, while his pelts are soaking, he inquires whether he has to wet paper or not; if he has to wet it, he does it in a large trough lined with lead, containing clean water. He holds the middle of the back of each quire in one hand, and the fore edge with the other hand, and draws it quickly through the water, the back first; lays it on a clean wrapper (which is laid on a clean paper board); opens part of the quire, leaves that part on the board, and draws the remainder of the quire, and all the other quires in the same proportion, through the water as often as necessary, till he has wet all the heap; then he places another paper board on the top of the heap, and puts sufficient weight on it; in this state it continues till the paper is all properly damped, by the moisture becoming diffused through the whole heap, except it be for fine work, when he turns the paper as often as he thinks necessary, pressing it at each turning; and common work would look better if the paper were turned.

“Paper for different works being of various qualities, it is impossible to form a regular judgment of how many dips in each quire all sorts of paper require; therefore the wetter must be cautious in examining, while wetting, whether each sort is of a soft, or spongy, middling, hard, or harsh nature; also to consider whether it be for a light or a heavy form, and dip each sort accordingly.”

In large establishments the pressmen do not wet the paper, but there is one or more persons appointed to that duty solely, who also turn it and press it, so that it is delivered to the pressmen to print, more uniformly in good condition, than where they wet it. _See_ TOKEN. TOKEN SHEET.

WHEEL.

Also called girt wheel, and drum; a cylinder of elm wood, with two flat broad grooves turned in it, on which the two girts wind and unwind alternately, as the carriage is run in and out. It is fixed on the spit, and one end of each girt is nailed to it; the other ends are fastened, the one that runs the carriage in to the end of the coffin, and the other to the fore end of the plank. The diameter of the wheel varies according to the size of the press.

WHITE LINE.

A line of quadrats.--_M._ So it is usually understood at present; yet it frequently happens that quadrats are not in sufficient quantity to use for white lines, even for the bottoms of the pages; reglet of a proper thickness is then substituted for quadrats, and sometimes leads, but these should never be used for this purpose--for a volume or a pamphlet may be wanted in a great hurry in the same measure, and then an inconvenience may arise from the leads being blocked up in an unnecessary manner.

WHITE PAGE.

A page that no matter comes in.--_M._

WHITE PAPER.

Although the first form be printed off, yet pressmen erroneously call that heap white paper, till the reiteration be printed.--_M._ This application of the term is now wearing away; and generally speaking, it is only used for paper not printed upon; when the pressmen are printing the first form of a sheet or the first side of a half sheet, they say they are working the white paper.

WHITE PAPER REGISTER.

Pulling an impression without ink, or with a sheet of waste paper between the form and the paper for the work, for the purpose of ascertaining that the furniture is right. This is a good old custom, and it is a pity that it is now so seldom practised, as it would prevent those mistakes of wrong furniture which occasionally occur in the white paper form, and when this happens, which I have known at different times, the only remedy is, either to cancel what has been printed, or to alter the reiteration form to make it register with that which is printed, to the disfigurement of the book when it is bound.

WHOLE PRESS. _See_ FULL PRESS.--_M._

WIDE SPACING,

is when en quadrats, or two thick spaces, are used between the words.

WILKINS, BEATA. _See_ DONATIONS.

WINTER.

A solid piece of wood, generally elm, similar to the head of a press, mortised into the cheeks below the carriage and the long ribs, and on which they rest.

I would recommend, contrary to the general practice, that in wooden presses the winter should lie solid in the mortises of the cheeks, and have no spring; and that all the spring should be in the head, which would not affect the perpendicular descent of the platen. This method of constructing a press would be found advantageous in all cases; but more particularly in one-pull presses, in which the platens are large:--

For it must be obvious, where an uniform impression is meant to be obtained from types, by means of the perpendicular descent of a body with a plane surface, that this surface and the surface of the types should be parallel to each other, and that every variation from these parallels must affect the equality of the pressure.

It being a necessary consequence, that the surface of the types should be horizontal; it will be equally clear, that every departure from this horizontal line will destroy the parallelism of the two surfaces, and prevent an equal pressure on all their parts.

