IM- PROVEMENTS IN THE APPARATUS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF SURFACES FOR PRINTING MUSIC
Year: 1868

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Henry Lennox, John
William Pearman, and William James Pearman, at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents, with their Petition, on the 17th
December 1868.
We, WILLIAM HENRY LENNOX, of Hampstead Road, and Joux
WILLIAM PEARMAN, and WILLIAM JAMES PEAкMAN, both of Castle
Street East, Oxford Street, all in the County of Middlesex, Music
Printers, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IM-
PROVEMENTS IN THE APPARATUS USED IN THE PRODUCTION OF SURFACES FOR
PRINTING MUSIC," to be as follows:-
This Invention relates to certain improvements in producing surfaces
for the purpose of printing music, and is intended to supersede the use
of the ordinary engraved plates, music type, and the lithographic
process, and to substitute stereotype plates or surfaces produced directly
from stamped or embossed impressions on metal plates, the music
symbols and words reading from left to right, or from ordinary engraved
plates reading from right to left.

page_text: We propose to employ a plate of soft metal or alloy, such as lead,
pewter, or type metal, without the addition of antimony, on which the
lines required for music are to be engraved or cut with the spaces
between them for the impression of the notes; the plate is then to be
stamped with dies of the various designs necessary to produce on the
plate the notes and symbols of music printing with the bars and the
words of a song all reading the right way; after which a stereotype is
to be made from the stamped or embossed plate, this stereotype may be
composed of any suitable material or compound, but we prefer to use
ebonite on account of its firmness and the facility with which it may
he moulded in a plastic form and pressed into the spaces cut in the
plate, and when the chonite has become hardened and set the pressure
is to be removed and the stereotype separated from the plate. The
embossed surfaces need not be cut or stamped of a perfectly uniform
depth, but should be generally so deep in the plate as to be slightly in
excess of the requirements of the raised surfaces of the stereotype, when
by levelling, fining down, or reducing the printing surface the whole is
brought to one uniform plane or level. In the stamped or embossed
plate the music reads the right way, from left to right, then the stereo-
type reverses the order, and prints the music the right way for reading.
A form of brace and staff as well as treble and bass clefs may be
stereotyped in brass, bronze, or bell metal, to be used to emboss the
whole of the page plate ready for the further stamping and embossing, so
as to form the primary work and ornamental border on the plate. The
stereotypes may be produced in any number from one embossed plate,
and may be used in any country for printing music, and they may be
formed of gutta percha hardened by the admixture of oxide of iron or
other suitable compound, instead of cbonite.
To obtain a raised stereotype printing music surface from an engraved
music printing plate, we make a thin casting of plaster of Paris on the
same, remove it, and cause it to adhere to a level surface of metal or hard
plaster by placing the raised surfaces of the casting flat on the second
plate treated with an adhesive material; we then grind away or cut down
the back of the casting until the representation of the engraved plate is
exposed as a raised surface reading the wrong way, then we take a second
casting which will produce sunken surfaces reading the right way, from
which any number of the final stereotypes for printing can be produced

page_text: with raised surfaces. Any suitable materials or compounds may be used
in these processes.
By these improvements it is evident that surfaces for printing music
may be produced at a very moderate cost direct from plates of metal
embossed or stamped the right way for reading, or from those engraved
the reverse way, from which stercotypes are formed and printed
impressions effected, such stereotypes being facsimile representations
of the original embossed, stamped, or engraved plates.