Forty Centuries of Ink Part 33

Van Nuys, 1878. Colored the Paper with a pigment and then printed designs with a soluble sulphide.

Casilear, 1878. United two distinctive colored papers, one a fugitive and the other a permanent color.

Hendrichs, 1879. Dipped ordinary paper in an aqueous solution of sulphate of copper and carbonate of ammonia and then added alkaline solutions of cochineal or equivalent coloring matter.

Nowlan, 1884. Backed the ordinary chemical paper with a thin sheet of waterproof paper.

Menzies, 1884. Introduced iodide and iodate of pota.s.sium or their equivalents into paper.

Clapp, 1884. Saturated paper with gallo-tanic acid, but the ink used on this paper contained ferri-sesquichloride or other similar preparation of iron.

Hill, 1885. Introduced into paper, ferrocyanide of manganese and hydrated peroxide of iron.

Schreiber, 1885. Colored paper material with indigo and with a subsequent treatment of chromates soluble only in alcohol.

Schreiber, 1885. Treated finished paper with ferric- oxide salts and with ferrocyanides insoluble in water but soluble in acids.

Schlumberger, 1890. Impregnated white paper with a resinated ferrous salt, a resin compound of plumbic ferrocyanide, and a resin compound of ferrocyanide of manganese in combination with a salt of molybdenum and a resin compound of zinc sulphide.

Schlumberger, 1893. Dyed first the splash fibers and mixed them with the paper pulp. Second. He also treated portions of the surface with an alkali, so as to form lines or characters thereon, then immersed the same in a weak acid, in order to produce water-mark lines.

Carvalho, 1894. 1. Charged the paper with bis.m.u.th iodide and sodium iodide. 2. Charged the paper with a bis.m.u.th salt and iodide of soda in combination with primulin, congo red or other pigment. 3. Charged the paper with a benzidine dye and an alkaline iodide.

1895. Applied a compound, sensitive to ink erasing chemicals, AFTER the writing has been placed on the paper.

Hoskins and Weis, 1895, a safety paper having added thereto a soluble ferrocyanide and a per-salt of iron insoluble in water but decomposable by a weak acid in the presence of a soluble ferrocyanide, as and for the purpose described. (2) A safety paper having added thereto a ferrocyanide soluble in water, a per-salt of iron insoluble in water but easily decomposed by weak acids in the presence of a ferrocyanide soluble in water, and a salt of manganese easily decomposed by alkalis or bleaching agents, substantially as described.

A review of the various processes for treatment of paper in pulp or when finished, demonstrates that time, money and study has been devoted to the production of a REAL safety paper. Some compositions and processes have in a measure been successful. It is found, however, that the ingenuity of those evil-minded persons, to the detection of whose efforts to alter the writing in doc.u.ments this cla.s.s of invention has more particularly been directed, finds a ready way of removing in some cases the evidence which the chemical reagent furnishes. This being true most of them have become obsolete, having entirely failed to accomplish the purposes for which they were invented.

There are but three so-called safety papers now on the market, if we exclude those possessing printed designs in fugitive colors.

It is a strange anomaly, nevertheless it is true, that 90 per cent or more of the "raised" checks, notes, or other monetary instruments which were in their original condition written on ordinary or so-called safety paper, never could have been successfully "put through" but for the gross and at times criminal negligence of their writers by the failure to adopt precautions of the very simplest kinds, and thereby avoided placing temptation in the way of many who under other circ.u.mstances would never have thought of becoming forgers.

There is no safety paper, safety ink, or mechanical appliance which will prevent the insertion of words or figures before other words or figures if a blank s.p.a.ce be left where the forger can place them.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

CURIOSA (INK AND OTHER WRITING MATERIALS).

