Quote:
Originally Posted by mouschi
As for newspapers, they were using woodcuts and stamping them basically by hand? They couldn't use pictures (until the dot-matrix patterns was invented) because they couldn't reproduce the images due to the paper needed. Do I have it right so far?
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It wasn't really the paper per se, so much as the method of reproduction. Albumen prints were made by exposing a photographic negative to a piece of specially coated paper, whereas newspapers in the late 19th century were printed by letterpress printing, in which a bed made up of movable type is inked and pressed onto a sheet of paper. I'm not sure if it would have been possible to make an albumen print on newsprint, but even if it was, it would have had to be done completely separately from the process of printing a newspaper. A woodcut, on the other hand, could easily fit among the type in a letterpress type bed, as people had been doing from the invention of movable type and the printing press in the 15th century.