IMPROVED METHODS OF MULTIPLYING FAC-SIMILE IMPRESSIONS TO ANY EXTENT
Year: 1822

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, J, Sir WILLIAM
CONGREVE, of Cecil Street, Strand, in the County of Middlesex, Baronet, send
greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George 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
Twenty-ninth day of January, One thousand eight hundred and twenty-two, in
the third year of His reign, give and grant unto me, the said Sir William
Congreve, my exors, adññors, and assigns, His especial licence, full power, sole
privilege and authority, that I, the said Sir William Congreve, my exors,
admors, and assigns, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend,
within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention
of certain "IMPROVED METHODS OF MULTIPLYING FAC-SIMILE IMPRESSIONS TO ANY
EXTENT;" 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 (that is
to say):
My first mode of multiplying fac-simile impressions applies principally
to letterpress work, and forms a quicker and readier way of stereotyping, or
producing any number of stereotype plates, than the ordinary mode of casting;
the stereotype plates, according to my plan, being immediately produced by the
pressure of a rolling press, and any number of these plates may be produced
after the matter is set up almost as rapidly as impressions may be pulled
on paper in a common printing press. For this purpose a quantity of hollow
letter or type, or matrices made of brass or other such metal, are provided,
instead of the prominent letter or type at present used. This letter is of the
same external forms and sizes as the common letter now used, so that the com-
positor will set up this hollow letter in the composing stick on the same
principle as he would the ordinary letter for any page, with this difference,
however, that it must be composed in the contrary direction. The page being
then locked up in a chase or iron frame, prepared on purpose, is run through
a rolling press similar to a copperplate press, but stronger, having a thin sheet
of prepared pewter or other soft metal fit for the purpose laid over the form,
when due pressure being applied as the form and this sheet of metal pass
through the press, a perfect stereotype impression, or plate answering to the
form, will thus be produced by a direct and rapid operation from the letter;
the work may thus be stereotyped with nearly the celerity and facility of
common composing and common printing, all the delay of preparing moulds,
melting metal, and casting being thus entirely saved. The provision of
the hollow letter will at first be more expensive, taking quantity for quantity,
but as in most works the stereotype impressions may be taken by pages, and
even by paragraphs, and afterwards combined for printing to any sized page or
for any sized sheet, the original letter or matrices being distributed as the
pages or paragraphs are set up, it is evident that a very small quantity of this
letter in creux would supply the place of a very extensive font.
My second plan for the multiplication of fac-simile impressions applies to
copperplate work, and is not limited in dimensions like the plans at present
in use; the original may be engraved on a flat surface of any size, and
transferred to a second flat surface also of any size, and from thence laid down
as copies of the original upon any number of other flat surfaces by the use of
plates of different gradations of hardness, as hard and soft steel, and copper, or

page_text: soft steel, copper, or brass, and pewter. To effect this it only requires that the
second flat surface employed should be a thin plate, when a sufficient pressure
will be obtained to produce the transfers, whatever may be the dimensions of the
plate, by merely passing the plate through a rolling press or mill, such as that
above mentioned for producing the stereotype fac-similies, the rollers of which
need not exceed three or four inches in diameter; the size of the plates
whereof the fac-similes may thus be multiplied is evidently not limited, as
it necessarilly is where the second impression is taken upon the outside
of a cylinder.
In witness whereof, I, the said Sir William Congreve, have hereunto set
my hand and seal, this Twenty-seventh day of July, in the year of our
Lord One thousand eight hundred and twenty-two.