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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5
[Engraving-Machine for Rapid Work]
Engraving-Machine for Rapid Work.—Paper and Press describes and illustrates a mechanical contrivance for producing matrix-plates for processes like the « Hoke. » To a swinging-plate, with universal movement, is attached two tools, a tracer and a cutter, so adjusted as to work perfectly parallel. The operator traces the picture or design, and simultaneously the cutting-tool engraves the matrix in fac-simile. It is asserted that the operation can be performed efficiently, easily, and correctly, even by an unskilled operator. Of this we have some doubt. We question whether a weighted tool, following the movements of a tracer, would cut as clean a line as one guided by a skilled hand. In any case, the necessity of keeping to the precise scale of the copy is a drawback. If the contrivance is really efficient, it should be attached to a pantograph, so that sketches might be enlarged or reduced to any desired proportion, simultaneously with the tracing operation. It is nearly sixteen years since Messrs Shanks & Johnston, of the Patent Type-foundry, London, invented a pantographic machine for similar work, the chief differences being that the line was not cut down to a foundation-plate, and that the depth of the cut could be regulated by a screw. It differed also in the nature of the cutting-tool, which was a revolving drill, maintaining a fixed position, the plate and not the tool being moved by the operation of the tracer. The machine was chiefly used for newspaper weather-charts. We have seen sketches produced by its agency, but they were not of a very high order of excellence.