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Chapter 14. Printing

Because some stamps have been printed by two or more methods and because specialists often collect various kinds of printing flaws, the entire subject of printing is of interest to all collectors. In fact, an advanced collector will often have a knowledge of printing far surpassing that of a great many commercial printers.

Basically, printing falls into two categories: recess or intaglio printing, and relief, sometimes called "letter-press" and more often called simply "printing". The latter is by far the most common method in use throughout the world and in principle has changed very little since the fifteenth century when Johann Gutenberg printed his Bibles from cast movable type. Prior to that time printing was done from blocks upon which had been cut the entire message to be printed. Such printing was an art well known to the Chinese who, indeed, even had movable type.

It is interesting to note that the "block books" which preceded the introduction of cast movable type ascribed to Johann Gutenbergave through the evolution of time become, in a large way, the manner in which many modern books are published. Thus, the history of common printing has completed its circle: first, from blocks upon which a whole page was cut into relief, then movable type which allowed a page to be set up from individual pieces of type, and now the printing plate made from an impression of the movable type.

Intaglio, or line engraving, must have been used in the very early stages of printing. Certainly we know that the great goldsmiths of the Renaissance would rub lamp black or another similar substance into the engraved lines of their work and take an impression on paper to see how they were progressing. Such impressions were, of course, intaglio printings or, as we might say, engravings.

Line engraving has always been a favorite medium for the reproduction of printed money and other valuable securities. Because an entire plate had to be cutinto the metal by hand, it was a costly and difficult process requiring the highest artistic ability. Shortly before the introduction of the world's first postage stamps in 1840, Jacob Perkins of Massachusetts invented a process for reproducing a line-engraved design on a larger metal area as many times as might be desired. Unable to interest American capital in his invention, Perkins went to England where he founded the historic line-engraving house of Perkins, Bacon & Co., who produced the world's first postage stamp for Great Britain. With but one brief exception, Perkins' process has been used exclusively for the production of United States postage stamps from the first issue until the present. It is also the process used for the production of most British and many other stamps of the world.

Perkins did not invent line engraving. He invented a process of transferring a steel engraving to another piece of metal. This process plays such an important part in philately that it is necessary for all collectors to have a basic understanding of it and the method of printing stamps from the plates.

The first step of the process is to engrave the die. This is done on a "soft" block of steel by the most skilled artisan. Every line and detail of the design of the proposed stamp is cut into the steel by hand tools small sharp chisels known as burins or gravers. The burin is held in the hand and worked carefully into the steel to cut the line desired. In all cases the design is engraved in reverse on the die.

After the engraver has completed his task, the die is hardened and burnished. When completed, an impression is taken to determine if the design is perfect. Such impressions are called die proofs. As often as not, die proofs are made in various colors to determine just how the design will look in different color schemes. Such are known in philately as "trial color die proofs".

When the die proof has been accepted, the die is placed in a "transfer press". Above the die is suspended, in powerful trunions, a roller of soft steel. When everything is in position the roller of steel is lowered and brought to bear under great pressure against the hardened die. The die, which is on a movable bed, is now passed under the roll. The great pressure applied causes an exact duplicate of the design on the die to be taken up on the softer steel of the roller. The process is repeated, back and forth, until the design of the die has been transferred to the roller in the required depth.

Photo by Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Tools used for the preparation of a steel plate:

1. Graver.
2. Scraper.
3. Burnisher.
4. Etching point.
5. Liquid etching ground.
6. Acid.
7. Engraver's glass.
8. Original die.
9. Transfer roll.
10. Flat stamp plate with 400 transferred stamps.
11. Curved stamp plate.

The roller is then removed, hardened, and burnished. It is now ready to perform its function as indicated by its name the "transfer roll". Once the roller is back in position in the transfer press, with a suitably prepared plate of soft steel placed under it in the position formerly occupied by the die, it now becomes possible to "lay down" the design on the transfer roll to the plate as many times as may be required. Hence the single design of the die may be repeated on a larger plate indefinitely, limited only by the size of the plate itself. After the transfers are completed, the plate is hardened, burnished, and ready to print.

Our first stamps were printed from plates of two hundred subjects each. Now our stamps are printed from plates of four hundred subjects.

Theoretically the design on the die can, via this process, be repeated on the plate in minutest detail and every such transfer will be an exact duplicate of the original. Actually this theory is a fact and the skill of transferring designs has become so advanced that, barring an accident to the plate, the world's greatest experts are unable to detect any difference whatever between the four hundred subjects of a modern plate. Every line, to the most minute scratch, that appears on the original die will appear on each and every one of the designs on the multiple-subject plate. Each design is an identical twin of the other, and all are identical to the die.

