Chapter II: Part 2

There was a time when certain clever inventions of the paper manufacturer could be employed for half-tone effects in line. For example, a Ross Board is manufactured with an assortment of patterned surfaces. When brush or crayon or pencil is drawn over them, they give effects that may not be duplicated in straight pen and ink on plain white drawing board. Some of these papers have a chalk surface. Some have imitation half-tone patterns, straight-line designs, etc. It is possible to scratch away certain portions with a sharp knife. _Do not use them_ as matters now stand in newspaper printing. They will not "stand reduction" and only very coarse tints reproduce satisfactorily.

_Special Caution_--Do not allow artists to make original drawings for newspaper use much larger than twice the size. Here is one of the greatest evils of the day. The artist seems possessed to make his original on a full sheet of paper, when he knows that the plate is for two or three newspaper columns. What happens? An illustration which makes a handsome showing in the original will inevitably fill-in when reduced to "actual size." Figure it out yourself--look at it through a reducing glass. Lines that seem wide apart almost touch in the congestion that follows great reduction. The really wise and shrewd artist makes his newspaper drawing _actual_ size.

Not more than a dozen Ben Day patterns can be used safely--now--in newspapers. Do you know the meaning of "Ben Day?" It is a mechanical tint, printed mechanically either on the plate, by the engraver, or on the original drawing, from an inked gelatine surface and rubbed on with a stilus. Magazine reproduction accepts it in all its forms. Newspaper stock muddies it up when it is too fine. In any event, when selecting a pattern, see that it is an open one and have it put on the engraving--not the design. If on the design it means a reduction. If on the plate it means no reduction, but precisely as shown in the Ben Day book of patterns.

Avoid complex line treatments and techniques, such as cross-hatching and the laying in of many very fine 290 pen lines close together. They look well in the original--they seldom print well on newspaper stock. They reduce abominably.

Any newspaper illustration should have plenty of white margin to "relieve it." When a drawing is cramped, packed in, suffocated by side rules, borders and text, it suffers.

Clear outline drawings, with an occasional dash of black, prove most efficient for newspaper reproduction. They _can't_ fill in, they _can't_ smudge, they _can't_ become contaminated by clots of printing ink or defects in the newspaper stock. Not even fast press work can damage their printability. But remember, not all outline drawings are alike--great originality of technique can be secured.

CAREFUL OF BLACK AREAS

Large areas of solid black are not advisable. Think it over. Ink flows irregularly on newspaper presses. One copy may show up exactly as in the original; the next may develop a white halo, a gray tendency, a smeary, half-baked look. No two impressions will be quite the same. And it is logical to see that this is apt to be so. Any imperfection or irregularity in the ink roller will cause it, or the collection of foreign matter on cut or roller. Any black area larger than two inches square is a hazard.

Advertisers often think that masses of solid black will make an advertisement "stand out." They would if they printed a smooth, even black--which they seldom do. But liberal white margins are far more potent in attracting attention and in segregating an advertisement from mixed company than solid blacks.

The _appearance_ of large areas of black may be secured via subterfuge. One method is to form the background of heavy black lines, quite close together. The white spaces between save the printing. Look at straight type through a magnifying glass. Not even type is printed clear black. Then what chance would an even surface of large proportion have?

Newspaper cuts should be "routed deep." Routing is merely the deepening or entire cutting away of extraneous matter on the engraving--that is, where there is no printing surface. The smudges of hideous design often seen are really an impression of a metal surface that has not been routed out properly. Every engraving should be examined critically for such defects.

Avoid placing a shaded area against a black area. As we have intimated, the heart and soul of the successful newspaper drawing is _contrast_.

The beginning of every advertisement or series of advertisements is represented in terms of a first visualization. It is in pencil. These should be made same size--that is, the actual size they are to eventually appear. Then no one, the artist least of all, is fooled by disparity of proportions.

KEEP IT SIMPLE

The visualizer should keep one cardinal point in mind. Keep newspaper advertisements simple. The less there is in them the better. Thirty-two of the ads selected by our advertising friend, mentioned earlier in the story, were good because they were simple. Type was held to blocks, and with as little change in style, size and character of type as possible.

All of them were characterized by liberal white margins. It is the best known way of fighting back the opposition of the surrounding appeals on the same page.

There's a good test possible. Make a photographic print of your advertisement, the size it is to appear, and paste it on a newspaper page--not a New York or Chicago paper, but a page in the "Bingville Banner."

Before plates are made or even before pen and ink drawings are fully completed, you can change, rearrange, eliminate, or add to, as the case may be.

The wise advertiser is the one who in preparing an elaborate and extensive newspaper campaign keys it in its printing qualities, not to the best papers on the list, but to the ones that are worst printed. This may mean the undreamed of thing of 100 per cent perfect!