ARTIFICIAL INK AND PAPER OWE THEIR INVENTION TO THE WASP--PHoeNICIA, "LAND OF THE PURPLE-DYE"

--LINES, ADDRESSED TO THE PHoeNICIAN--OLDEST EXISTING PIECE OF LITERARY COMPOSITION--WHERE PAPYRUS STILL GROWS--DU CANGE'S LINES ON THE STYLUS--MATERIALS USED TO PROMULGATE ANCIENT LAWS OF GREECE--ANCIENT METHOD OF WRITING WILLS--MATERIALS EMPLOYED IN ANCIENT HEBREW ROLLS--ANTIQUITY OF EXISTING HEBREW WRITING --OLDEST SPECIMEN OF GREEK WAX WRITING-- WOODEN TALLIES AS EMPLOYED IN ENGLAND--WHEN WRITING IN GOLD CEASED--DATE OF THE FIRST DISCOVERY OF GREEK PAPYRUS IN EGYPT--PERIODS TO WHICH BELONG VARIOUS STYLES OF WRITING--ANECDOTE AND POEM ABOUT THE FIRST GOLD PEN--INTERESTING NOTES ABOUT PENS AND INK-HORNS--EMPLOYMENT OF THE PEN AS A BADGE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY--SOME LINES BY c.o.c.kER--THE OLDEST EXISTING WRITTEN DOc.u.mENTS OF RUSSIA--WHEN SEALING WAX WAS FIRST EMPLOYED--PLINY'S DESCRIPTION OF THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF PAPYRUS PAPER--MODE OF PRESERVING THE ANCIENT PAPYRUS ROLLS--SUGGESTIONS RESPECTING USES OF INK-- COMPARATIVE TABLE ABOUT COAL TAR AND ITS BY- PRODUCTS--COMPOSITIONS OF SECRET INKS AND HOW TO RENDER THEM VISIBLE--CHARACTER OF INK EMPLOYED FOR MANY YEARS BY THE WASHINGTON PATENT OFFICE--FACTS ELICITED BY HERAPATH IN THE UNROLLMENT OF A MUMMY--LINES FROM SHAKESPEARE AND PERSEUS--SEVENTEENTH CENTURY OBSERVATIONS ABOUT SECRET INKS--CAUSE OF THE DESTRUCTION OF MANY ANCIENT MSS.--METHODS TO BE EMPLOYED IN THE RESTORATION OF SOME OLD INKS-- VARIATIONS IN THE MEANING OF WORDS--THE POUNCE BOX PRECEDED BLOTTING PAPER--SOME OBSERVATIONS ABOUT BLOTTING PAPER--ANECDOTE RELATING TO DR. GALE--WHEN WAFERS WERE INTRODUCED-- PERSIAN ANECDOTE ABOUT THE DIVES--EPISODES RESPECTING THE STYLUS--DESCRIPTION BY BELOE OF ANCIENT PERSIC AND ARABIC MSS.--CITATION FROM OLD BOSTON NEWSPAPER AND POEM--METHOD OF COLLECTING RAGS IN 1807 AND SOME LINES ADDRESSED TO THE LADIES--METHOD TO PHOTOGRAPH COLORED INKS--POEM BY ISABELLE HOWE FISKE.

IN considering the important and kindred subjects of "gall" ink and "pulp" paper, we are not to forget the LITTLE things connected with their development and which, indeed, made their invention possible.

The gall-nut contains gallic and gallo-tannic acid, and which acids, in conjunction with an iron salt, forms the sole base of the best ink. This nut is produced by the punctures made on the young buds of branches of certain species of oak trees by the female wasp. This same busy little insect was also the first professional paper maker. She it was who taught us not only the way to change dry wood into a suitable pulp, the kind of size to be used, how to waterproof and give the paper strength, but many more marvelous details appertaining to the manufacture of paper which in their ramifications have proved of inestimable benefit and service to the human race.

The Greek word "Phoenicia" means literally "the land of the purple dye," and to the Phoenicians is attributed the invention of the art of writing.

TO THE PHOENICIAN.

"Creator of celestial arts, Thy painted word speaks to the eye; To simple lines thy skill imparts The glowing spirit's ecstasy."

The oldest piece of literary composition known in the oldest book (roll) in existence is to be found in the celebrated papyrus Prisse, now in the Louvre at Paris. It consists of eighteen pieces in Egyptian hieratic writing, ascribed to about the year B. C.

2500.

While the papyrus plant has almost vanished from Egypt, it still grows in Nubia and Abyssinia. It is related by the Arab traveler, Ibn-Haukal, that in the tenth century, in the neighborhood of Palermo in Sicily, the papyrus plant grew with luxuriance in the Papirito, a stream to which it gave its name.