However, the bank note companies which produced our first stamps were not so adept in the art of making the transfers. Hence and especially when a design was of difficult outline, as were the one and ten-cent stamps of 1851-7-the transfer operator sometimes failed to move his plate far enough to make a complete transfer of the design. Thus we find on our printed stamps so called "short-transfers". And, again, the operator may have made his first "light" transfer of the design out of alignment and so would shift the position of the plate to its proper place. However, when he did so, the first light impression would, of course, remain on the plate and, when stamps were printed therefrom, these doublings of lines would be apparent. Such are called "double transfers". Or, perhaps, after completing a plate, one or ore of the impressions were found not to print well the transfer may have been too shallow. In such cases the plate would sometimes be returned to the press and an effort made to "re-enter" the transfer roll exactly into the design. When such re-entry was successful, no visible results could be seen on the stamps but, when slightly off the original, the stamps resulting from this impression would show the error. Such are called "reentries".

Still again, instead of trying to re-enter the design with the transfer roll, "recutting" would be resorted to. In this case the engraver would recut by hand the lines that were not properly transferred. Such hand recutting of the designs on the plate would, of course, be heavier than the other lines in the design and would show up in the printed stamps. Such stamps are called "recut".

Now it makes no difference just how these various things came to take place. The fact remains that the things I have described as "could have happened" actually did happen and the results as noted on the printed stamps are as described. Those with pedantic minds will assert that such and such really didn't happen to position so and so on the plate but, instead, so and so happened. We are here concerned with the results and how to look for and recognize them for what they are.

Great studies have been made of these early United States stamps and every single position of every stamp of the two hundred that make up the printing plate has been identified. Such collecting is known as "plating". Many early line-engraved stamps can be so "plated". Indeed, it is quite possible that all of them can. It is a challenge that has intrigued many an advanced collector and one worthy of his mettle.

With the increase in skill in transferring designs it became less and less possible to discover differences in the designs but occasionally double transfers are still to be found on our modern stamps and, when the process of making the printing plates is rushed, sometimes a considerable number of such flaws may occur. An example would be some of the stamps of the 1932 George Washington Bicentennial issue where some really extraordinary double transfers have been discovered.

Bear in mind that such a flaw is constant and will always appear on exactly the same stamp of the sheet so long as this particular plate is in production or until the flaw is discovered and corrected.

One of the most flagrant flaws of this nature in fact, probably the outstanding error of philatelic history is the so-called "five-cent error" that occurred in sheets of two-cent stamps printed in 1917. As we have noted in our description of the making of line-engraved steel plates, proofs are usually taken before the plate is put into production and any errors or flaws noted thereon are marked and the plate is then corrected. In 1917 on one plate of two-cent stamps of four hundred subjects of course it was noted that three impressions on the plate were not satisfactory. These three designs were erased from the plate (an intricate process but capable of being performed almost perfectly under modern methods) and a completely new transfer was laid down in these positions. In this instance the transfer operator, by mistake, selected the five-cent design on the transfer roll. His error went undiscovered and a considerable number of sheets of stamps were printed and circulated bearing these five-cent stamps in sheets of twocent denomination before the error was discovered and the plate retired from use.

"Five-cent error" in a sheet of two-cent stamps.

PREPARATION OF THE STEEL PLATE

Prior to the actual laying down of the designs from the transfer roll as described earlier, the steel printing plate must be prepared.

Everything that is done to this plate will show up on the printed stamps and so has a bearing upon the stamps you collect.

After the steel plate has been annealed and made ready to receive the transfers, the exact position of each design is indicated upon the plate by means of "guide dots" or very faintly scratched lines. Bearing in mind that the paper upon which the stamps will be printed is first moistened and so will shrink, perhaps unevenly, the craftsman lays out his plate by means of precision tools to allow a sufficient space between each stamp both horizontally and vertically. Sometimes he will allow a difference in the width between the rows of the stamps, as in the case of the first stamps issued in 1908. Here it was found that, owing to the excessive unevenness in paper shrinkage, there was considerable waste because the sheets of stamps did not pass through the perforating machines correctly. Hence experiments were made by spacing the six outside vertical rows of each printing plate a full millimeter wider than the inside rows. Naturally such a difference in the spacing of the stamps was not lost on stamp collectors who promptly had a new variety for their collections. It must be admitted that, so far as the author knows, this is the only occasion that a difference in width of spacing between the rows of stamps was attempted on the printing plates.