No advertiser can hope to secure full efficiency from a campaign if it presents a smudged and confused appearance. Newspapers are trig things in their own right. Their column rules and their precision of type make this an arbitrary condition. There is really nothing finer and cleaner and more pleasing to the human eye than a well-composed newspaper, hot from the press. Ugly advertisements can make an ugly newspaper. They can even spoil the set-up and typography in general of the reading sections.

A newspaper is held responsible if returns from a single advertisement or a campaign are not satisfactory. It is looked upon as a "poor medium." Yet how many times the true fault can be traced to the message itself. Full efficiency in advertising is the result of full efficiency in the copy....

(Reprinted by the kind permission of The Bureau of
Advertising, the American Newspapers Publishers Association,
Mr. William A. Thompson, Director.)

NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING PLATES

Mechanical production of any kind is an unsympathetic and inexorable thing, and the modern large daily newspaper, in its mechanical production, is unsympathetic and inexorable to the highest degree. It reproduces exactly and impartially from all the different material supplied to it.

Your ad-plate is locked into the form with the other matter composing the page. A hurried lock-up, and the form is molded into a mat and stereotyped. Fast presses and cheap ink do the rest.

If your ad does not show up well in the first few impressions run off, the press grinds on just the same, with little or no make-ready. Once they start, it is too late to stop to allow the press-room foreman to investigate why a certain ad does not print up well. The "Daily Bugle" must get on the streets, if possible, before its competitors with the important scoop that the Beghum of Swat has just died. If you have supplied the best material for the newspapers to work with, the clean-cut reproduction of your advertisement is insured. If you have been penny-wise and pound-foolish in saving a few cents on your ad-plate, all the dollars you spent on art, typography and white space for your ad are on the knees of the gods and liable to be spilled off the said knees, and your ad is messy looking when it appears. The advertiser invariably blames the newspaper and the newspaper passes the buck on to the plate-maker. The printed appearance of the ad is largely determined by the kind of plate furnished to the newspaper.

The large daily newspapers are entirely dependent upon the stereotyping process for the necessary speed required in production. They do not print directly from type or cuts. The big advantage of stereotyping in this connection lies in the fact that it is the quickest method of producing a solid, duplicate printing plate from an original molding form. After locking up a page form, it can be molded, the matrix dried and the plate cast and ready for the press in about ten minutes.

Therefore, only unmounted plates should be sent to the large daily papers and not wood mounted, as it takes too long for the heat to pass through the wood base in drying the mat.

The unmounted plate is placed on a metal base, (because heat passes through metal quickly in drying the mat) and then locked in the form with the type and other matter composing the entire page. A mat is then molded from the complete form and a curved stereotype is cast from this page mat. It is from this curved full page stereotype that the large daily newspaper is actually printed.

Since they must duplicate the plates sent to them by the stereotyping process, your expensively prepared advertisement, if it is to appear sharp and clean in the valuable space it uses, should be electrotyped by your plate-maker. A stereotype duplicated from an electrotype will print cleaner than a stereotype duplicated from a stereotype by reason of the fact that mats molded by the newspaper from electrotypes are sharper and deeper than when they are molded from stereotypes.

Electrotypes have a distinctly sharper and harder face and are deeper than stereotypes. The very nature of the process and materials used in their manufacture makes this superiority inevitable. Wax is used as the plastic medium in which to mold electrotypes, whereas for stereotypes paper is used. Sharpness and depth cannot be molded into paper as it can into wax.

Neither will stereotype metal poured by gravity against a paper matrix mold be as sharp and deep as copper deposited electrolytically on a wax mold.

It follows, therefore, that when an unmounted electrotype is supplied to the "Chicago Tribune" or the "New York Journal" or the "San Francisco Call" they are stereotyping your ad in the page form from a plate molded in wax directly from the original.

On the other hand, when you supply a stereotype of your ad to the large dailies this stereotype is already one step removed from the original master plate and means that two paper mats intervene between the original supplied to the plate-maker and the final stereotype of the page containing your advertisement. In short, they are duplicating a stereotype from a stereotype and each duplication means a loss in sharpness and depth; therefore they should be supplied with a sharp electrotype from which to make their final page mat.

Obviously when a stereotype is supplied to the large dailies they are working from a plate that is neither sharp nor deep to start with, as would be the case if you sent them an electrotype from which to work. An electrotype is economy in the end and will save you grief, when the cost of space is considered.

Should you desire economy, order your plate-maker to send mats--copy considered--to the large dailies. A mat is less expensive than a stereotype and will reproduce your advertisement equally as well.

