Master Printer

Gold medals have been pressed upon Frederick E. Ives of Philadelphia ever since 1885, but not until lately have his chief beneficiaries thus saluted him. The United Typothetae of America (U. S. employing printers) waited until last March, and the Clubs of Printing House Craftsmen (U. S. printing executives) waited until last week, to salute, in his 70th year, the author of practically all modern picture-printing processes -- half tones, color plates, intaglio or "rotogravure." The author, in short, of the pictures of murderers and statesmen in the newspapers; of the sepia supplements and the ravishing hosiery advertisements; of the stunning magazine covers, richly illustrated natural histories, automobile catalogs and many more visual luxuries that are rushed today before the eyes of a sophisticated world. Frederick E. Ives was a Connecticut boy, who obtained a post at Cornell University in charge of photographic laboratory work. In 1879 he developed his first ideas for reproducing on a metal printing plate all the details, tone and "half tones" of a photograph, painting or drawing. In 1881 he produced the first printing blocks which, by printing one after the other with different inks, would reproduce a subject in its natural colors. Half Tones. The basis of half-tone printing as evolved by Mr. Ives lies in photographing the copy (subject) and transferring the negative to a copper or zinc plate treated with light-sensitive enamel; etching away the proper portions of the plate with acid; mounting the plate, inking and running it through a press. To produce a clear image (keep the ink from smearing) it is necessary to make the plate a mass of tiny points, whose size and proximity determine the value of the tone, the sharpness of the lines. This mass of points is obtained by photographing the copy through a "screen", or criss-cross system of finely ruled lines. The closer together these lines are, the smoother and harder must the paper be that is to receive their result in ink. Thus, pictures in newspapers are made with screens having 60 lines to the inch; pictures on paper with an ivory-like finish have been made with screens up to 400 lines to the inch. Color Process. Europeans had solved the problem theoretically when Ives first made practical "color filters" for a camera, to extract from a colored painting the patterns and values of the three primary colors composing it. As every one knows, each primary color--yellow, blue, red--has its complementary-- violet, orange, green. When added to its complementary, each primary color becomes black. Thus, to obtain a negative print of the portions of a picture in which yellow was present, Mr. Ives photographed the picture through a violet filter. The red and blue elements of the picture were then found through green and orange filters. In each case a screen was used, the rulings being set at different angles to avoid exact superimposition. Plates were made from each of these color-pattern negatives, and printed one over the other--exactly--with the result that the original subject was reproduced in its natural colors. The points of screened primary color lay close beside each other (as painters have learned to place them, for vividness and clarity), letting the eye blend them into greens, oranges, browns, purples. It was found that an additional plate, bringing in the values of grey and black, served to sharpen detail. All this is now called "process printing," in use wherever color printing is done today. There are, of course, simpler methods for simpler effects, as in printing colored comics ("funnv papers"), where the artist indicates where spots of various colors are to come, and the plates are made in simple supplementary patterns to inlay these colors, without blending them.