N300 Mayo Question

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

I just got my first one (Duffy) and really like the set. What are these cards? I know that the OJs are albumen photographs. Are the Mayos the same or are they something else?

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

Read Rudd.It's not that I don't love to talk my head off, but in spite of having 8--I don't quite understand it myself...pretty shameful, huh?

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

Half-tone process: This was a process that allowed for photo-realistic images in prints. The process uses a special screen to transform a photographic image into a fine pattern of dots on the printing plate. The process was invented about 1870 and became popular in newspapers in the 1880s. It is still used today. (See chapter 4)

Chapter 4:
In the late 1800s, the invention of the half-tone process revolutionized printing. Using a special screen, the half-tone process transforms a photographic image into a fine pattern of tiny dots on the printing plate, which is then printed onto the paper or cardboard. These tiny dots allow an image to look photo-realistic, at least from a distance. If you take a magnifying glass and inspect the picture on a modern card, or in a magazine or book, you will see that it is made up of tiny dots. With the half-tone technology, card makers could take an actual photograph or photographic negative and make realistic looking printed images. They could also take a painting or other art and make it into half-tone dots. The images on the 1933 Goudey Baseball cards, for example, are half-tone reproductions of paintings. If you take a magnifying glass you will see that the images are made up of tiny dots. This was a much easier way to put artistic images on cards than drawing directly on the plate.


This half-tone process was only used as needed. Rarely is a genuine card entirely half-tone. Half-tone wasn't needed to make lettering, border lines and other solid designs. On a card, most of these parts would be solid ink. If you take a card, magazine or illustrated book you will see that part of the print will be half-tone, while other parts will be solid. In a magazine or newspaper, the picture will be made up of tiny dots, while the text and often the border design will be solid.

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Posted By: hankron

The Mayo and the Just So issues were the first standard baseball cards that were mechanical prints (ink and printing plate/press) and had photo-realistic images. Particularly deceptive with the Mayos, as they were designed to look like photo cards ... The earlier printing press cards, like the Allen & Ginters and the Buchner Gold Coins, resemble little paintings or sketches.

While photo realistic printed images on cards and magazines and postcards is taken for granted by us and even by grandparents years ago, for many years it was not practically possible to make a mechanical print with a photo realistic image. The technology hadn't been invented. If you look in a Civil War era newspaper, you will see that all the newpaper pictures look like sketches. It wasn't until the early 1880s, that a few newspapers, using a relatively new printing process, had photo-realistic pictures. I beleive the New York Times didn't have such images until the 1900s.

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

durable than a negative--including a glass-plate negative? Otherwise, why go to all that trouble (now that me can mass produce photo paper, developer, stop and--negatives)?
I understand that the albumen print process was fairly com-plicated and time consuming, but looking at the One Hour Photo techniques for producing and reproducing our snapshots at the drugstore, it's hard to imagine making a plate with tiny dots being more convenient!

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Posted By: hankron

Making the printing plates is complicated and time consuming (up front cost), but the process is less expensive than photographs if you're doing mass production-- like printing newspapers or magazines cards. Also, if you are printing a newspaper, where it's text and pictures, you want everything as part of one printing plate, instead of words and pasted-in photographs. For companies, it's not a matter of theory as practicalness. The newspapers were the first to use half-tone, down the road baseball cards. With any commercial technology, different industries and even individual companies started using a process at different times. So it's never a case that on June 23 1882 everyone started using a technology.

You can find old half-tone printing plates around, and they will have a physical in-relief surface.

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Posted By: hankron

And before anyone asks, no one will find the original T206 printing plates that can be used to make new cards.

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Posted By: J.

.......

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Posted By: hankron

For many inventions, like half-tone printing, there is a large gap between the invention date and its widespread commercial use. For example, the type of half-tone printing for newspapers was invented about 1870, but wasn't first used by a newspaper until the 1880s.

This is because when the process is invented it is more of an in-labratory experiment and doesn't work commercially-- usually due to poor quality coupled with being too expensive and not pracitcal. After years of honing and experimentation, the process becomes workable and inexpensive. Some processes are never used commercially, because they always remain tooexpensive or whatever.

So, at one point, using photographs was a less expensive and the most practical way to make photo-realistic images-- as you suggested. However, as the years passed and the half-tone process advanced, haltone-printing became cheaper-- especially for massive print runs.

This also shows that an technology's date of invention is not a reliable indicator of the technology's widespread use.