Jesse Gonder "printing plate" ?

[LuckyLarry]

Is this some sort of printer plate? aprox 2" by 2.5" it weighs over an ounce and is the thickness of a penny. It sort of looks like this photo yet the image is reversed?
Larry

[toppcat]

Larry:

I've seen one other plate like this, for a Red Sox player, with the same kind of back. Reverse image makes sense as (I believe as a layman) the image was inked, transferred to a rubber mat and then slapped onto the press sheet (along with others players of course). Steve Birmingham might know a lot more about the process but that's my understanding.
EDIT, I think my middle part above is incorrect?

[swarmee]

Photo printing process didn't include plates, to my knowledge; just exposure in a dark room from the original film.

May have been from a publication (magazine, newspaper) or obscure card set. Gonder wasn't on Cincy long, so it could be dated pretty easily to 1962-63.

[commishbob]

Yup, a photoengraving plate, usually made with copper or zinc. Saw lots of these when I worked at the now-defunct Houston Post in the 70s and early 80s. Made through a painstaking process that had been streamlined quite a bit by the time I was working there. It was still fascinating to watch the whole process of the pages being laid out.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by commishbob

Yup, a photoengraving plate, usually made with copper or zinc. Saw lots of these when I worked at the now-defunct Houston Post in the 70s and early 80s. Made through a painstaking process that had been streamlined quite a bit by the time I was working there. It was still fascinating to watch the whole process of the pages being laid out.

Yep, that's it. Pretty cool.

It's a pretty rough screen, so I'm thinking it's from something like a local program or newspaper, something that didn't have super high production values. (Newspapers are difficult, some were done this way, some with rubber "plates" - some are screened roughly like this, others have excellent quality photos. It's most likely a technology vs budget sort of thing.

[LuckyLarry]

thanks everyone for the replies!
Larry

[spec]

Bob Andrews and Steve Birmingham are right on target. When I broke into the newspaper business in the late 1960s, we called these "halftones." They were made from original photos by photoengravers and mounted on lead blocks that were fitted into the chase that held the type for the page set by linotype machines. This chase was then used to make a cardboard mold (stereotyping) from which the actual metal printing plate was cast. This process was still in use at the papers I worked for in Boston into the 1970s, but was gradually supplanted by computers and offset printing techniques employed today. One-column "cuts" like your Gonder were often saved and filed in cabinets in the newspaper's morgue or library and reused to save time and money. Thus, many have survived today. Though they are steps away from being "printing plates," these "cuts" or "halftones" can be inked and used to make crude proofs of the image.