When you send them a mat instead of an electro there is one more duplication for the newspapers to make in producing the final stereotype from which they print, but the mat which your plate-maker furnishes them is at least molded directly from the original plate, so that it is sharper and deeper than the mat the newspapers have to make when you furnish them a stereotype from which to work. When you furnish the large dailies with the mat they cast a flat stereotype first, which is locked up in the form with the other matter composing the page. This entire form is then molded into a mat and stereotyped.

The small dailies and country newspapers print directly from type and cuts. They use a flat-bed press. For this reason it is necessary that the advertising-plate or dealers cut which you furnish to them should be mounted type-high.

The best plate you can furnish them is none too good; their make-ready and the general handling of their material is not of the highest order in efficiency as compared to the large dailies, and it is entirely probable that even with a good sharp electrotype, your advertisement may not show to advantage. With a stereotype, the liability of smudgy printing is greatly enhanced.

The Rapid Electrotype Company knows the mechanical equipment of the different newspapers throughout the United States. It sends mounted plates to those papers that print directly from type and cuts, and unmounted plates to those that stereotype their forms. This detail is left entirely to their discretion. The names of the towns to which your advertisement or dealers-cut is to be shipped is all the information they require in order to determine whether or not to ship mounted or unmounted plates.

THE RAPID ELECTROTYPE COMPANY

The Rapid Electrotype Company of Cincinnati was organized in July, 1899, and incorporated under the laws of Ohio in May, 1902. It has been in service over a fifth of a century.

Prior to the organization of The Rapid Electrotype Company, electrotyping was, on the whole, a localized business. The Rapid Electrotype Company pioneered in the service of making and distributing newspaper advertising plates--electrotypes, aluminotypes, stereotypes, and mats--direct from its factory in Cincinnati to newspapers and dealers throughout the United States.

The originality of this service, intelligently rendered to advertising agencies and advertisers, was one of the reasons for the increase of their capacity from only five thousand square inches of plate matter daily in 1899 to one million square inches per day in 1921, and from an organization of only nine men to one of over two hundred and fifty, working in day and night shifts.

Their new factory is unquestionably the largest of its kind in the world, especially designed and equipped for the making and distribution of newspaper ad plates of all kinds. Over forty-five thousand square feet of floor space is devoted to this service, and with their highly developed co-operative facilities they occupy a unique place in the advertising plans of many large national advertisers and advertising agencies.

FACTORY PRACTICE

Developing and serving an ever increasing volume of business has brought about a specialization in the factory practice of The Rapid Electrotype Company. It has kept pace with the demands upon its production and has made improvements in manufacturing methods designed to cut-corners in cost of manufacture, to be shared with its customers, and to make its service truly Rapid for all emergencies, without sacrificing quality.

Its commercial job-plate department is a separate and distinct unit from the newspaper advertising-plate department.

The character of the respective requirements of commercial job-plates and newspaper advertising plates make this departmental production advisable.

A lead-molding press, built by The F. Wesel Mfg. Co., weighing over thirty-thousand pounds, and developing two thousand tons pressure per square inch on a thirty inch hydraulically operated ram is used in the job-plate department. On this press are duplicated, from the finest screen half-tones, the highest quality electrotypes and nickeltypes to be used in three and four color process printing.

The preponderating volume of its business, however, is the production of newspaper electrotypes, and it is in this department that The Rapid Electrotype Company has made distinct improvements in manufacturing practice by methods and machinery designed and constructed by its own engineers in its own machine shop.

BLACK LEADING

The Rapid Electrotype Company has built a new type of machine for use in this important phase of the electrotyping art. It is a combination Dry-Wet Machine, designed by its own engineering staff.

Those familiar with electrotypes well know the superiority of the wet black leading process, especially for half-tones, stipple, Ben Day or fine type, where much of the detail and sharpness is lost in dry black leading, because of the crushing effect the brushes have on the wax mold. In this new type of black leading machine this fault is entirely eliminated, as the brushes never come in contact with the printing face of the mold; they merely polish the high built-up spots, thereby insuring better electrical conductivity to the wax, and a more uniform deposition of the copper shell.

Two of these especially designed machines are in constant operation in the ad department, which means the highest grade of advertising plates.

DEPOSITING THE SHELL

Those who are not technically familiar with electrochemistry are prone to think that the length of time a mold is kept in the electrolytic bath, i. e., the copper bath, determines the thickness of the shell deposited thereon. As a matter of fact, one electrotyper may keep his molds in the copper bath for three hours and get only as thick a shell as another who keeps his in but two hours. The element of time does not determine the thickness nor quality of the shell deposited.

The determining factors in this phase of electrotyping are the composition of the electrolytic bath, its temperature, and the current density applied. In addition, the purity of the materials, the cleanliness of the batteries, the perfection of the electrical connections as well as the distance between the anode and the cathode are all matters of importance. These factors are all variables and must be confined between narrow limits.

