I was discussing printing with another member and decided to look for some videos of the overall process. I did find a few nice ones.
Here’s a nice video of stone lithography using a transfer at an art place. I've mentioned the process of making the transfers to lay out the stone before and this is probably the best video I've seen of the process as it's applied to art.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E38B0swb4vo
And a nice overview of commercial offset lithography from 1996, towards the tail end of some of the technology shown, which wasn’t far removed from the state of the art in maybe 1910-20.
The plate developing our shop had was more like the water table and hose the art guy used than the machine in the video. And we made permanent masks from the negatives rather than blocking areas off with moveable pieces like the guy at the plate exposer. But all the rest is familiar to me.
The guy at about 6:19 taking the finished brochures off the folder? That could have been me fairly often. One of the more common jobs they let the Highschool kids do when we were busy. The only part I didn’t get to do was run the paper cutter. But I was around it plenty.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMqHexdEj2Q
Pretty cool stuff.
Here’s a direct lithography press from 1860 in operation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g52EooaVlcI
And an 1886 press still in use
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zvKCbnyNoE
I've also learned a bit of timeline, the offset press was invented in 1904 and wasn't common right away. So I believe the cards we collect were produced by direct lithography, nearly identical to the presses shown in the two videos.
Steve B