Total Eclipse of the Stamp on What Is Sure to Be an Otherwise Both Photos on the Stamp Come Courtesy Bright Day on Aug
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JULY 1, 2017 | Volume 59 We welcome members with all levels of experience, from beginners to advanced membership is open to all persons of good character who are interested in philately. Total eclipse of the stamp On what is sure to be an otherwise Both photos on the stamp come courtesy bright day on Aug. 21, a shadow of Mr. Eclipse, who also goes by Fred will darken the land. Specifically, Espenak. Espenak is a retired NASA it will darken a 110-km stripe astrophysicist and, more important in this centered on the town of Lincoln instance, an amateur astronomer and expert Beach in Oregon at 10:18 AM with a camera. The photo featured on the Credit: U.S. Postal Service before moving in a southeasterly stamp is one he took in Libya in 2006. direction to Bonneau Beach, S.C., “I’m sure the term ‘awe inspiring’ came at 2:47 PM. into being after someone saw a total Die-hard solar eclipse 2017 fans eclipse,” Espenak gushes. Reflecting on have long ago staked out their viewing his first eclipse in 1970, he recalls, “There In this Issue: spots. And any eclipse laggards can is nothing else that comes close. I thought, check the National Aeronautics & Space ‘This can’t be once in a lifetime; I have to Administration website for detailed see another.’ ” maps. Meanwhile the Newscripts gang is And he did. “Since the early 1990s I have preparing by scrounging around the sofa been to every total eclipse,” Espenak says. cushions to come up with 49 cents for first That works out to 27 stakeouts around the class postage. world, though seven times his view was That’s because Aug. 21 is a Monday, and blocked by clouds. Newscripts never takes a day off. But While a total solar eclipse is rare, “it’s we love a good eclipse. Luckily the U.S. a real once-in-a-lifetime experience Postal Service has come to the rescue to have your art featured on a stamp,” with a color-changing stamp to portray Espenak says. and celebrate the event. The stamp, to be released on June 20, features a photo Espenak will be in Casper, Wyo., for of the sun’s corona, with the sun itself this year’s eclipse. And he’ll arrive the perfectly blocked out by the black disk of week before to speak at a big astronomy the moon. conference there. He says, “I got the invitation four years in advance.” Not only can you stare directly at this stamp—no funny glasses required— touching the image reveals a photo of Spacing out with stamps and bricks the moon in stunning detail. The picture By Melody M. Bomgardner change is thanks to thermochromic ink. http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i23/Spacing-stamps- Though color-changing ink was made bricks.html famous by 1970s-era mood rings, this Chemical & Engineering News ISSN 0009-2347 is the first time the Postal Service has Copyright © 2017 American Chemical Society featured it on a stamp. What once was stamp printing is now stamp production For a century and a half, forests have The first press to reach the U.S. colonies been leveled to provide the paper for arrived a century later in Cambridge, Mass., philatelic publications to describe the and those used in the mid-1700s by men various printing methods for stamps. This like Benjamin Franklin looked much the is crucial information. same. Printing techniques can be used to tell Shown below is Gutenberg at his mid- the genuine from a forgery, to distinguish 15th-century press as pictured on a 1954 high-quality initial printings from Germany commemorative (Scott 723) subsequent inferior ones, and to determine juxtaposed with a late 18th-century which look-alike stamps were printed at American colonial-era flatbed press different times, using similar but distinct pictured on the 1975 11¢ Americana In flatbed printing, flat printing plates technologies. definitive (Scott 1593). are locked face up into a bed to form the printing surface. A collector who knows how a postage stamp was printed can tell a great deal In the earliest versions, leather-sheathed, about it. wadded wool ink-balls pick up the sticky ink, which is beaten to thoroughly ink the The following descriptions are an printing surface. Slightly damp paper is abbreviated introduction to acquaint you then carefully laid over the inked plate. with stamp printing. For completeness, it Paper, ink and plate are then positioned should be noted that machine-produced under the screw-operated press that gives and computer-vended United States the machine its name. stamps use unconventional thermographic and electrically enabled printing Using the leverage of that press, a techniques and media that are simply wooden or metal platen compresses the beyond the scope of this article. paper slightly into the inked plate, which transfers to it a detailed impression of At its most basic, stamp printing is the the inked design. Because the paper is application of ink to