This invention was in course
of time applied by Sir George Airy, the then Astronomer-Royal, for
regulating the motion of his great transit and touch-recording
instrument at the Royal Observatory, where it still continues to be
employed.
'Another early subject of mine, the anastatic printing process,
found favour with Faraday, "the great and the good," who made it the
subject of a Friday evening lecture at the Royal Institution. These two
circumstances, combined, obtained for me an entry into scientific
circles, and helped to sustain me in difficulty, until, by dint of a
certain determination to win, I was able to advance step by step up to
this place of honour, situated within a gunshot of the scene of my
earliest success in life, but separated from it by the time of a
generation. But notwithstanding the lapse of time, my heart still beats
quick each time I come back to the scene of this, the determining
incident of my life.'
The 'anastatic' process, described by Faraday in 1845, and partly due
to Werner Siemens, was a method of reproducing printed matter by
transferring the print from paper to plates of zinc. Caustic baryta was
applied to the printed sheet to convert the resinous ingredients of the
ink into an insoluble soap, the stearine being precipitated with
sulphuric acid.
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