Du Cange, 1376, cites the following lines from a French metrical romance, written about that time, to show that waxen tablets continued to be occasionally used till a late period:

"Some with antiquated style In waxen tablets promptly write; Others with finer pen, the while Form letters lovelier to the sight."

The laws of Greece were promulgated by means of MSS. on linen, as they were also in Rome, and in addition to linen; cloth and silk were occasionally used.

Skins of various kinds of fish, and even the "intestines of serpents" were employed as writing materials.

Zonaras states that the fire which took place at Constantinople in the reign of Emperor Basiliscus consumed, among other valuable remains of antiquity, a copy of the Iliad and Odyssey, and some other ancient poems, written in letters of gold upon material formed of the intestines of a serpent. We are also informed by Purcelli that monuments of much more modern dates, the charter of Hugo and Lothaire, A. D. 933 (kings of Italy), preserved in the archives of Milan, are written upon fish skins.

Constantine authorized his soldiers dying on the field of battle to write their last will and testament with the point of their sword on its sheath or on a shield.

B. C. 270. The Jewish elders, by order of the high priest, carried a copy of the law to Ptolemy Philadelphus, written in letters of gold upon skins, the pieces of which were so artfully put together that the joinings did not appear.

No monuments of Hebrew writing exist which are not posterior even to the Christian era, with the exception of those on the coins of the Maccabees, which are in the ancient or what is termed the Samaritan forms of the Hebrew letters. This coinage took place about B. C. 144.

The most ancient specimen of Hebrew ink writing extant is alleged to have been written A. D. 489.

It is a parchment roll which was found in a Kariat synagogue in the Crimea. Another, brought from Danganstan, if the superscription be genuine, has a date corresponding with A. D. 580. The date of still another of the celebrated Hebrew scriptural codices, about which there is no dispute, is the Hilel codex written at the end of the sixth century. Its name is said to be derived from the fact that it was written at Hila, a town built near the ruins of the ancient Babel; some maintain, however, that it was named after the man who wrote it.

One of the earliest specimens of Greek (wax) writing is an inscription on a small wooden tablet now in the British museum. It refers to a money transaction of the thirty-first year of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B. C.

254.

In England the custom of using wooden tallies, inscribed as well as notched in the public accounts, lasted down to the nineteenth century.

Gold writing was a practice which died out in the thirteenth century.

The first discovery of Greek papyri in Egypt took place in the year 1778. It is of the (late of A. D.

191 and outside of Egypt and Herculaneum is the only place in which the Greek papyri has ever been found.

Square capital ink writing in Latin of ancient date is found on a few leaves of an MS. of Virgil, which is attributed to the close of the fourth century, and the first rustic MS. to which an approximate date can be given, belongs to the close of the fifth century.

The most ancient uncial ink writing extant, belongs to the fourth century, whilst the earliest mixed uncial and miniscule writing pertains to the sixth century.

The oldest extant Irish MS. in the round Irish hand is ascribed to the latter part of the seventh century, while the earliest specimen of English writing of any kind extant dates about the beginning of the eighth century.

The gold pen won by Peter Bales in his trial of skill with Johnson, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, if really made for use, is probably the first modern example of such pens. Bales was employed by Sir Francis Walsingham, and afterwards kept a writing school at the upper end of the Old Bailey.

In 1595, when nearly fifty years old, he had a trial of skill with one Daniel Johnson, by which he was the winner of a golden pen, of a value of L20, which, in the pride of his victory, he set up as his sign. Upon this occasion John Davis made the following epigram in his "Scourge of Folly:"

"The Hand and Golden Pen, Clophonion Sets on his sign, to shew, O proud, poor soul, Both where he wonnes, and how the same he won, From writers fair, though he writ ever foul; But by that Hand, that Pen so borne has been, From place to Place, that for the last half Yeare, It scarce a sen'night at a place is seen.

That Hand so plies the Pen, though ne'er the neare, For when Men seek it, elsewhere it is sent, Or there shut up as for the Plague or Rent, Without which stay, it never still could stand, Because the Pen is for a Running Hand."