Among our nineteenth-century stamps especially, it is possible to see the position dots and traces of the guide lines on the printed stamps. In fact, these are very helpful to those who attempt to "plate" certain issues. But it is not unusual to find them even on the most modern issues.

The layout of a 400 subject rotary plate showing electric eye guides for the perforating machine in center and at left.

After the plate has received all of its impressions, it receives other permanent markings. The plate number is set in on the margins as well as, sometimes, other indicia of the various phases of manufacture. Permanent guide lines are cut between the four panes of one hundred stamps each. At the extreme margin of each of these guide lines an arrow is cut to call particular attention to the line. These guide lines are provided to assist the cutting operator when he divides the sheets of four hundred stamps into panes of one hundred in which form stamps are sent out to the Post Office. For modern stamps, which are printed from rotary presses, special markings are provided on the margins of the sheet to guide the electric scanning mechanism that guides the perforating machines. These marks are known to collectors as "electric eye" stamps. At the present time, all United States stamps produced from rotary presses are perforated by machines guided by the electric eye. The markings vary as experiments were made in putting the electric-eye mechanism into practice. The earliest markings were a series of heavy short vertical dashes dividing the sheet into right and left panes. Later markings are horizontal dashes placed at the other margin of the continous sheet of paper on which the stamps are printed.

A plate block of four stamps.

Still other markings which are applied to the margins of the steel plate and which, of course, print on the sheet margins of the finished stamps, are the registration marks to guide the printer when producing two-colored stamps. Each plate for each color is provided with a registration mark so that the printer will know when he has his paper in proper alignment.

All of these markings are of great interest to collectors and help identify his stamps.

PRINTING FROM A LINE-ENGRAVED STEEL PLATE

The finished steel plate, ready for the printer, presents a perfectly smooth, highly polished surface (sometimes chromium-plated) in which the lines to be printed are recessed. To ink this plate, a well-inked swab is smeared over its entire surface and well rubbed in so that every minute line will receive its full share of ink. The surplus ink remaining on the surface of the plate is carefully removed and, finally, the operator burnishes the plate, sometimes with the palms of his hands. The plate now seems to be without ink. In fact, however, every line, every tiny scratch, is filled to its surface with ink. The plate is now ready to print.

A piece of moistened paper is carefully laid over the plate and both are passed under a felt roller under pressure. The paper is forced into the crevices of the plate and picks up the ink. The sheet of paper is now laid carefully aside to dry. Eventually it is pressed flat and made ready for the perforating machines. If produced in a rotary press, the paper is dry and all of the operations described are done mechanically, the finished stamps coming from the presses in a continuous roll.

This method of printing leaves lines of ink in varying depths as they may have been engraved by the engraver on the original die and because of this third dimension, the result is particularly pleasing. The tones and shadows are deeper and richer than can possibly be obtained from any method of relief or letterpress printing. This in itself is a considerable safeguard against the counterfeiter for he cannot duplicate this depth of ink without, in fact, actually using the identical method of printing. It is readily seen how difficult such a process would be. He cannot successfully reproduce the original die for this is completely handwork and, as every student of art is well aware, each artist leaves some mannerism peculiar to his work on each engraving he does.

For this reason the line-engraved steel-plate process is used almost exclusively by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington, D. C., and by a select group of bank-note engravers who manufacture postage stamps and money for governments, and other securities where the utmost protection against counterfeiting is required. The number of expert engravers in the world is very small and their work is well known to all serious philatelists as well as to all others in the trade. Once a steel die has been cut, it is a permanent affair that, if kept carefully, will outlast the ages.

This method of printing finds very little use in commercial channels and when so used the printing is done from the original dies usually on copper. The author knows of no instance where the multiple-subject plate method developed by Perkins is used in ordinary commercial channels.

Photo by Bureau of Engraving and Printing Large rotary press.

PHOTOGRAVURE AND ROTOGRAVURE

These are methods of intaglio printing widely used in commercial printing (and by various other names), as for the Sunday pictorial supplement of newspapers. It is true intaglio printing in that the printing is from recess engraved plates. However, such plates are made by means of photography through screens like the ordinary halftone illustration in "slick paper" magazines. These gravure plates differ from the ordinary half-tone illustration in that the latter is a relief and the gravure is a recess plate.

