University of Virginia Library

II

The second development of the 1790s of obvious interest to the bibliographer
is the beginning of the mechanization of the production of paper,
a process initiated probably in 1796, by Louis Robert, at Essonnes, south of
Paris.[51] The realisation of Robert's ideas was achieved in Britain, financed

in part by Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, stationers and paper-makers of
Huguenot descent, by whose name the paper-making machine is still known.
The machine was perfected in 1807, when a patent was granted to the
Fourdrinier brothers and John Gamble—`perfected' in the sense that modern
Fourdriniers operate on the same principles, even if accompanied by
numerous refinements and huge increases in scale. The machine comprises an
endless moving wire screen onto which the stuff (or `pulp') is dribbled from
the stuff chest (or `vat') via the breast box;[52] the paper is then wound up at
the `dry end' of the machine to form a continuous reel (or `web').

Such paper is conventionally known as `machine-made'; but it is necessary
here to consider briefly a distinct variety of machine-made known as
`mould-made', which could be produced in one of two ways. The earlier way
was the `chain-mould' method,[53] which comprised an endless belt of conventional
moulds (and deckles), without the underlying wire screen, onto
each of which a measured amount of stuff was poured. It is not certain, however,
that any machine constructed along these lines was ever put into use
commercially. The later way was to use a composite machine, combining
chain-mould and Fourdrinier;[54] whereby conventional moulds could, when
desired, be attached to the wire screen; with the moulds removed, the machine
was then available again for producing a web. The moulds could be either
laid or wove, but obviously the objective of the exercise was to mechanize the
production of laid paper, since until 1825 only wove paper could be produced
on the normal Fourdrinier. The continuing demand for laid paper
was met rather by hand-mades, sheets produced by the traditional method of
dipping mould and deckle into a vat of stuff, so that mould-mades may be
regarded as little more than a historical curiosity. In any case, as far as the
bibliographer can probably determine, there is nothing to distinguish a sheet
of laid paper produced by either of the chain-mould methods from one produced
by hand.

A distinction, however, can tentatively be made between a sheet of wove
paper produced on a Fourdrinier and one produced by hand. Before 1839
any sheet containing a watermark, whether or not it includes a date, must
have been produced by hand, for it was not until that year that the dandy
roll was first employed with a watermark design on its surface.[55] As first employed
on being patented in 1825 the dandy roll was no more than a roller
with a laid finish passed over the surface of the web as it was being formed,
its purpose being simply to press out more water. From 1828 dandies were
also made with a wove finish, though without a watermark.

Paper produced between 1825 and 1839 with a laid appearance but without
a watermark was probably made by machine, an assumption which it
may be possible to confirm by determining which side of the sheet the indentations
from the dandy roll are in. Machine-made `laid' paper (i.e. that
created with a dandy roll) differs from hand-made (and mould-made) laid
paper by the fact that in machine-made the `chain lines' appear in, and the
watermarks are read from, the side which was not in contact with the wire
screen, the reverse of the procedure with hand-made. In hand-made paper
the side which came in contact with the mould is described as the right (or
`mould' or `wire') side, the other side the wrong (or `felt') side. With machine-made
paper, however, the terms are reversed: according to Labarre, `the upper
side is the `right' side, i.e., the side on which the couch-roll acts and not
the wire'.[56]

It is also of some bibliographical interest to note the methods by which
the web was reduced to sheets of conventional sizes. In the period preceding
the introduction of dandies bearing watermarks the web might simply be
drawn across a table and cut to the length desired. After 1839 the web might
be `cut to register', a process whereby the circumference of the dandy corresponded
with the length of the shorter edge of the intended sheet, so that
the watermark would appear in a consistent position in the resulting sheets.
Unless the sides of the paper can be distinguished it may not be possible to
tell a laid hand-made sheet from one cut to register from a web. Conversely
paper with a watermark appearing in a varying position within the sheet—
as in modern superior paper (variously, and often misleadingly, described)
used both for printing and for writing—must be machine-made.

