Chapter 2 Mechanical Composition of Arabic The Industrialisation of Printing Until the beginning of the nineteenth century, the techniques of printing had substantially remained unchanged since the days of Gutenberg. In 1800, the primary processes employed in European print shops differed little from those used in the preceding 350 years. Paper was still made by hand and the process- es of type-making – punchcutting, striking of matrices and casting type – as well as those of typesetting and printing had changed little since the fifteenth century (Figure 2.1).1 Figure 2.1 Punch and corresponding matrix, as used in manual type- making. From de Vinne, The Practice of Typography. But throughout the nineteenth century, industrialisation affected the print- ing and related trades of industrialised countries. What was a craft at the be- ginning of the century transformed into an industry at its closing. This gradual mechanisation was often causally related, with one improvement opening the door to innovation in another domain as “technical progress, rationalised or- ganisation and compulsory education interacted one on another”.2 Mechani- cal paper-making was a prerequisite for powered printing presses, improved distribution networks a necessity for increasing newspaper circulation, whilst general electrification facilitated all the tasks involved. The printing trade, a field that had been remarkably reticent to change, transformed fundamentally 1 Michael Twyman, Printing 1770–1970. An Illustrated History of Its Development and Uses in England (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970), 48. 2 S. H. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing, rev. ed. by John Trevitt, (London & New Cas- tle, DE: The British Library & Oak Knoll Press, 1996), 136. 36 Chapter 2 within a few generations.3 Its principal catalyst was the newspaper industry: The Times of London became a leading sponsor of improvements in printing machinery in response to its expanding readership.4 In 1814 it adopted the steam-powered Koenig press, increasing the number of sheets printed per hour from 300 to 1,100.5 In lockstep with improvements in machinery and mechanisation of labour came numerous inventions that were aimed at accelerating printing and re- ducing costs. Stereotyping, pioneered in the eighteenth century, became com- mercially viable through the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Genoux’s use of papier mâché for the creation of flongs in 1829.6 Electrotyping, an electro-chemical process for replicating a model in metal, was invented in Russia in 1839 by the German engineer Moritz von Jacobi.7 It soon entered the printing trade and was put to use for copying metal type without recourse to punchcutting and striking of matrices.8 The process lent itself to producing matrices that had to be exact reproductions of existing type where the original punch had become defective or gone missing. Also, as Richard Southall points out, this technique 3 “As late as 1772 the Basel printers caused the city authorities to ban the use of an improved handpress because its inventor was not a professional printer” Ibid., 137. 4 Daily circulation rose from around “1,500 in the eighteenth century to 11,000 in 1830, 38,000 in 1850, and 70,000 in 1870. Before this last date it had been overtaken by the Daily Tel- egraph which had a circulation of over 100,000 in the 1860s and twice that number in the 1870s”. Twyman, Printing 1770–1970, 51. 5 This number was gradually increased to 4,000 in 1828, 8,000 in 1848 and 20,000 by 1868. Steinberg, Five Hundred Years of Printing, 192. 6 Twyman, Printing 1770–1970, 54. 7 Herbert Heinrich, “The Discovery of Galvanoplasty and Electrotyping,” Journal of Chemical Education 15, no. 12 (December 1938): 566–75. 8 “The model letters are cut on type-metal, and, after preparation, are suspended in a por- celain-lined jar containing a solution of sulphate of copper in connection with a voltaic battery. The chemical action created in the battery cells causes an electric current that lib- erates atoms of copper from the solution, which adhere to the suspended model letters. When the desired deposit is obtained the letters are taken from the solution and their thick shells of copper removed. These shells are reinforced by brass and are converted by the fit- ter-up into movable matrices. Matrices can be made by the electrotype process from mod- els in type-metal or from cast type as readily as from punches of steel”. Theodore Low De Vinne, The Practice of Typography. A Treatise on the Processes of Typemaking, the Point Sys- tem, the Names, Sizes, Styles and Prices of Plain Printing Types (New York: The Century Co., 1902), 18–19..