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Untitled Article
a small quantity of gunpowder exploded in holes judiciously placed in the block . '—p . 18 . Improvements in machinery not only economize the force applied , and the time occupied , but the materials employed , in a surprising manner . This is beautifully exemplified in the effect of the improvements in printing- presses—vide chap . 9 .
Chap . II . on Copying , contains much very curious matter , and one suggestion which we would hope may not be neglected . * There is one application of lithographic printing which does not appear to have received sufficient attention , and perhaps farther experiments are necessary to bring it to perfection . It is the re-printing of works which have first arrived from other countries . A few years ago one of the Paris newspapers was reprinted at Brussels as soon as
it arrived , by means of lithography . Whilst the ink is yet fresh this may be easily accomplished : it is only necessary to place one copy of the newspaper on a lithographic stone , and by means of great pressure applied to it in a rolling press , a sufficient quantity of the printing ink will be transferred to the other stone . By similar means the other side of the newspaper may be copied on another stone , and these stones will then furnish impressions in the usual way . If printing from stone
could be reduced to the same price per thousand as that from moveable types , this process might be adopted with great advantage for the supply of works for the use of distant countries possessing the same language . For a single copy of the work might be printed off with transfer inky which is better adapted to this purpose ; and thus an English work , for example , might be published in America from . stone , whilst the original , printed from moveable types , made its appearance on the same day in England .
' It is much to be wished that such a method were applicable to the reprinting of fac-sirniles of old and scarce books . This , however , would require the sacrifice of two copies , since a leaf must be destroyed for each page . Such a method of reproducing a small impression of any old work is peculiarly applicable to mathematical tables , the setting up of which in type is always expensive and liable to error : but how long the ink will retain its power of being transferred to stone from
paper on which it has been printed , must be determined by experiment . The destruction of the greasy or oily portion of the ink in the character of old books seems to present the greatest impediment ; if one constituent only of the ink were removed by time , it might perhaps be hoped that chemical means would ultimately be discovered for restoring it : but , if this be unsuccessful , an attempt might be made to discover
some substance having a strong affinity for the carbon of the ink which remains on the paper , and very little for the paper itself/—pp . 58 , 59 , 60 . Chapter XII . contains a list of inquiries to be made on visiting manufacturing establishments . It is a good lesson in the art ol asking questions , for want of proficiency in which much knowledge is often missed .
The four chapters which relate to the elements of price well deserve to be studied . Those which follow , on the Division of Labour , are admirable . To the common views of its utility , Mr . Babbage adds the following important principle ;—
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644 ^ Critical Notices . — On the Economy of Machinery , fyc .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1832, page 644, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1820/page/68/
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