Printing photographs

trønderen

I've been searching back and forth, mostly in Wikipedia - for googling, I am apparently unable to find the right search terms; all my attempts produce millions of hits of which the first 200+ are irrelevant :-) So I am hoping for some more knowledgeable advice that "Just F google it!" :-) My problem: At what (approximate) time did newspapers get technology letting them transfer a photograph (or for that sake, any flat image such as a painting) to a press more or less "automatically", in the sense that there was no need for a graphic worker / artist to copy the image by hand to some traditional technology such as lithography? For all I know, maybe the actual printing used lithographic techniques, which is quite old. The problem is transferring a photograph to this plate. Or some other technology. When did it appear, and what was the technology called? (Background for asking: Reading a 'historic' children's book taking place in the 1800s, written by a well known author. I strongly suspect that the author is taking historic liberties when he tells about the photograph that was published on the front page of the local newspaper. I'd like to have some more facts before holding this against the author :-))

PIEBALDconsult

Maybe look into the history of offset printing?

Greg Utas

Maybe this is what you're looking for: Wirephoto[^].

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trønderen

If newspaper photo printing wasn't available before offset printing, then I'll go after that author... It is quite easy to find stuff about the (history of) the offset printing technology, assuming that you've got the material to be printed available. Information about how to transfer a photograph to the offset press is harder to find - both how it was done, and at what time it became available. The offset printing technology did not by itself create some magic for having photographs transferred to the printing press.

OriginalGriff

Photographic etching: the plate was covered in a photosensitised resist which was exposed to the negative, then etch the plate with acid to leave a printable image. What is Photo Etching? | Photo Etching Services | Precision Micro[^] (My mother was an offset-litho printer, and you pick up these things even if that was well passé by the time she got into it.)

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trønderen

Field photographers could use that technology for transmitting photographs to the newspaper house, but could it as easily be transferred to the printing press? I guess it could, at the time Wirephoto became available (1913++), but that is several decades later than when this author claims that the local newspaper reproduced a photo on its front page. So I strongly suspect that there were earlier techniques for transferring images to a printing press.

trønderen

When was this technology established? Is this what was used by newspapers in the 1800s? One practical question: How were these etched metal plates integrated with the rest of the printing process? Would you have to pass the newspaper pages through two distinct printing cycles, one for printing the text, set in lead type, and then a second one, for the etched photographs? Or was there some way to combine them to a single print cycle?

David ONeil

Google-fu started at "digital offset printing newspaper history" ended at ""computer to plate" history" [Computer to plate - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer\_to\_plate) [The Evolution of Computer-to-Plate Technologies Revolutionizes the Printing Industry](https://www.platesetters.com/the-evolution-of-computer-to-plate-technologies-revolutionizes-the-printing-industry/#:~:text=In 1993, Agfa claims to,however, has continued to evolve.)

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OriginalGriff

if I recall correctly, it was in the early 1800's by Nicéphore Niépce[^] and the plate was attached to a wooden block which was then typeset with the (mostly lead) characters which formed the text, a spectacularly tedious job that I did far too often at school as the head of the Printing Society. Loads of little letters, loads of little wooden wedges to hold them all in place and loads of swearing when the :elephant:ing wedges fell out followed by all the letters ... https://www.moveable.com/Assets/Moveable/Images/Type/QBF-metal.jpg[^] The resulting Form (yes, really) was then run over by an ink-laden roller followed by pressing it onto a sheet of paper - which gave rise to the phrase "stop the presses!" for breaking news.

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PIEBALDconsult

Well, even a Guttenberg press can print images, once they're made into half-tones or woodcuts or whatever, but you're looking for a less manual workflow, right?

OriginalGriff

The only time you used multiple passes was when you wanted actual colour: four passes, four colours: CMYK But that came a lot later, newspapers were black and white (and messed your hands up which is why gentlemen wore gloves to red The Times) for a long time. Registration was a bitch: getting all four colours to line up on the paper was no fun at all! :laugh:

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trønderen

And this was the technology used by local newspapers in the mid-1800s, right?

trønderen

Did he really print photographic images, directly transferred to his printing press? In that case, he was way ahead of his time. Actually, way ahead of photography!

trønderen

Last time I saw a professional typesetting system (a few years ago, not many!) it still had the option to add registration marks outside the printed area for multi-pass alignment. I believe that modern printing presses have automated functions for doing the alignment. The precision required for aligning a grayscale graphical image in a rectangular area left by the text printing process allows a magnitude (or more) freedom. A millimeter or two won't matter. So if they wanted to do a two-pass printing of first the text, then the photos, I am sure they could. But did they do that? (Precision requirements for printing color photos does not prove that the answer is 'No!')

trønderen

Google "digital offset printing newspaper history" - 86 million hits.' Google "computer to plate" - 129 million hits. How far down in those hit lists do I have to go to get information about how (and when) technology in the mid-1800s allowed photos to be transferred to the newspaper printing presses of the day? I am sure that you haven't tried. I can assure you: After 200+ hits, you still don't have a clue.

David ONeil

> At what (approximate) time did newspapers get technology letting them transfer a photograph (or for that sake, any flat image such as a painting) to a press more or less "automatically", in the sense that there was no need for a graphic worker / artist to copy the image by hand to some traditional technology such as lithography? You implied that you were looking for the time graphics were able to be passed to the press fairly automatically. The process Griff pointed out is not automatic - it was very labor intensive, as he said. It wasn't until the digital age that such processes came into existence. Sorry if that isn't what you were looking for, but it is what you implied you were looking for. If you want to be that pissy about it, here is a new google-fu to use: "when did newspapers stop using woodcuts". The very first article in it will start you down the path to the question you really had in mind: [History of nineteenth-century periodical illustration - Nineteenth-Century Newspaper Analytics - NC State](https://ncna.dh.chass.ncsu.edu/imageanalytics/history.php)

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OriginalGriff

Probably not: it would have required two forms created (labour intensive work by skilled craftsmen!) then either two presses or "press them all" then change the form and press them all again. That's a lot of work so it's unlikely to happen if a single pass will do it. Whatever is cheaper to produce will probably be used, especially as there was a lot of competition (and taxation!) with newspapers in those days.

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OriginalGriff

the really fascinating thing was that photoetching was also used for the world first fax machine: 1843 by Alexander Bain (inventor) - Wikipedia[^]

"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!

David ONeil

Human ingenuity is and was amazing!

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David ONeil

PS - I'm sure you've already heard about it, but the Antikythera mechanism's origin makes you wonder just why it took so long to get to that stage!

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