Electrotype Plates & Electrotypers

There were thousands--Where did they go?

In the evolution of printing electrotyping, invented by Moritz von Jacobi in Russia in 1838, revolutionized the process as it allowed high-quality duplication of illustrations, particularly of wood cuts, and of type and entire composed pages or signatures.¹

The history of the enormous Harpers Establishment tells of the accumulation of electrotype plates. Those of the Magazine alone were rapidly approaching ten thousand when Jacob Abbott described their storage in 1885:

The plates are stored in subterranean vaults built under the streets that surround the building….The vaults extend under ground for two hundred feet in length, and in dimensions are eight feet wide by eight feet high. They are shelved on both sides, and the shelves are loaded with plates—stereotype or electrotype—representing all the works published in the establishment. There is one plate for every page of every one of the many hundreds of volumes which the house publishes, making from fifty to seventy tons in all.

When a new edition of any book is required, the plates are brought out from these vaults and put upon the presses. When the work is finished, they are taken back again to the vaults.²

The two major unions were the National Society of Electrotypers and Stereotypers (UK) and the International Stereotypers and Electrotypers Union (US and Canada). Long merged or gone.³

After newer technologies like offset printing superseded electrotyping I suppose the plates were melted or destroyed. Maybe Glenn Fleishman knows?⁴

Here are a few at E-Bay:

VINTAGE ELECTROTYPE PRINTER PLATE

1. Fleishman, Glenn. (2021) Reading the Reprintings :The Printer’s Side.Medium. (Feb. 22).

2. Abbott, Jacob. (1855). The Harper Establishment; or, How the Story Books Are Made (New York: Harper & Brothers).

3. International Stereotypers and Electrotypers Union. The International Stereotypers and Electrotypers Union Journal. [Philadelphia, Pa.]: [The Union], 1906.

4. Fleishman, Glenn. SIX CENTURIES OF TYPE & PRINTING.