AN IMPROVED METHOD OF STAMPING
Year: 1824

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, Sir WILLIAM
CONGREVE, of Cecil Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, Baronet, send
greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Fourth did,
by His Letters Patent under the Great Seal of that part of the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland called England, bearing date at
Westminster, the Seventh day of February, in the fifth year of His reign,
give and grant unto me, the said Sir William Congreve, my exors, adñors,
and assigns, His especial licence, full power, sole privilege and authority,
that I, the said Sir William Congreve, my exors, adñors, and assigns, during
the term of years therein mentioned, should and lawfully might make, use,
exercise, and vend, within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed, and also in all His Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, my
Invention of "AN IMPROVED METHOD OF STAMPING;" in which said Letters
Patent there is contained a proviso that if I, the said Sir William Congreve,
shall not particularly describe and ascertain the nature of my said Invention,
and in what manner the same is to be performed, by an instrument in
writing under my hand and seal, and cause the same to be inrolled in His
Majesty's High Court of Chancery within six calendar months next and
immediately after the date of the said Letters Patent, that then the said
Letters Patent, and all liberties and advantages whatsoever thereby granted,
shall utterly cease, determine, and become void, as in and by the same;
relation being thereunto had, will more fully and at large appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Sir William Congreve, do hereby declare that the nature of my said Invention,
and the manner in which the same is to be performed, are particularly
described and ascertained in and by the following description thereof; my
said Invention is described in manner following, that is to say:
It consists of a mode of stamping paper, vellum, leather, or other suitable
substance, so as in one single impression to unite with the embossed work
usually given in stamping the most beautiful and delicate printed figures,
either in one or more coloured inks, or in silver or gold. This mode of
stamping is either applicable to the protection of the revenue, or generally,
to increase the security of any document against forgery, or for ornamental
works in general. Thus it may be applied to the stamping of receipts, bills
of exchange, bank notes, &c.; or it may be used for the borders of country
or other bank notes, so as to make their forgery very difficult; or it may be
used for ornamental borders to tickets, cards, or papers of any sort, and also
for ornamenting leather, vellum, and all other such materials which are
combined in chairs, screens, or other descriptions of ornamental furniture.
Now, the difficulty involved in this process, and the security arising from
it when applied as a protection against forgery, is, that to produce the
embossed work in high perfection the paper must be stamped dry, which,
as the fine and delicate printing used must be performed at the same instant
as the embossing, on account of the register between the embossed work and
the printing, involves the well-known difficulty of printing very fine work in
perfection on dry paper, sized for the purpose of being written on.
To over-
come this difficulty I have found it necessary not only to use a press of very
great power, but to impress the paper between two metallic surfaces or other
suitable hard substances, instead of between a metallic and leather surface,
as in common stamping. The force or counterpart of the dic must, therefore,
bo a permanent impression and not a temporary one, as in the common mode.
Thus a steel die requires a copper force, which must in the first instance be
struck as a modal from the die, and thus involves an additional and difficult
process in the preparation of the engine necessary for such a stamp, while it
is obvious also that the press or engine must in every part of it be one of
extremely nice construction and adjustment to ensure these two metallic
counterparts, the steel die and its copper force coming together at every
impression without injury to either; these are evidently difficulties requiring
very expensive and nice machinery, the whole of which are involved by the
simple union of printing and embossing at one impression, as above stated,
while in forming the devices for such stamps care must be taken so to

page_text: intermix the printing with the embossing that the delicacy of the register
shall prevent these operations being performed separately. To seperate them
indeed, so as to perform the embossing dry and the printing wet by ordinary
means, would evidently render it impossible to preserve any union or register
on a complicated and well-mixed device from the shrinking or expansion of
the paper in drying or in wetting between the two operations. In stamps and
other securities of higher value I unite the register of different colours with
that of the embossed work, by means of my compound plate or die, which is
already the subject of a Patent, and thus had a further combination of
difficulty to oppose the forger. The extreme precision of register in these
two heterogeneous operations is not, of course, of so much importance in the
ornamental work; nevertheless, its beauty and perfection must recommend it,
even its application to these purposes, such as the embossing and gilding
or silvering vellum, leather, or such other materials for furniture, to which
such work is applicable, while at the same time the combining of these two
operations in one gives a celerity to the process, and thereby ensures economy
as well as perfection.
In witness whereof, I, the said Sir William Congreve, have hereunto
set my hand and scal, this Seventh day of August, One thousand
eight hundred and twenty-four.