This important phase of manufacture in The Rapid Electrotype Company is under the supervision of an electro-chemical engineer.

Plus this fact is the accuracy of mechanical operation in handling wax molds from the time they are put into the batteries until they are taken out with the shell deposited thereon and ready for tinning and backing-up.

The molded cases are suspended at regular intervals of twenty inches from an endless chain-conveyor operating directly over the batteries. This conveyor carries the cases edge-wise through the electrolytic bath between two rows of anodes which are four inches apart. At the end of each battery the conveyor automatically lifts the cases out and over into the next battery in the series, of which there are seven. The eighth tub contains pure running water for washing the case after the complete deposition of the shell.

The speed of this conveyor is regulated so that when the molded case has reached the end of its journey through the series of seven batteries, the other factors also being regulated, a shell of uniform thickness and texture throughout is deposited thereon.

This automatic handling of the cases in the batteries eliminates the necessity of the battery-man pulling the case out of the bath by hand from time to time in order to peel back a corner of the shell to see if it is thick enough, which is the common practice. In other words, the element of human guess-work is eliminated, and in addition, the items of time and handling are greatly reduced.

BACKING UP THE SHELL

Backing-up the shells with the metal base, i. e., casting, is done automatically by The Rapid Electrotype Company.

A rotary casting-table with a capacity of ten pans revolves around its axis on a plane that brings each pan immediately below a spout through which the required metal is automatically flowed from the bottom of the metal pot on the tinned shell placed therein. When the required metal backing has been flowed, the table turns to bring the next pan with its shell under the metal-spout. The amount of metal flowed is exactly regulated. As the casting table completes a circuit, the first shell backed up has cooled so that it can be removed to the scrubbing machine.

This method, of course, eliminates the hand-ladling of hot metal from the metal-pot to the casting-table, as is the ordinary practice, and obviates any possibility of the oxidized metal or dross on the surface getting into the casts, besides effecting a marked economy in time and handling. In addition, it casts the plates flat, thereby eliminating about 75 per cent of the finishing, which, of course, means a better printing plate. Three of these machines are used.

The Rapid Electrotype Company developed and built these casting-machines in its own machine shop and owns the patents covering them.

THE ALUMINOTYPE PROCESS

The development, perfection and introduction of the Aluminotype Process for duplicating a printing surface in a solid piece is one of the outstanding accomplishments of The Rapid Electrotype Company, and marks a distinct step in advance of the other and older methods used in the graphic arts, for certain classes of printing.

Aluminotypes are much harder than an electrotype or stereotype and have as sharp and deep a printing face as an electrotype. The Aluminotype process will reproduce as sharp and clear as the electrotyping process an eighty line screen half-tone, which is really too fine a screen for newspaper printing.

A distinct advantage Aluminotypes have is in the item of weight. An Aluminotype, unmounted, weighs only one quarter as much as an unmounted electrotype or stereotype of the same size. When mounted on a wood base an Aluminotype weighs just one half as much as an electrotype or stereotype of the same size mounted on wood. In a national advertising campaign where a general list of newspapers is used Aluminotypes, by reason of their light weight, effect a marked saving in parcel-post or express charges. This saving in postage is especially noticeable in the case of foreign country newspaper campaigns.

In addition, because of their toughness, a saving can be made in packing Aluminotypes, inasmuch as they do not require the expensive precautions in packing to avoid injury in transportation that electrotypes or stereotypes do. They will not bend; their printing face cannot be injured by the ordinary mishaps attendant upon handling in transportation. For all practical purposes it can be said that Aluminotypes are indestructible.

MATRICES

The ordinary practice followed in making mats is to use an electrotype or stereotype pattern plate made from the original form. Sometimes the original itself is used.

The first mat molded from an electrotype pattern plate will be sharp. The next one molded will be a little less sharp than the first. The third one molded will be slightly less sharp than the second one. In other words, with every succeeding mold, the electrotype or stereotype pattern plate is mashed a little by the pressure of the matrix press until it has to be discarded and a new one used.

The five-thousandth mat made by the Rapid Electrotype Company from the same pattern plate is as sharp as the first one molded. This is because an _aluminotype_ pattern is used from which to mold. _Aluminotypes_ will not mash under the pressure of the matrix press, as they are much harder than electrotypes.

THE SHIPPING DEPARTMENT

The shipping department of The Rapid Electrotype Company is one of the most important and highly systematized in the entire organization, and in the manner of handling orders for distribution to newspapers in large campaigns or in making bulk shipment direct to the advertisers is unique.

It is in this department that the packing and routing of advertising plates to newspapers or dealers is done. A system of triple checking each item of all orders precludes, as far as is humanly possible, any error in filling accurately all specifications.

_This brochure was compiled by H. C. Forster of
The Rapid Electrotype Co._