MANUFACTURING MICA LETTERS, NUMERALS, SHOP SIGNS, FIGURES, ARMS, DEVICES, & ORNAMENTS
Year: 1855

page_text: *
PROVISIONAL, SPECIFICATION left by the said Frederick Leiss and
Charles Schneider at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with
their Petition, on the 26th June 1855.
L
We, FREDERICK LEISS and CHARLES SCHNEIDER, of Hesse Darmstadt, Ger-
many, now residing at No. 65, -Princes Street, Leicester Square, Middlesex,
do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention' for "MANUFACTURING MICA
LETTERS, NUMERALS, SHOP SIGNS, FIGURES, ARMS, DEVICES, & ORNAMENTS;" to
be as follows
Our Invention is for manufacturing from the 'mineralinica," letters, nume-
rals, &c., as above mentioned, and may be produced in gold, silver, and various
colors, transparent or not, as may be desired. This mineral has the quality of
glass, and for the above purposes possesses other advantages which glass does
not possess; being infrangible, more transparent, easy to bend, and of great
solidity, and when affixed on windows, facias, tablets, glass cases, lanterns, &c.,

page_text: is of a brilliant appearance, as ornaments and attraction by day and night. It
combines with its other advantages an incredible cheapness, and therefore most
particularly suited for public use.
The manufacturing of our letters, numerals, ornaments, &c. consists in
slitting the mica into sheets of a required thinness, then cutting the sheets of
mica into forms, and coloring those forms according to the ornament or object
to be produced; or by putting the forms under gelatine or mineral substances,
which will cause a brilliant transparency and show of colors, and give the
annearance of projection.
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent, filed 1
by the said Frederick Leiss and Charles Schneider in the Great Seal
Patent Office on the 24th December 1855.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, we, FREDERICK
LEISS and CHARLES SCHNEIDER, of Hesse Darmstadt, Germany, now residing
at No. 65, Princes Street, Leicester Square, Middlesex, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her Letters
Patent, bearing date the Twenty-sixth day of June, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and fifty-five, in the nineteenth year of Her
reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give and grant unto us, the
said Frederick Leiss and Charles Schneider, Her special licence that we,
the said Frederick Leiss and Charles Schneider, our executors, administrators,
and assigns, or such others as we, the said Frederick Leiss and Charles
Schneider, our executors, administrators, and assigns, should at any time agree
with, and no others, from time to time and- at all times thereafter during the
term therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and
vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Channel
Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention for "MANUFACTURING MICA LETTERS,
NUMERALS, SHOP SIGNS, FIGURES, ARMS, DEVICES, AND ORNAMENTS," upon the
condition (amongst others) that we, the said Frederick Leiss and Charles
Schneider, by an instrument in writing under our hands and seals, should
particularly describe and ascertain the nature of the said Invention, and in
what manner the same was to be performed, and cause the same to be filed
in the Great Seal Patent Office within six calendar months next and imme-
diately after the date of the said Letters Patent.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that we, the said Frederick Leiss and Charles Schneider,
do hereby declare the nature of our said Invention, and in what manner
the same is to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained
in and by the following statement, that is to say :-
Our Invention consists in a new and peculiar method of working the mineral
"mica" (glimmer), according to the processes hereafter mentioned, for the
purposes of publicity, attraction, and general public use, and for the purpose of
illumination where perfect transparency is required, and for the application of
ornamental purposes on the outer and inner parts of houses, and for decoration
of articles of art and luxury.
The manufacture and application of the mineral mica, which possesses nearly
all the qualities of glass and many others not peculiar to glass, is important,
especially in the case when applied in the place of glass, whilst the latter
is either too heavy or altogether not answering the same purpose on account of
its non-pliability, or when for any required transparency glass could not be
produced thin enough, or when glass would be too fragile, or, exposed to the
fire, would crack.
The working of the mineral mica for purposes before mentioned consists in
the following manner :-
The raw material will be slit after it is cleaned, or sometimes also colored
and hardened in its raw state, with instruments of glass, horn, ivory, or steel to
a required thinness, cut in pieces, sheets, forms, or tablets of. any.required*
shape, round or square, flat or curved, or any convenient size, and will after-
wards undergo the following different methods in order to put drawings and
colors on the mica:-
1. Drawings and coloring will be put on sheets of mica in the way of
printing, where in most cases painting is joined with it; both either black
or in transparent or non-transparent colors, gold, silver, quicksilver; &c.,,
by means of lithography, printing from copper plates, wood, or any other
impressions from engraved surfaces in the way of printing, or by means of
photographic printing, or the method of drawing off prints. The mica will
answer the same purpose as paper or any other stuff to print upon, and
the required drawings and coloring' will be rendered on the same by means
of printing with gold or silver, party-colored or black. When the drawings
are only printed in black or drawn by hand, the coloring is executed by:
painting in transparent and untransparent colours, oil colours, varnish colors,
enamel colors, water colors, opaque colors, &c. The before-mentioned'
method of working hitherto not thought of, which we hereby particularly

