Printing photographs

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.)

Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++

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.

"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!

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:

"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!

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)

Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++

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.

"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!

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!

Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++

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!

Our Forgotten Astronomy | Object Oriented Programming with C++

Peter_in_2780

Halftone is the keyword you're looking for. Read the History section of Halftone - Wikipedia[^]

Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012

Kornfeld Eliyahu Peter

It seems that the first photography printed in newspaper belongs to the French in 1848... Photojournalism - Wikipedia[^]

"The only place where Success comes before Work is in the dictionary." Vidal Sassoon, 1928 - 2012

Dan Neely

OriginalGriff wrote:

Registration was a bitch: getting all four colours to line up on the paper was no fun at all! :laugh:

Trying to get just 2 colors to line up correctly in a block print in my HS art class was bad enough. X|

Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius