In embossing a book for the blind, the first thing necessary is to choose the book; and in this choice much care, forethought, and discrimination have to be exercised. The production of braille books being much more difficult, and consequently more expensive than the production of those in ordinary type, it is not possible even if it were desirable, to publish everything and anything for the use of the blind, as seems to be the custom nowadays with the big publishing houses when catering to the literary wants of the seeing. The book having been chosen, it is necessary to determine whether it shall have a large circulation, or whether the demand will be limited, perhaps to two or three copies. If the former is likely to be the case, the book has to be stereotyped—a process explained later; while if only a few copies will be required, it is copied by hand. In both cases, however, a manuscript copy has first to be made, from which the operator can work. This may be done either by a blind man from dictation or, as indeed is more often the case, by some seeing person acquainted with braille, who is willing to undertake the task, and thus save the blind workers much time.
When the manuscript has been completed and reread, the book is ready for stereotyping, or for delivery to a blind man to make further copies. Assuming that the book requires the former, a copy is now made of the manuscript on brass sheets, from which impressions on paper may afterward be taken. These brass sheets are especially rolled for the purpose till they are a certain gauge, and then cut to exactly twice the size of a braille sheet. After this, they are carefully folded by the stereotyper to the ordinary size, the crease thus formed being hammered flat, leaving a double sheet of brass hinged at one side, the two parts lying flat and close together.
Henceforward this double sheet is treated by the stereotyper as one; and when the dots are made on one half, they are reproduced on the other. There are many ways of making these dots on the brass plates, perhaps the simplest being with a frame made much like that used for ordinary braille writing, only that a steel punch and hammer take the place of the style, and the bed of the frame is grooved in long parallel lines, in place of the pits in those used for writing by hand. The objection to this system lies in the fact that it requires a great amount of practice to be able to hammer the punch correctly; for unless the blows are of equal force, some of the dots will be higher than the others; and where this happens, even a slow reader would be liable to pass his finger over the low dots without recognizing their presence, and would in consequence make nothing of the reading-matter.
Certainly the best, though more complicated, process of stereotyping, is that by which the majority of the British and Foreign Blind Association books are now printed. It consists of an upright machine fitted with six punches to represent the six dots in braille, which are worked by levers connected with keys in front of the machine, in appearance not unlike those of a piano. When the operator desires to make a letter of the alphabet, he presses on the keys representing the dots requisite for the character, and the corresponding punches are forced out behind to a uniform distance. With the foot a treadle is now worked, which pushes forward a die into which the punches fit, and the sheet of brass hanging suspended between these two receives the impression of such dots as the keys have forced forward. When the treadle and keys are released, the die and punches spring back to their ordinary positions, and the brass automatically moves along a space, in readiness for the next letter. The sheet can of course be easily raised line by line as required. The advantages gained in this process are that the dots are naturally of a uniform height, and that a whole character may be made with one pressure of the treadle, instead of having to make each dot separately with punch and hammer.
When all the plates to a book have been stereotyped, they are sent to a corrector to be carefully examined, and he makes a note of all the mistakes, and then returns a list of them, together with the plates, to the stereotyper, who works out the errors from the inside of the double brass sheet. This done, and the plates finally corrected, they are ready to pass into the hands of the printers, to have the paper impressions pulled from them.
The machines generally used for this purpose are the Columbia or Albion, both hand-presses; but the British and Foreign Blind Association has the use of a magnificent press, worked by a gas engine, which enables them to turn out an immense amount of work. On the bed of this machine are two boards covered with blanket or india-rubber, upon which the printer fastens two of the brass sheets by means of buttons. The tympan, or slat which comes down on the bed, also has india-rubber fastened to it, the object, of course, being to prevent the dots from becoming erased by the pressure exerted on them. The two plates in the press at one time are called a ‘form,’ and do not consist of consecutive sheets. If the book is a small one, perhaps containing ten sheets, plates one and ten are worked together, then two and nine, three and eight, and so on. In such a case the sheets are merely stitched together afterward with the cover; but if the size is too large for stitching, and the book is to be bound, the plates are printed as follows: one and four, two and three, then five and eight, six and seven, etc.
The paper used for this printing is made of material which, after numerous experiments, has been found to be the best for the purpose. The necessity for this arises from the fact that in order that the dots may emboss well, the paper has to be damped first, and were the material not of a certain quality, it would shrink and become quite unfit for use. When the paper has been properly damped, a sheet is placed between the top and bottom halves of the two brass plates, or ‘form,’ and the tympan closed down on them.618
The object in having the double plates becomes at once apparent; for the raised dots on one half of the plate act as punches, and the sunken dots on the other as dies, two pages being printed at once, and far more satisfactorily than would be the case were only one plate used.
Before a ‘form’ is removed and replaced by another, the whole of the copies required from it for the edition of the book are printed, and hung on lines to dry; and when this has been done with all the sheets in succession, they are collected in correct order, and the book is ready for the binder. In the case of books that merely require stitching, the work is done by a machine; all that the binder has to do being simply to lay the sheets, open from the middle, on a frame, and press a treadle, when the machine unrolls a piece of wire, which it pierces through the paper, and bends over on the inner side.
In binding a book rather more trouble has to be taken. The sheets are sewed separately onto two or three tapes, which are stitched on a frame; a guard, or piece of folded paper, being placed at intervals of every ten, in order to prevent the dots from being pressed out, and to make the book open more easily. The tapes are cut when the whole book has been sewed onto them, and to the protruding ends the boards, or covers, are afterward glued. These are then bound in whatever manner is desired, and the title either labeled on its back or printed in gold letters for the convenience of the seeing people who have to deal with it.