Photography and screens, or "dust boxes" which coat the plate unevenly to make it appear that a screen has not been used, are also sometimes employed for the production of postage stamps. Such is the case with some of the British Empire stamps. When skillfully used in combination with line engraving, the result is excellent and often even more pleasing than the strictly line engraved design. It is possible by use of photography to soften some of the details and, in combination with the handwork of the line engraver, the effect is striking and not obtainable by either method alone.

All gravure work, whether line-engraved or by photographic process, is identifiable by its rough feel, caused by the varying thickness of the ink deposited upon the paper. We all unconsciously practice the trick of feeling a calling card to see if it is printed or engraved, and considerable prestige is attached to the engraved calling card. So, too, in a large way do the engraved postage stamps of the world receive prestige over other kinds.

"PRINTED" STAMPS

In addition to the line-engraved postage stamps we have described at length, a great many postage stamps of the world have been printed by more ordinary processes. All forms of printing have been used. Some of the world's most valuable stamps like the Hawaiian "Missionaries" have been printed from type set up in small printing shops and produced from ordinary platen or cylinder presses just such equipment as you will see in any commercial printing shop.

Hawaiian "Missionary" stamp.

Many other stamps have been printed by lithography a method of printing which, during the past generation, has seen enormous gains in technique and is far removed from its original processes as discovered by Alois Senefelder about 1800.

The process depends upon the natural phenomenon that grease or fatty substances will repel water while other substances will "hold" water. Senefelder discovered that certain kinds of stone would soak up water. By drawing a design or printing words on the stones with a fatty-substance ink, he had what proved to be a very satisfactory printing machine. After the words had been drawn the stones were immersed in water. The fatty ink repelled the water, the uncovered surfaces soaked up the water. An ink roller passed over the stone depositing ink only on the drawn design, for the water in the stone repelled it at other places.

The process was completed by placing a piece of paper over the stone and applying pressure.

Lithography has seen many improvements and developments. Modern lithography and its step-child, offset printing, through the use of the camera and the substitution of zinc and aluminum for the heavy stones, have made enormous advances and only in principle resemble the original process developed by Senefelder.

Lithography offered a reasonable and very satisfactory substitute for the line-engraved steel-plate process. The intricate designs that characterize much steel-plate work could be drawn in detail on the stones to reproduce in clearest detail. The only element lacking was, of course, that the lithographed article presented a perfectly flat surface and, thus, lacked the depth of tone the steel engraving produced.

A great many postage stamps of the world have been produced by lithography and some stamps have been produced in the same design by both lithography and steel engraving.

Many lithographed stamps may be plated rather easily. As lithography was practiced up to a generation ago, it was necessary to reproduce on the stone as many designs as were to be printed. To overcome the difficulties of reproducing the design of a stamp several hundred times, lithographers resorted to a multiplication process. A design would be made and transferred to a stone ten times. Then this multiple of ten would be transferred to a larger stone ten additional times. And the process continued to the desired number of reproductions. It is generally possible to identify the ten individual stamps (or other number as the case might be) making up the first transfer. Then it is usually possible to identify each group of ten in the sheet. The Republic of Panama, whose stamps have almost always been produced by the line-engraved process and which provide some of the finest examples of this work, used the lithographic method to produce two stamps in 1928 in honor of Charles A. Lindbergh's good will flight to Central America. Evidently the lithographic method was selected inorder to produce the stamps in time.

Stamp issued by the Republic of Panama to honor Lindbergh's good will flight to Central America.

The use of "Step and Repeat" machines, by means of which the design of an individual stamp may be repeated photographically as many times as required onto a single printing plate, has enormously advanced the lithographer's art and made it quite impossible to plate with any degree of accuracy modern lithographed stamps. Our annual Christmas seals are printed from plates of as many as sixteen hundred subjects by this method.

The relief method of printing has one positive advantage over the steel engraving: it allows the printing of multicolored stamps. It is quite true that two-color stamps and perhaps three-color stamps have been printed from steel-engraved plates. But on all such stamps there is no positive register of the colors nor can there be. The process of wetting the paper, often required for steel engraving, and the consequent shrinking of the paper does not permit a close register of two or more colors.

Relief printing in all of its forms, however, does not require the paper to be moistened, so exact registering and even blending of colors may be obtained. In color the relief methods of printing remain supreme and have been widely used under various names and methods to fill our albums with many colorful and beautiful stamps.

The flag of Denmark appears on one of the "over-run nations" stamps.