One part of the carriage of a press lies on the winter, the other end resting on, and confined to, the forestay, which is fixed to the floor, and cannot give way; the coffin, in which is the press stone, lies on the carriage; and on the press stone the types are placed. Now, when great pressure is applied to the types, to produce an impression, it causes the winter to give way, which immediately disturbs the horizontal plane of the types, and destroys the parallel between them and the face of the platen, and causes an unequal pressure, besides straining the cords of the platen, the platen itself, and all the parts connected with it, to the injury of the workmanship, and of the whole machine; all which would be avoided by the winter being laid solid in the mortises of the cheeks, and the carriage and ribs justified by a level. It would also be attended with another advantage,--not being so liable to slur in running in; the inner tympan not being so close to the platen.

This principle is equally applicable to iron presses, as well as to wooden ones; and will tend to preserve them a longer time in good condition.

WOODEN RIBS.

That part of the frame in a wooden press on which the long ribs are fastened; in the middle they lie on the winter where the under resistance to the pressure is, and are kept in their place by the summer; and at the fore end they are supported by the fore stay; it is necessary that they should be perfectly level.

WOOL CARDS.

Made with strong wire; one of which is fastened to two pieces of wood that go across the wool hole, and the other has two open handles fixed to the back of it, for the purpose of carding the wool with which the balls are stuffed.

WOOL HOLE.

A place boxed off sometimes under a stair case, or in any situation where the dust will not affect the press room, or other departments of the business--in which the wool is carded wherewith to make the balls.

The wool is kept in the box, over which two pieces of wood are stretched across and fastened down, lowest in the front; on these one of the cards is fixed. In the act of carding the wool the dust and refuse fall into the box, and are thus prevented from being trampled about.

WOOL HOLE. The workhouse. When a compositor or pressman is reduced by age or illness to take refuge in the workhouse, it is said he is in the _Wool Hole_.

WORKED, or WORKED-OFF.

When a job, or the sheet of a work is printed, it is said to be Worked, or Worked-off. _See_ OFF.

WORK WITH A FIGURE.

In printing offices where there are a number of presses employed, it is usual to distinguish them by numbers; as 1st press, 2d press, &c.; and the pressmen put a figure into each form they work, corresponding to the number of their press, for the purpose of ascertaining readily at which press a sheet was printed in case of bad workmanship, or any accident; and in general pressmen are subject to a fine if they work without a figure, or with a wrong one: but when the same press works both the forms of a sheet, it is not necessary to have a figure in more than one form.

The figure used to be placed regularly in a white line at the bottom of an even page, about four ems from the fore edge: it was placed in an even page that it might not mislead the bookbinder; and always in a full page that did not finish a paragraph.

WORKING IN POCKET. _See_ COMPANIONSHIP.

WORKING ON LINES. _See_ COMPANIONSHIP.

WORKING ON TIME. _See_ COMPANIONSHIP.

WRIGHT, THOMAS. _See_ DONATIONS.

SCANDINAVIAN PRESS.

A new press has just been introduced to public notice (August 1841), under the patronage of Count Rosen, a Swedish nobleman, but being too late for insertion in the alphabetical order, I give a notice of it at the end. There are two of these presses now at work in the extensive establishment of Messrs. William Clowes and Sons, under the name of “The Scandinavian Self-inking Press,” invented by Mr. C. A. Holm, of Stockholm, who has taken out a patent for it. It is a press with a platen which descends perpendicularly, and at its regular rate of working produces 550 impressions in an hour, which I have ascertained by personal inspection. It requires two boys to each press to lay on and take off the paper, and to turn down and raise the tympan, and one superintendent is fully competent to attend to two presses. By dispensing with woollen blankets in the tympans and substituting paper, it produces fine impressions, as the specimens published of large and finely executed engravings on wood testify. There is a contrivance which causes a rest or pause when the pressure is at its maximum, and gives time for the ink to be firmly attached to the paper. The motive power may be either hand labour or steam, those in use at Messrs. Clowes’s establishment are worked by steam; they do not occupy more room than any other press that will print paper of the same dimensions, and are very simple in their construction. The inking apparatus is so arranged that the distributing rollers have three or four different motions, the object and effect of which are to produce a perfectly equal and uniform distribution of the ink. They are manufactured by Messrs. Braithwaite, Milner, and Co., engineers, in the New Road.

