Bull's Head and Mermaid - The Bernstein Project - Österreichische ...

Ill. 16: This illustration of a paper machine shows the state of the art around 1830. From the vat (A) the pulp reaches the flow box (B)
through the rotating Fourdrinier wire (E) and is transferred between two felts from the sieve section to the press section by couching (H).
Until the invention of heated drying cylinders (P) over two press rollers (O and Q) a winch was usual. Source: Das Pfennig-Magazin der
Gesellschaft zur Verbreitung gemeinnütziger Kenntnisse, No. 73, 20 Sept. 1834, p. 584.
then smoothed by rubbing with an agate stone or later
batchwise in a hammer mill. One distinguished between
full-, three-, quarter-, semi- and unglued papers, where the
sizing degree determined the use of the paper. While blotting
or filter papers are totally unglued, printing papers are
usually only soft-sized because of the better absorbency.
Writing papers again are strongly glued. With the mechanical
production of endless paper, the animal sizing of single
sheets was not feasible anymore. A new paper sizing
method described in 1807 by Moritz Friedrich Illig established
itself in the following decades. The usual subsequent
surface sizing was substituted by sizing the paper pulp
achieved by adding alum and resin during the pulp processing
in the colander.
Industrial Watermark Production
The paper manufacturer John Phipps and Christopher
Phipps 1825 received a patent for “An improvement in machinery
for making paper by employing a cylindrical roller
the part of which is formed of ‘laid’ wire. The effect produced
by the said cylindrical roller is that of making impressions
upon the sheet of paper, or pulp, upon which the said
roller passes and thus the paper has made it the appear-
ance of ‘laid’ paper (like that manufactured by hand).”
(Smith, Watermarks). The London industrialist John Marshall
delivered a metal-fabric covered roller (Ill. 17) to the paper
manufacturers Towgood in January 1827. This roller should
make the paper on the Fourdrinier wire smoother. Shortly
afterwards he delivered a roller with a ribbed covering to J.
and C. Phipps.
Watermarks could be initially affixed to these rollers but only
as outline watermarks. The first industrially produced papers
with shaded portrait watermarks of Napoleon which
were shown at the Industrial Exhibition in Paris in 1849 can
be attributed probably to the English paper maker W.H.
Smith. Such shadow watermarks are, for example, still a
widespread security feature of banknotes.
The paper industry used further methods for making watermarks
in paper sheets. One of these is the Molette technology.
A different technology was used for the so-called
‘false’ watermarks where watermark patterns are faked by
pressing in dry paper or printed with special colours.
Unlike the watermark of handmade papers, the dandy
roller of the industrial production (Ill. 18) of watermarked
paper could last significantly longer than the two-year-usage
period of watermarks from a mould. For this reason
watermarks in machine made paper are only restrictedly us-
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