one surface (the forced into the press to pick up the ink, press) from which a design is transferred the dried ink is raised on the surface of to paper (the stamp). This may be done the paper in the finished, dried print and directly, from press to paper, or by an has the distinctive, textured feel of printed indirect or offset printing process in which currency. the ink is carried by a roller or some other intermediate means from the press to the The eye of Herman Melville — an area paper. about three millimeters There are four primary printing methods square — as used to print most stamps. The first of enlarged from these is intaglio, which includes line the 1984 20¢ engraving and photogravure, although Literary Arts with the changing technology of the last stamp (Scott half-century, these two are increasingly 2094) engraved regarded as entirely independent printing Although these relief presses differ by veteran U.S. technologies. considerably from the line engraving used stamp engraver to print the first U.S. postage stamps, what Thomas R. Hipschen, showing the skill, Intaglio is followed by planographic these very similar presses on these two accuracy and deft touch needed to master printing (which includes lithography and stamps represent is the slow evolution of line engraving. offset-lithography), relief printing (which printing technology. includes letterpress and flexography), and embossing (the process used since 1853 Line-engraved plates on flatbed intaglio for most U.S. stamped envelopes). presses printed the first U.S. postage stamps in 1847, and all U.S. postage and INTAGLIO revenue stamps for the next 70 years, up to In appearance, the earliest presses to print the middle of World War I. The 1¢ Balboa postage stamps differed little from the first commemorative from the Panama-Pacific movable-type printing press that Johannes Exposition issue of 1913 (Scott 397). Gutenberg invented in Germany in the mid- 1400s, or from the Spanish press that was the first in North America when it printed catechisms in Mexico City in 1539. Stamp & Tongs | Dallas-Park Cities Philatelic Society Volume 59 | JULY 1, 2017 | page 2 What once was stamp printing is now stamp production - Continued PHotogRAVURE In lithography, the printing surface is Collector-stamp specialists have devoted is broadly similar to line-engraved treated to hold water in areas that are considerable effort to the study of the gravure printing, but achieves its effect not to do any printing, thereby repelling various printing presses that produce through the efficiency and precision of the greasy ink that is applied elsewhere American postage, beginning with that photomechanical technology instead of to create the desired design. As a result, first rotary press. the practiced skills and fine steel tools of a lithographed or offset-lithographed stamps human engraver. have a flat appearance. BEP employee Benjamin F. Stickney designed the web-fed rotary press used The desired design is photographed For 150 years of U.S. stamp printing, at the Bureau from 1914 until 1962, through a very fine screen to create a offset lithography was seldom used for appropriately referred to as the Stickney pattern of relatively shallow cells that can U.S. postage stamps, but this is no longer press. Courtesy of Siegel, is an example be etched onto the printing surface using true today. The vast majority of American of the first stamp to come off that press, an an electrical or chemical process. issues since about 1990 have been printed imperforate 2¢ carmine Washington type I by offset-lithography, sometimes in (Scott 459) produced for private perforation Because the cells that take the ink are conjunction with line engraving. and sale by the U.S. Automatic Vending so shallow compared to line engraving, Machine Co. and because pressure is not required to Near the end of WWI, wartime shortages transfer the image as in line engraving, the of men and material resulted in the use of resulting stamps feel smooth to the touch, offset-lithography to print the widely used but their distinctive dot structure readily 1¢ to 3¢ Washington definitives of 1918- seen under a magnifier identifies them as 20 (Scott 525-536). photogravure stamps. A good example may be seen nearby in the various photogravure dot patterns enlarged from the 1984 20¢ Roberto Clemente commemorative (Scott 2097). With the advent of rotary presses, which greatly increased printing speed, flat printing plates that had been used previously were curved to With images supplied courtesy of Robert fit the rotary press cylinders. However, A. Siegel Auction Galleries, exceptional in cases where the same issues were mint examples of the engraved 1914 produced on both flat and rotary presses, 1¢ green (Scott 424) and the offset- the curving of the rotary plate resulted in lithographed 1¢ gray green (Scott 535) a printed stamp in which the design was make the differences between the two easy slightly longer in the direction in which to see.