New theory why American Beauty cards are narrower than other T206's

[steve B]

Originally Posted by tedzan

OK guys...... FYI regarding the OBAK cards....and then hopefully, we can get back on the main track here talking
about T206 American Beauty cards.

The OBAK (T212) cards were printed in San Francisco at the Schmidt Lithography Co. Judging from the 76-card
uncut sheet shown in Post #8, Schmidt Lithography used a 30-inch wide press track to print 19 cards across the
sheet. This press track was considerably wider than American Litho's 18-inch press track used for the T206's.
For your edification regarding Schmidt Litho....check-out this link......
http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/schmidt.html


Judson....thanks for the kind words and regarding your......" Frank W.'s point is well taken, but if the "stones" were
individual to the player images and assembled for each sheet, then that, to me, would be conclusive. If there were
miscut cards of the same player with different players to the left or right, that would be substantial proof that the
stones were secured individually onto the printing plates. "

Lithography is an art, and as Frank says the images are initially created on stones ("lithos"..Greek). Now, my under-
standing of this process is....then the image is transferred to metallic plates. So, adding a 13th image (or 26th, or
39th, etc., etc. onto a printing plate is no big deal.

Gee, I don't appear to be invoking any really thought-provoking stuff here. Let's do some serious thinking and arrive
at some plausible explanation for this series of "skinny" cards.


T-Rex TED

Lithography is either stones or plates. You wouldn't see both used.

The original image is converted to a film with a grid of dots, similar to any other halftone image. Alternately, a solid section of color can be printed.

Using stones was the older method, and is used mostly for art today.The stone is actually a nice thick piece of a special grade of limestone. The image is drawn on the stone with a water soluble material. Or printed on through a photographic process using a negative. The stone is waxed, and the water soluble part is washed off taking the image area wax with it. The stone is then etched with acid leaving depressions in the stone. In printing, the stone is wet on just the raised surface, and inked with an oil based ink. The ink sticks to the depressions, but not the damp stone. The paper is pressed onto the stone, making the printed item.

In offset lithography the image first gets printed to a rubber blanket that transfers the image to the paper.

In the modern version, which is nearly exclusively offset lithography the images are photographed with the screen which creates the dot pattern, and a film is generated. This film is attached to a mask which is used to expose the plates, which are then etched. Modern plates are usually aluminum with a thin limestone like coating. Once the plates are etched the printing process is pretty much the same, and almost always the offset style.

Very modern printing skips a lot of the preliminary steps, doing it al with computers. I'm not at all familiar with exactly how it's done.

Changing a stone to add an image would be a load of work. you'd either start with a fresh stone or more likely grind or etch the image off a used stone, and begin again from scratch. If there was room, you might just sneak an image into the border. Moving the row over to add a card would be pretty tough.

Changing a plate is also very difficult. I've seen scratches repaired by using a pencil like item that puts some surface back on the plate. And stuff can be added by scratching the plate. But wholesale changes would take a very long time, and the plate wouldn't last very long. So you'd want to make a whole new plate, which would require a new mask to be made.


On the good side, I believe they would use a new "negative" to make the new plate in either case, and by its nature it would have some difference from the earlier one. And Just today I got a card that I also have in another brand.
AB460 and soverign 460. I'll be making a nice detailed scan so I can compare the two in great detail.


Steve B

[FrankWakefield]

Thanks for that, Steve.

I can't envision American Litho reingraving for the special runs of American Beauty cards. I don't think each card was individually etched. If they were, and they were pieced into the press like movable type, then it would have been likely with all of those cards with multiple passes that we'd have seen a card with one player's green and another player's yellow.... for example.

What seems more likely is that normal width sheets had the cards cut with just an extra sliver coming off of the side of each of the cards. Maybe someone at AB whined about the cards being so wide they were difficult to slide into that nice, wide, normal-sized package. So American Litho cut them a tad smaller for AB.

[steve B]

So I've done the scans and looked at them. Pretty interesting.

If they were different it wouldn't necessarily mean the stone/plate was different. A card from one part of the plate is usually different from one from another part if there's two of them on the plate. And I think there's enough T206s out there with the same name at the top from a miscut or even with the name at both top and bottom that we know they were often or usually doubled up on the sheet.

Here's the detail of the American Beauty card.


And here's the detail of the same area of the Soverign card


Both were scanned at 800dpi

The slight diffrences in the thickness of the black lines are from the black ink being a bit more liquid while the soverign card was being printed. The registration is also different. Blue a bit high on the AB and a grayish color slightly to the left on the Sov. Aside from that the dot pattern and even the lettering are close enough to call them identical. I'm nearly certain that not only were they printed by the same plate, but are from the same position on the plate.

I'd be interested to hear theories against this. I have a couple, but consider them to be unlikely.

Next up, looking at the maybe two other t206s I have two of, and looking at a modern card or two that I know for sure are double prints so I can show examples of differences.

