setting type wet in the 18th century?
Hello all!
I recently learned about a letter from Ben Franklin which details his suspicions that lead might not be good for humans: https://franklinpapers.org/framedVolumes.jsp?vol=44&page=238
In that letter, he mentions that type needs to be wet when being distributed: “in 1724, being in London, I went to work in the Printing-House of Mr. Palmer, Bartholomew Close, as a Compositor. I then found a Practice I had never seen before, of drying a Case of Types, (which are wet in Distribution) by placing it sloping before the Fire. I found this had the additional Advantage, when the Types were not only dry’d but heated, of being confortable to the Hands working over them in cold weather. I therefore sometimes heated my Case when the Types did not want drying.”
Has anyone ever heard of this practice before? Why would the type need to be wet?
Any information appreciated!
Best,
Jessica Peterson
Wetting the type before distribution was a common practice by journeymen comps in the large firm to which I was apprenticed in the 1960s (Tinlings of Liverpool & Prescot), the idea being that the water held the type together and prevented it being pied - especially so when dissing was done ‘from the stone’ and the type was more prone to falling over.
Wow, that is fascinating! How did you wet it?
Simply by brushing water over the page and letting it soak through for a few minutes before dissing! I must admit that I rarely did it, for I found that the letters sometimes stuck together rather too well and prevented easy separation during dissing.
Thanks for clearing this up! Your experience is so helpful!
Before solvents, type was cleaned with lye water. The lye water was in a shallow tray or trough, that rocked. the form was loosened, immersed in the lye water and brushed and rocked and rocked and brushed. Then the form was removed from the lye tray and rinsed with clean water before distributing. You will find many older type cases lined with paper in the bottom of the boxes. This was to soak up some of the water from the wet types. The lye residue made the skin on the fingers, soft and loose. Alum was applied to the fingers to tighten the skin.
In German and Dutch manuals the advice was given to distribute the dampened type before the lunch break or before the end of the working day and to leave the cases out for the type to dry.