It may be impossible to determine whether the wove paper without
watermarks used in a British book printed in the early nineteenth century is
hand- or machine-made, but an uncut copy may help in the determination.
The hand-made sheet will have deckles on all four edges, whereas the
machine-made will have either three or four cut edges, depending on how
the web was reduced to sheets. The remaining edge (either a shorter or a
longer) will exhibit what may be called `deckle strap thinning', created by
the stuff seeping under the deckle straps (the revolving leather straps which
confine the stuff to the wire screen)[57] and resulting in a deckle characteristically
more uniform than the deckle edge created in a sheet of hand-made paper.
Though it may sometimes be difficult to distinguish a thinning from a tear,
viewing the edge against a light should identify a thinning. Of course cut
edges may also result from producing a sheet of the required dimensions
from, for example, a double sheet. Nonetheless, whatever the difficulties, it
may be worth examining the edges of an uncut copy in attempting to determine
format or in undertaking other varieties of analysis.

If James Ballantyne in Edinburgh is typical of major printers elsewhere
in Britain machine-made paper was not in widespread use in substantial

bookwork until about 1820, but by the mid-1820s the transition from handmade
was practically complete. In other words, and discounting the small
amount of laid paper still being used, up to about 1820 paper used in bookwork
was usually wove with a watermark (i.e. hand-made), but from the mid1820s
it was mostly wove without (i.e. machine-made)[58] Thus, in printing
the works of Sir Walter Scott, Ballantyne appears to have first used machine-made
paper in 1819, for the Novels and tales (T/B269Aa, published December
1819) and the Poetical works (T/B262A, January 1820), both in twelve
volumes; thereafter some works are on hand-mades, others on machine-mades,
but beginning with Woodstock (T/B190A, April 1826) all the major works
are on machine-mades exclusively. This transition within Ballantyne's
printing-house parallels the transition within the British paper-making industry:
1824 was the first year in which the output of machine-made paper
exceeded the output of hand-made, 14,459 to 12,750 tons. The progress of
the transition (and the increase in production) can be gauged by the figures
for 1840 (33,463 to 9,937) and for 1860 (95,971 to 3,839).[59]

Wove paper was considered preferable to laid because of its greater
smoothness and uniformity, and machine-made paper was ready for shipping
in five days, rather than five weeks for hand-made. In 1806 the Fourdrinier
brothers estimated the annual cost of operating a seven-vat hand mill at
£2,604.12s., as against the cost of operating an equivalent machine at
£734.12s.; at the same time the cost per hundredweight of making paper by
hand was reckoned to be 16s., as against 3s.9d. by machine.[60] These advantages
notwithstanding, paper-makers were slow to install Fourdriniers. Clapperton
notes that `Owing to the want of enterprise among the paper-makers,
and the opposition of the trade to the introduction of machinery, the business
did not at first progress rapidly.'

However, we should not overlook the expense involved in acquiring and
installing a machine. In March 1808 William Balston was quoted £1500 by
the Fourdrinier brothers for a machine capable of producing the equivalent
of eight vats, with an annual licence fee of £380.[61] Despite the assurance that
installation of a machine would save him £1000 a year Balston chose to retain
his vats. According to Bryan Donkin's `Prospectus of the patent machine for
making of wove paper, 1813'[62] even the smallest machine, a mere thirty
inches between the deckle straps and producing the equivalent of three or
four vats, cost £715 if driven by straps, £750 if driven by wheels, with an

annual licence fee of £200 (three vats) or £300 (four vats); Donkin's licence
fee for an eight-vat machine was £940 or £980. In other words the slowness
of implementation may well have been due to the capital costs involved, not
necessarily to any dissatisfaction with the machine itself or to any hostility to
the principle of mechanisation.

Estimates of the number of machines installed in the 1820s and '30s vary
(one estimate for 1837 is that 105 machines were then in operation, another
279); by 1842 there were 356 machines and 372 traditional vats, with the
machines calculated as on average equating with five vats.[63] As can be seen
from the figures already quoted, by 1860 hand-made accounted for under
four per cent of the paper produced in Britain.[64]

