Printers' Ink Has Been Boon To All Of Us

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 172, 23 July 1941, Page 6

Printers' Ink Has Been Boon To All Of Us

THE printing press and its pro- ! found influence on the affairs lof man has long received recognition. In fact, the invention of printing from movable type is still I the subject of lively' controversy. (Apparently the German records dfs- | covered at Mainz in 1/40, crediting | Gutenberg as the inventor, are nowheld to be false, and the honour goes to one Coster, of Haarlem. By A. W. B. Powell However, there is no need for us to go into the intricacies of these disputed claims, for undoubtedly we can still pay tribute to Caxton for his share in bringing the printing press to English soil. Although a great deal has been written on the subject of printing, little space has been devoted in the past to that essential printers' commodity—ink. Ink cannot claim a very early appearance in the affairs of man, certainly neither ink nor paper were developed prior U 40002000 8.C.. simply because there was no need for them. In remote times writings were few but slaves were many, so records were incised in stone or marked in clay tablets which were later sundried or baked in kilns. The Egyptians were among the first to colour their engraved picture characters in order to render the inscriptions more legible. This was achieved by a suspension of coloured charcoal and gums in water. From Stone to Papyrus As trade expanded there was need for a more portable and convenient writing material than bricks or a few hundredweight of stone, and so papyrus came into use. This useful water plant, with its characteristic head so generally depicted in ancient Egyptian art, was long in use; in fact, it was not until the fourth century A.D. that it suffered competition from the more satisfactory materials, parchment and vellum. It is perhaps not generally known in Auckland that quite a flourishing row of papyrus bushes fringe a small drain in the Auckland Domain, that is near the Cain and Abel statue on the northern side over from the band rotunda. So deep a subject is that of mere ink that a book of 560 pages has just appeared. "Printing Inks: Their Chemistry and Technology," bv Carleton Ellis. New York. Ellis describes how the first inks used on papyrus consisted of soot or some other finely divided form of carbon suspended in a varnish containing a drying oil, and for red inks iron oxide was used. Such pigments have retained their colour over a span of almost five thousand years. About A.D. 50 inks came into use that rendered erasure difficult, for they penetrated deeply into the paper. These were a suspension of lamp black and copper sulphate in water. Chinese Made India Ink By the third century the Chinese had developed the so-called India •ink, an ink which survives in general usefulness to this very day. In spite of its name this ink has nothing to do with India but was undisputedly an early Chinese invention. The chief ingredient of the original India ink was lampblack, pounded through fine silk to reduce the size of the particles; this was made into a paste, with glue, water, the whites of eggs, cinnabar and musk. After prolonged grinding in a mortar, the ink was cast in sticks ready for sale. Over 20 years ago I purchased a stick of "India ink" for the sum of ninepence. This identical stick has been in almost constant use ever since in preparing wash drawings of natural history specimens, yet its original length of three inches has been reduced only byone-third. I certainly would not recommend as an investment, shares in a Chinese "India ink" factory! However, for many centuries, "India ink" was in general use in Europe as well as in the Orient.

The invention of the quill pen permitted the use of more liquid ink and so about A.D. 1100 gall inks came to Europe from Arabia and were soon extensively used in the monasteries. It was only when there , came the call for the multiplication of documents that the idea of printing from movable type was thought of and eventually became reality. Printing Ink Problems Printing brought with it still another ink problem and so we learn that the earliest printing inks were made of sulphate of iron in combination with vegetable astringent matter and with very little carbon Before long inks made of linseed oil and lampblack, applied to the type with inked pads, were used. About 182:3. an ink formula was devised, consisting of linseed oil resin and hard soap added so that the ink would leave the type more easily. To-day, the art of ink making hfls resolved into a technical science, for with the developing complexity of printing methods so there must be a special style of ink for each purpose. To-day we treat as commonplace, the facility with which photographic views are reproduced in the Press but it took more than half of last century to bring this process to perfection, and again involved another inky problem. More critical still was the demand for suitable inks when the natural 'colour three and four colour blocks were developed. Making Illustrations Prior to the invention of photo-i I engraved blocks, illustrations were! I done mostly by engravings on! copper, steel or wood or by the in-1 teresting process of lithography. As I | the name suggests, lithography was j originally done from stone, the stone being the fine textured limestone of Solenhofen. Bavaria. This process re-! lied upon the antipathy of grease to l , water. I There was no raised surface, the' design to be printed being prepared in a greasy medium. Water protected the rest of the stone, and the ink from the machine rollers adhered only where the original greasy dej sign appeared. I The Solenhofen limestone was also renowned for its contained fossil! I organisms of the distant mesozoic I ; era. In this stone were found the re- j mains of the world's earliest bird I and, fitting enough, the lithographic! process, utilising the very stone in i which these remains were found be- ■ came the medium for publishing' the ' first descriptions of these archaic! creatures. \ Except for large posters and com-' mereial printing, lithography gradually gave way to the photo-engraved processes. Irately, however, there has been an amalgamation of the two processes as photo-lithography and the results achieved represent some of the highest attainments of the printer's art. Results again made possible only by the faithful attendant to nil printing progress, the expert m ink. •