I'm thinking on the extra sliver trimmed off idea, currently thinking not, but it bears some thought.

Steve B

[ethicsprof]

Steve B,

i am very impressed with your expertise in this arena.
i know Joe has offered much help with printing issues since he is trained and practices in that area. Jamie has helped a great deal with his knowledge of key texts in the field of lithography. And David has offered help when it comes to photography.
I do believe that your specialty has been desperately needed and very much welcome!!!
I'm late to this thread and now have much to delve into and incubate.
all the best,
barry

[teetwoohsix]

Steve,I think you are 100% right.If you compare the letter "W" in the word "NEW" and the letter "R" in the word "AMER." on both cards,you can see an exact match-this is great work!!

Thank you also for the detailed breakdown with the printing processes,this is an awesome addition to this thread.

Sincerely,Clayton

[mkdltn]

I did a patent search on Google, I think these coupons were machine fed into the package. If the cards were a tad to large for the feeder mechanism it would really cause problems on the line. This would explain the isolation of the thin cards to one factory. It was a customer request easily implemented quite late in the production process. Just an Idea.

http://www.google.com/patents?id=IB9...coupon&f=false

Mike

[steve B]

Thanks guys, I'm far from being an expert. I worked for a couple years in a print shop years ago. 1979-81 actually only 2 years as the first and last were half years. But the shop was a great place to work and insisted on the guys like me doing other jobs. And we were expected to pay attention. I got to run a 35 inch Heidelbeg press my last week due to an injury. And I did at least a day or two helping and learning in all the other departments except sales.

I stayed up way too late last night scanning cards, and I've got some ideas that may make things a bit more confusing.

I like Mikes idea about the machine, but with some reservations. More to think about.

Steve B

[tedzan]

This is all very interesting; however, I do not see any noticeable difference in the Brown lettering captions of my three Ford
cards.
The Brown captions were printed in the initial ink printing phase (of the 6-color process) in the printing of T206's. There are
many T206 proofs that confirm this fact. Therefore, I don't expect any significant differences in the printing of the captions.









Regarding the main subject of this thread, the cigarette packaging (cutting, folding, assembling the packs and the cigarette
stuffing) was done by machinery at the "modernized" Factory's [such as the Kimball plant (#649). in Rochester, NY].

But, it's my impression that the the T-card insertion was done by the employees (usually, low paid women or teenage youth).
Inserting two cards (one on each side of the slide) in the pack was a very quick and simple process.


TED Z

[tedzan]

One more very important bit of information. The majority of the Tobacco brands, reflected on the backs of the T206 cards,
were produced at the Richmond, VA factory (#25) during the 1909-1910 timeframe.

The Factory #25 cigarette production includes the following T206's......

American Beauty 350 (frame and no frame)
Broad Leaf 350 & 460
Carolina Brights
Cycle 350 & 460
Drum
Old Mill
Piedmont 150 & 350 & 460
Sovereign 150 & 350 & 460
Sweet Caporal 150 & 350 & 460

Therefore, I do not understand this comment......

" I think these coupons were machine fed into the package. If the cards were a tad to large for the feeder mechanism it would
really cause problems on the line. This would explain the isolation of the thin cards to one factory. "


TED Z

[steve B]

That was one of the reservations I had about the machine theory. I can only think of a few reasons why a factory would have one particular machine that required different inserts. None of those reasons make much sense considering how industry worked at the time.

The only halfway sensible thought is that they were testing a new machine that had potential to be faster. I don't think that's the case. If it was there would be a population of some other brands cards that were narrow like the ABs. And there would more than likely be a population of ABs that were normally sized. The same would go for a change during production. Since there isn't any evidence of either, I think that can be set aside for now.

Nice to see more Fords. A sample of two isn't all that much, 5 is a bit better.

My main point with the ford was that if they made a new plate for the AB cards to fit more across the row they would have probably taken new halftone pictures, and they'd be different. The consistency between all the Fords leaves me convinced that all were printed from the same plate.

I've looked at a few different t206s that I have two of,(11, more than I thought) and there aren't really any screening differences on any of them. There are a few differences, but nothing I can really say isn't just due to the variable inking. The Absteins I have show a difference on the hat that is close, but not enough to say it's different. And there's a mark on the left frame line of Beck. And Abbattichio blue sleeves has a difference near the neck. All of these could be merely from over or underinking, or even just how fluid the ink was that day.

It has also occurred to me that if you were doing several of the same player on a sheet you could take multiple images of the same halftone, so the different positions wouldn't absolutely be different.

I was thinking that it would also be a nuisance to trim the extra bit off the AB cards in production, but it's probably possible to cut the sheet normally and still make the narrow cards.

Fascinating stuff, the more I think and try to prove/disprove a theory, the more It looks like it might just be possible.

Steve B