page_text: insure for us, is that, which enables,,us to apply, the,mineral, mica, to
public use.
2. Besides we do employ in many cases other methods, in general known.or
employed by glass and other materials to render drawings and coloring on the
mica by means of paper, gold or silver paper fixed under the mica, or paper
with drawings.or. paintings printed in transparent colors, which is rendered
diaphanic by a clearing, liquid, or by means of. gelatine, fixed under, or any
other suitable material, which will then be fixed on the mica, and will.receive
its durability by varnish, solution of gutta percha, or-by means of fixing metals
thereunder, such as gold, silver, quicksilver, colored. foils, or by fixing, wood
under when solidity is required, or covering by adhesion of frostings upon the
back of the mica, by which means it gets an extraordinary brilliancy... In.
many, cases, especially with large objects, the mica, gets a covering of glass
which fits to the form of the object
12. 1
..
3: Drawings and coloring will be rendered by a variety of other processes,
by electro-magnetic, galvanic, or any other chemical and generally known pro-
cesses, as with other productions of a similar kind, and we employ, respecting.
drawings and coloring of the mica, those différent methods of manufacturing
in a variety of bearing on each other, by most of which the colours and.draw
ings will be burnt, into the mica.
The affixing. of: the mica plates,sheets, or forms upon glass or any other
material is done by different, cements. which are most.transparent and water.
and fire proof, such as "solution of gutta percha; white varnish, marine glue,
gum,copal, or any other, fire, air, and waterproof cements, which protect. by
their close contact with the glass the drawings and colors from the influence
of the atmosphere. The affixing is effected: bytrollers whichi-by their pressure
remove tlie air bubbles. In many cases the drawings: upon mica will be put
between two glass plates and thus preserved, or to which will be added, when
the forms are merely fixed upon glass, an edging of either gutta percha; cement,
or metal
"
Our Invention has for its object the manufacturing of letters, numerals, and
shop. sigus. The drawings and coloring of them.are exécuted upon sheets of
mica by painting, printing basements, or chemical processes, as above men-
tioned, which thus can be cut out in all possible sizes and forms, or as whole.
plates, whereupon, the letters, nunerals, &c. will be fixed on windows, doors,
shops, lanterns, bottles, or any flat or curved surfáce, or.in: frames, as tablets
between plates of glass intended for exhibition.
These letters, numerals, &c. have the. superior advantages over the clumsy.

page_text: and yet very fragile glass letters, and the dull-looking brass letters, in being,
less heavy as well as less fragile, but solid and durable, not affected by wet,
damp, or atmospheric impurities, very easy, to clean, would stand water and
soap well or any way of cleaning as well as glass. They are by far more, mag-
nificent in the exhibition of their purpose of drawings and colors, than any
others hitherto, seen, and add to the great advantages of pliability and fixing on
curved surfaces a shew of colors and an appearance of striking. distinctness.
Their brilliant transparency, which, other letters are entirely wanting, is an
attraction by day and night, and therefore an urgent requisite of the present
time, especially in the town of London, in consequence of the frequency of dull
and foggy weather: Their incredible "cheapness, surpassing all other letters
hitherto known, and even cheaper than the most simple or most common
paintings, will be found most desirable for public utility, and thereby a possi-
bility is offered to obviate a desideratum necessarily long felt by the public,
to have the names of the streets in transparent letters upon the lanterns,
or numbers of houses upon street doors and shops in a most brilliant
manner, and with very little expense.
We manufacture also by means of the application of the specified processes
in transparent colors upon sheets of mica, drawings of figures, groups, sceneries,
slides for magic lanterns, and similar objects for the use of science and art, also
transparent arms, devices, emblems, chromatrop figures, and the like, for the
purposes of illumination where perfect transparency is required. The colored
sheets of mica fixed between two plates of glass are perfectly transparent, and
far more distinctly observed than objects of this kind painted upon glass hitherto
known.
We produce, finally, objects for ornamental purposes. Sheets of mica with
arabesques, drawings, pictures, portraits, landscapes; marginal ornaments, visit-
ing and other cards, &c., in transparent and untransparent colors, in gold and
silver, &c., are furnished by different methods of our processes, and offer ä
great abundance of various useful and embellishing objects, furniture and
articles of art and luxury, for instance, ornamental covers for prayer or any
other books, screens of any kind, fans with mirrors, lamp glasses with reflectors,
pass-par-touts for portraits, and drawings in sketch books, albums, &c., of which
the sheets of mica form in the meantime frame and covering, &c. The orna-
mental objects, drawings, or pictures being accomplished on a greater scale and
fixed upon glass or between, represent the art of annealing (glass painting),
and even surpassing it in its different methods of application, such as ornaments
of windows and doors, decorations of the outer and inner parts of houses,

page_text: churches, ships, &c., on account of receiving by the process of printing the
superiority of giving to the represented objects with the same transparency by
far a greater acuteness, which annealing can never produce.
In witness whereof, we, the said Frederick Leiss and Charles Schneider,
have hereunto set our hands and seals, the Twenty-fourth day of
December, in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and
fifty-five.
FREDERICK LEISS. (L.S.)
CHARLES SCHNEIDER. (L.S.)