IMPORTANCE OF HONEST INK MANUFACTURE--ABSENCEOF INFORMATION AS TO NAMES OF MOST ANCIENT INKMAKERS,--WHERE TO LOOK FOR ANCIENT INK--THEIRPHENOMENAL IDENTITY--INK AND PAPER AS ASIATICINVENTIONS ENTER EUROPE IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY--BOTH IN GENERAL USE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY--MONKS AND SCRIBES AS THEIR OWN INK MANUFACTURERS--MODERN INDUSTRY OF INK BEGINS IN 1625--ITS GROWTH AND PRESENT SITUATION--THEGENERAL IGNORANCE OF THE SUBJECT--INK INDUSTRYIN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY--THE FIRST PIONEERSABROAD AND THOSE AT HOME--OBSERVATIONS RESPECTING INK PHENOMENA OF THE PAST EIGHTY YEARS--WHAT SOME INK MAKERS SAY ABOUT IT--LITTLEDEMAND FOR PURE INKS--SOME SKETCHES OF THE LEADING INK MANUFACTURERS OF THE WORLD--ESTIMATIONOF QUANTITY OF INK MADE IN THE UNITED STATES--THE "LIFE" OF A MARK MADE WITH ORDINARYWRITING FLUID--ESTIMATION OF MOST INKS BY PROFESSORSBAIRD AND MARKOE--FORMULA OF THE OFFICIAL INK OF THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS--VIEWS OF SOME PROMINENT INK MANUFACTURERS ABOUT SUCH INK--SOME COMMERCIAL NAMES BESTOWED ON DIFFERENT INKS--THE 200 OR MORE NAMES OF INK MANUFACTURERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
THE consideration of the effect of the use of ink upon civilization from primitive times to the present, as we have seen, offers a most suggestive field and certifies to the importance of the manufacture of honest inks as necessary to the future enlightenment of society. That it has not been fully understood or even appreciated goes without saying; a proper generalization becomes possible only in the light of corroborative data and the experiences of the many.
History has not given us the names of ancient ink makers; but we can believe there must have been during a period of thousands of years a great many, and that the kinds and varieties of inks were without number. Those inks which remain to us are to be found only as written with on ancient MSS.; they are of but few kinds, and in composition and appearance preserve a phenomenal identity, though belonging to countries and epochs widely separated. This identity leads to the further conclusion that ink making must have been an industry at certain periods, overlooked by careful compounders who distributed their wares over a vast territory.
"Gall" ink and "linen" paper as already stated are Asiatic inventions. Both of them seem to have entered Europe by way of Arabia, "hand in hand" at the very end of the eleventh or beginning of the twelfth centuries and for the next two hundred years, notwithstanding the fact that chemistry was almost an unknown science and the secrets of the alchemists known only to the few, this combination gradually came into general vogue.
In the fourteenth century we find one or both of them more or less substituted for "Indian" ink, parchment, vellum and "cotton" paper. It was, however, the monks and scribes who manufactured for their own and assistants' use "gall" ink, just as they had been in the habit of preparing "Indian" ink when required, which so far as known was not always a commodity.
As an industry it can be said to have definitely begun when the French government recognized the necessity for one, A. D. 1625, by giving a contract for "a great quantity of 'gall ink' to Guyot," who for this reason seems to occupy the unique position of the father of the modern ink industry.
Ink manufacture as a growing industry heretofore and to a large extent at present, occupies a peculiarly anomalous situation. Other industries follow the law of evolution which may perhaps bear criticism; but the ink industry follows none, nor does it even pretend to possess any.
Thousands are engaged in its pursuit, few of whom understand either ink chemistry or ink phenomena.
The consumer knows still less, and with blind confidence placidly accepts nondescript compounds labeled "Ink," whether purchased at depots or from "combined"itinerant manufacturing peddlers and with them write or sign documents which some day may disturb millions of property. And yet in a comparative sense it has outpaced all other industries.
With the commencement of the eighteenth century we find the industry settling in Dresden, Chemnitz, Amsterdam, Berlin, Elberfield and Cologne. Still later in London, Vienna, Paris, Edinburgh and Dublin, and in the first half of the nineteenth century in the United States, it had begun to make considerable progress.
Among the first pioneers of the later modern ink industry abroad, may be mentioned the names of Stephens, Arnold, Blackwood, Ribaucourt, Stark, Lewis, Runge, Leonhardi, Gafford, Bottger, Lipowitz, Geissler, Jahn, Van Moos, Ure, Schmidt, Haenle, Elsner, Bossin, Kindt, Trialle, Morrell, Cochrane, Antoine, Faber, Waterlous, Tarling, Hyde, Thacker, Mordan, Featherstone, Maurin, Triest and Draper.
In the period covered by the nineteenth century at home, the legitimate industry included over 300ink makers. Those best known are Davids, Maynard and Noyes, Carter, Underwood, Stafford, Moore, Davis, Thomas, Sanford, Barnes, Morrell, Walkden, Lyons, Freeman, Murray, Todd, Bonney, Pomeroy, Worthington, Joy, Blair, Cross, Dunlap, Higgins, Paul, Anderson, Woodmansee, Delang, Allen, Stearns, Gobel, Wallach, Bartram, Ford and Harrison.
The ink phenomena included in the past eighty years has demonstrated a continuing retrogression in ink manufacture and a consequent deterioration of necessary ink qualities. When the attention of some ink makers are addressed to these sad facts, they attribute them, either to the demand of the public for an agreeable color and a free flowing ink, or to an inability to compete with inferior substitutes, which have flooded the market since the discovery of the coal tar colors; they have been compelled to depart from old and tried formulas, in the extravagant use (misuse) of the so-called "added" color.