Though published volumes are generally printed throughout either on
hand-made paper or on machine-made, that homogeneity almost certainly is
merely a reflexion of the paper-merchant's supply, not a desire for uniformity
on the part of the printer. Indeed, some volumes were printed on a mixture
of papers, apparently indicating an indifference within the trade. The three
volumes of Scott's Quentin Durward, an octavo, published 20 May 1823,[65]
provide a convenient example. One set,[66] which differs only in the odd sheet
from other sets in the Melbourne collection and so may tentatively be taken
as representative of the edition as a whole, is predominantly without watermarks,
but thirteen of the twenty full gatherings/sheets in volume 2 and six
of the twenty-two in volume 3 do have watermarks. Hence of the sixty-two
sheets making up the three volumes nineteen are clearly hand-made. That
at least some of the remaining forty-three are machine-made is confirmed by
the occasional presence of a seam mark, a mark in the paper produced by
the seam joining the two ends of the wire screen on a Fourdrinier.[67] That
all forty-three sheets without watermarks are machine-made, derived from a
web, is suggested by the patterns of cut and deckle edges—for example, in
the three uncut sets of Quentin Durward in the Melbourne collection the
fore edge of $1-4 in the sheets without watermarks is invariably cut, whereas
those sheets with a watermark invariably have a deckle edge in that position
(i.e. those sheets with a watermark were produced in a traditional hand-held
mould). From copies which have been cut this degree of certainty cannot be
arrived at: it will not be possible to distinguish sheets produced by hand in
moulds without watermarks from sheets produced by machine in a web, also
without watermarks. In the transitional period (and specifically in the years
around 1820), therefore, it is possible that three sorts of paper may be found
in the one volume.

As a counter to the suggestion of indifference just made is the curious

case of the eighth edition of Scott's Waverley (published, according to Lockhart,
in an edition of 2000 in April 1821),[68] of which there are two issues;[69]
copies of both are in the Melbourne collection. Pace Todd and Bowden, all
three volumes of 77Ak are watermarked `1819 | 2', whereas 77Al has no
watermarks at all; that the paper in 77Al is at least in part machine-made is
again demonstrated by the presence of an occasional seam mark, though the
paper is palpably not uniform. 77Al is distinguished from 77Ak in having
`†' in the direction line of $1r, but the two agree in press figures, demonstrating
that they were printed in one continuous run (Todd and Bowden
mistakenly regard the latter as a reimpression). The siglum clearly serves to
distinguish the two issues, but why would the printer (anonymous) or the
publisher (Constable, in Edinburgh) wish to make a distinction between
hand-made (or watermarked) and machine-made (or without watermarks)?
Were the two papers considered as of different qualities (and therefore sold
at different prices)?[70] —Lockhart makes no distinction.

The change from hand- to machine-made paper corresponds also with
the transition from printing with a hand-press to printing with a machine,
and perhaps it could be claimed that it was the development in printing
technology which encouraged the transition in the process of paper-making
by increasing the demand for it.[71] In Ballantyne's printing-house the two
changes do indeed run in parallel. From a Scott letter it appears likely that
Ballantyne introduced machines (how operated is uncertain—perhaps manually)
in 1823,[72] and Jane Millgate reports that two steam-powered machines
were acquired in early 1830 for use in printing the magnum edition of Scott's
collected works;[73] over that seven- or eight-year period the transition—both in
paper-making and in printing (the latter reflected in the abandonment of
press figures)—was complete. The widespread adoption of machine-made paper
by the end of the 1820s may be just one element in the transition in book
production from the hand-press period to the machine-press, but for the bibliographer
it is the element which most emphatically marks that transition.

To return to my original concern: the determination of format in British
books printed on locally-made paper in the 30-odd years from 1794. Until
1811 much of the paper used for printing was hand-made, containing a
watermark comprising a date and often other elements, and the practice of
dating paper was continued well beyond that date, seemingly as long as
paper was being made by hand in a mould. Uncut volumes on dated paper
should readily reveal their origins in a hand-held mould, and hence their
format. Cut volumes on dated paper may be less revealing; nonetheless the
illustrations presented here suggest that a familiarity with the patterns of
placing watermarks on moulds from 1794 onwards should enable the bibliographer
to determine the format of such volumes. However, over the course
of the 1820s there is a clear decline in the capacity to determine the format
of the volume in hand, given that by 1830 the volume may well be among
the majority printed on machine-made wove paper without watermarks of
any kind and cut in the process of edition binding, thereby removing all the
supplementary evidence which might have been brought to bear on the task,
notably the original edges of the sheet. From this decade onwards alternative
sources of evidence will need to be sought if the bibliographer is to determine
the format of the volume in hand.