Sometimes, as in the case of the series of stamps issued by the United States to commemorate the Overrun Nations of the world, a combination of lithography and steel engraving has been used to attain more than two colors. It was decided to illustrate in color the flag of each nation pictured on the stamps. The stamps were printed by the American Bank Note Company as this firm was experienced in and equipped to perform this compound process required. In this instance the flags in color were printed by a lithographic (offset) process and later the frames of the stamps were printed from steel-engraved plates. It will be noted that no attempt was made to have a close register between the lithographed centers and the line-engraved borders. Incidentally, while the American Bank Note Company had made all United States postage stamps from 1879 to 1895, at which time the Government undertook to make its own stamps, this was the first occasion since that time that any United States adhesive postage stamp had been printed outside of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D. C.

THE WONDERFUL GIORI PRESS

We have indicated the difficulty of registering colors in multicolor printing from line engraved plates. All we have stated on this matter was true and continued to be true for all United States postage stamps printed up to July 4, 1957: On that day the Post Office Department issued the very popular "Flag Stamp" on which our national standard is shown in full color.

The Flag Stamp ushered in a new era of multicolored stamps for the United States. It was soon followed by other issues printed in two or more colors.

The remarkable feature of these new multicolored stamps is that they are printed in all colors used simultaneously from a single printing plate.

This truly revolutionary method of printing, either from intaglio or letter press plates, is the result of an invention of Gualtiero Giori after whom the printing press performing this feat is named the Giori Press.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington acquired one of these presses in 1957 and promptly put it to work printing the now famous "Flag Stamp".

The small miracle of printing a design in multiple colors from a single plate with a single impression is achieved from a very simple principle. The plate itself is inked in as many colors as may be desired. Each color being applied to only that portion of the plate which is required to print that color. In other words the ink rollers are themselves printing plates which "print" their ink onto the plate which in turn will do the actual printing on paper. Hence, if two colors are desired two printing rolls are required, one for each color, each so designed as to pass ink to only certain portions of the printing plate. If three colors are wanted then three ink rollers are provided. Theoretically, at least, there is no limit to the number of colors that could be thus printed at a single impression.

The development of the Giori Press followed World War II and was first used to print postage stamps in Argentine in 1949. It is said to have also been used for some stamps of West Germany, Jugoslavia and Finland.

Since its introduction at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at Washington it has been used to produce many multicolored postage stamps; including Flag Stamp, the Champions of Liberty series and others.

UNITED STATES POSTAGE

Some of United States Stamps printed on Giori Press.

Regular Inverted center

Canadian "Seaway" stamp

The Giori press has sounded the death knell to inverted centers of stamps printed in two colors. This was sharply brought to public attention in 1959 when the United States and Canada issued the now famous St. Lawrence Seaway commemorative stamp. The designs of the two stamps was as close to being identical as possible. The stamps were printed in two colors redand blue. The Canadian "Seaway" stamp was printed in the usual way from two separate plates and shortly the world was electrified at the discovery of an inverted "center", the first major error ever to have been discovered on a Canadian postage stamp. Naturally collectors everywhere searched their collections in hope of finding one of these prizes. And for a while many searched vainly for a United States "Seaway" stamp with a similar inverted center. Such a search was hopeless for the United States "Seaway" stamps had been printed on the Giori press and on products of this press inverted centers are impossible.

OFFSET PRINTING

This is a variation of the lithograph process in which the design is transferred from the printing roller to a rubber roller and then, "offset" to the paper. It is a particularly rapid process and one that has seen considerable improvement in the last generation. It was used by the United States Government in 1918 for the production of one-cent, two-cent and three-cent stamps to relieve the Bureau of Engraving and Printing of the enormous amount of work the war had forced upon it. These stamps are really identified by their absolutely flat and "messy" appearance. They furnish collectors with a healthy group of varieties for study and are one of the most interesting interludes of our postal history.

There are, of course, a great many processes of printing that come under the general heading of relief or letterpress printing, many of which have been used to produce postage stamps. Techniques of operation differ in different countries and in different printing establishments. It is pointless to try and review them all here even if the author were qualified to do so. There is, however, one process that requires explanation for the collector of United States and other stamped envelopes. This is called "embossing".

EMBOSSING

Embossing, the method used to produce all Government stamped envelopes of the United States and several other countries, is basically letterpress printing. It differs only in that the uninked portions of the printing die are recessed and engraved in design. Under pressure the paper is forced into the recesses and against the engraved design so that the uninked portions of the design are raised above the surface of the paper. For instance, let us imagine that the letter "O" which you are now reading on this page had been printed against a resilent surface so that the center of the "O" would now be raised as you read it. If the pressman handling this particular page has placed a small piece of paper on the cylinder of the press just where this letter appears you will see a suggestion of embossing.