THE END.

LONDON:
Printed by A. SPOTTISWOODE,
New-Street-Square.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

The word ‘Spaces’ in case diagrams has been abbreviated to ‘Sp.’
to save column space.

Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.

Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.

Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.

Pg 24: Alphabet Table, Sgie numerical value; ‘40’ replaced by ‘10’.
Pg 34: ‘up the rythm’ replaced by ‘up the rhythm’.
Pg 85: ‘tranverse portions’ replaced by ‘transverse portions’.
Pg 96: ‘ and fractious’ replaced by ‘ and fractions’.
Pg 159: Table row ‘168 49 59’ replaced by ‘168 49 50’.
Pg 230: ‘in order to their’ replaced by ‘in order to assist their’.
Pg 240: Table row: Peroxide of iron; ‘2F’ replaced by ‘2Fe’.
Pg 299: ‘called ἐπίσημον’ replaced by ‘called στίγμα’.
Pg 312: ‘or short (בֳ) בָ _ŏ_’; possibly, should be
‘or short (בָ) בֳ _ŏ_’.
Pg 314: ‘These seven letters ﬡ ﬢ ﬣ ﬥ ﬦ ﬧ ﬨ are’ should really be
‘These eight letters ﬡ ﬢ ﬣ ﬤ ﬥ ﬦ ﬧ ﬨ are’.
Pg 337: Inner Form block: ‘[*]’ replaced by ‘[4*]’.
Pg 413: ‘o upon any’ replaced by ‘or upon any’.
Pg 423: ‘arbitary order’ replaced by ‘arbitrary order’.
Pg 438: ‘the placing the’ replaced by ‘the placing of the’.
Pg 461: ‘and he likwise’ replaced by ‘and he likewise’.
Pg 476: ‘way of the chace’ replaced by ‘way of the chase’.
Pg 491: ‘Opsloe, now Christiana’ replaced by ‘Opsloe, now Christiania’.
Pg 497: ‘Monsalbanus’ replaced by ‘Mons Albanus’.
Pg 497: ‘Monsdolorosus’ replaced by ‘Mons Dolorosus’.
Pg 531: ‘and Newspaerps in’ replaced by ‘and Newspapers in’.
Pg 596: ‘which contaitn the’ replaced by ‘which contain the’.
Pg 611: Table row ‘| 0 3 7½ | 0 3 7½ |’ replaced by
‘| 0 3 7¼ | 0 3 7½ |’.
Pg 612: Table row ‘| 0 3 2¼ | 0 3 8¾ |’ replaced by
‘| 0 3 8¼ | 0 3 8¾ |’.
Pg 717: ‘sh as shame’ replaced by ‘sh as in shame’.
Pg 718: ‘ма́рморъ, marble, _mramor_’ replaced by
‘мра́моръ, marble, _mramor_’.
Pg 718: ‘ше́рсшь, wool, _schārste_’ replaced by
‘ше́рсть, wool, _schārste_’.
Pg 719: ‘Hard а, о, у, ы. Soft я, е, ю, и, і, э, ѣ’
replaced by
‘Hard а, о, у, э, ы. Soft я, е, ю, и, ѣ’.
Pg 719: ‘г, к, х,’ replaced by ‘г, к, or х’.
Pg 732: ‘changes in D’ replaced by ‘changes into D’.
Pg 749: ‘and not exceeeding’ replaced by ‘and not exceeding’.
Pg 787: All four columns in the Syriac Alphabet table are shown as
identical; some characters in fact have a different glyph
from the first column, but there is no Unicode codepoint
for them.
Pg 792: The section heading ‘TAMUL’ was missing and has been inserted.
Pg 810: ‘after that rince’ replaced by ‘after that rinse’.
Pg 810: ‘always delvered’ replaced by ‘always delivered’.