Embossed envelope stamps are, unlike the adhesive stamps we have described at such length, printed one at a time. Each envelope-making machine is equipped with a single printing die. The blanks from which the envelopes are made are cut to shape by means of cutting dies just as your mother or wife cuts out cookies from the rolled dough. These blanks are automatically fed into the envelope-making machine which embosses a stamp at the proper place, gums the flaps, folds and seals the envelope, dries the gum and counts the finished envelopes into any desired number. An ordinary box of five hundred United States envelopes is usually divided into groups of one hundred. This division is done automatically by the machine making them.

The making of an embossed die for printing our envelope stamps closely resembles the process we have described for the making of a steel engraved printing plate. The process differs only slightly and then only in technique. The engraver, as before, cuts the design onto a steel die. In this case the die is the end of a steel shaft. After the die has been made and approved, it is hardened and now is placed directly against a some what larger steel shaft. Under very great pressure the hard die is forced directly against the softer steel "hub". As a considerable amount of steel has to be displaced the process requires several applications of the die to the hub. Between each application some of the displaced metal is removed from the hub. When the die has been sunk into the hub to its required depth, the hub is hardened and now, by reversing the process, is capable of striking off as many working dies as may be required.

The O'Connell Envelope-making machine being demonstrated at an International Philatelic Exhibition in New York.

It will be seen at once that the working die is, in all respects, similar in function to the steel printing plate and performs the same function namely to print stamps. It differs only in that the working die consists of a single design whereas the printing plate has many subjects. After proper hardening the working die is placed in the printing press, or envelope-making machine. Directly opposite the die there is a resilient substance, such as leather, against which the die strikes. The surface of the die is inked, the paper placed between it and the resilient tympan, and the operation of printing and embossing is completed when the press strikes against the tympan. This striking can be either by direct downward or upward pressure or by a rotary motion. In any case the pressure is sufficient to force the paper hard enough against the engraved recesses of the die to transfer these lines to the paper.

The process varies somewhat according to the different machines that may be used. The flat-bed machines usually perform all of the work described excepting only the cutting of the blanks which are always prepared ahead of time. The rotary machines usually perform only the printing of the stamp while the folding is done on other machines. Either flat-bed or rotary machines are capable of printing both the stamp and the corner card in the same operation, there being separate ink fountains provided for the different colored inks.

Quite obviously the constant striking of the printing die against the tympan will in time cause the die to wear and will also wear down the tympan. The resulting stamps will, therefore, show some differences which are often startling. While in general and as long as the printing dies are in good condition and kept clean, each embossed stamp on an envelope will be an identical twin to the original die, this is not necessarily so. The uncolored portions of the printing die are recesses and do not receive ink. However, if some foreign substance, such as lint or dust should fill up one of these recesses, that particular portion of the die would receive ink and the resulting stamp would be minus a letter or so. Hence we find some envelope stamps on which the letter "U" of "United" is completely missing. Such missing letters are the result of the die becoming clogged at this point. All succeeding stamps printed from this die in this condition will continue to show the missing letter until the stop page in the recess either falls out of its own accord or the flaw is noted and the die cleaned. Once cleaned, the die will produce perfect stamps. Missing letters such as we have mentioned are much sought after by collectors. The remarkable thing is that so few of them turn up, for the machines making envelopes pound away at the rate of from eight to ten thousand impressions per hour.

Showing effect on stamp when a letter of the printing die fills up with lint or foreign substance. Letter "U" of "United" has disappeared. When operator cleans die the "V" will again appear on all stamps printed from this die.

Naturally enough, also, the forcing of the paper into the crevices of the die will sometimes cause wrinkles and pinches in the paper. Such things are usually ignored by collectors as they are merely characteristic of this method of printing; they are variations that could and do happen at any time without intent or cause.

IN GENERAL

Throughout the stamp catalogs stamps are usually indicated as "Engraved", "Typographed", "Lithographed", "Offset" or "Embossed". All of these terms have been clearly explained but we sum up their meaning to collectors as follows:

"ENGRAVED" Stamps produced from intaglio plates, usually steel but sometimes copper.

"TYPOGRAPHED" Any of the methods of letterpress printing.

"LITHOGRAPHED" Printed either from stones or any of the more modern processes.

"OFFSET" Printed by the process that offsets the design on the plates to a rubber roll and thence to the paper; a form of lithography.

"EMBOSSED" Printed from striking dies which raise the unlinked surface of the paper.

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