MEDAL-ENGRAVING MACHINES AND ANAGLYPTOGRAPY

I'm searching for the name of the process whereby paper money engravers transferred the image of medallic (three dimensional) portraits to bank note designs. This was accomplished by varying the distance between lines of the engraving in a topographical manner. Counterfeiters had a miserable time trying to copy it and it was quite effective. Any help with a name and a brief description of the process would be appreciated.

Wendell describes the process of anaglyptograpy. I cannot comment on its use in banknote engraving as this is outside my expertize. I can comment, however, on anaglyptography as I have made an extensive study of it.

It is one of the most misunderstood words and process in numismatics. It is NOT a machine that creates engraving for medals, but rather the use of medals for the creation of engravings. Many numismatists had the misconception that it was a machine that replaced the tedious process of hand engraving of dies.

The process was a forerunner (for a brief time, 1838-1861) of photoengraving for making printing plates. Coin and medal books were illustrated by this process, It can be traced back to 1817 by a youthful watchmaker, Christian Gobrecht who later was to become Chief Engraver at the Philadelphia Mint!. The device is similar to a ruling pen. Gonrecht built one to engrave on the back of watch cases.

Later when he was at the Mint he had fellow mint worker Joseph Saxon build one which was used to illustrate several books by Mint Assayers Jacob Eckfeldt and William DuBois. Saxon also built one for a banknote engraver who took it to England and sold it to John Bate.

Bate was a rascal. He claimed he invented the device and got a British patent. The history thereafter is a fascinating story which goes all the way up to British Parliament and involves a fight between French and English publishers with Royal Mint engravers also involved.

I selected the word Anaglyptography for my Vocabulary Word of the week (see elsewhere this issue). The complete entry is too long for an E-Sylum article (2,475 words or 7 pages). I omitted the History. You can find the complete entry including the History on the Newman Portal (see Dictionary, under A for Anaglyptography).

"Anaglyptography" is an interesting word for an arcane process, but I don't see the word used by bank note engraving researchers who have written about the process. Ormsby's book of 1852, A Description of the Process of Bank Note Engraving discusses the process, calling it medal engraving or medallion engraving, and even pictures a medal copying machine in plate 2, figure 2.

Bowers's book Obsolete Bank Notes calls it a medal-ruling machine. McCabe in Counterfeiting and Technology refers to it as medallion-engraving machine. I have long called it medallion-ruling work. I don't see any of these people using "anaglyptography" as a term for the process. The people most identified with the process are Asa Spencer, Christian Gobrecht, and Joseph Saxton.

Bob McCabe, who devotes almost five pages in Counterfeiting and Technology to the process and the men who made the machines to do it, describes it this way:

Medallion Engraving Machines. Also known as "medal engraving machines" and "image lathes," these devices copied the surface features of coins or medals to produce an engraving that appeared to be three-dimensional. This was done by having a tracing needle move horizontally across the coin or medal in lines that were about 1/200 of an inch apart. The tracing needle was mechanically linked to an engraving point that made a copy of the coin's image on a copper or soft-steel die. To get the three-dimensional effect on the engraved copy, the machine was designed to deflect the tracing needle and the engraving cutter in a vertical direction whenever the needle passed over a raised surface. The amount of deflection was proportional to the actual height of the three-dimensional surface the needle was passing over. On the part of the coin that was flat, there would be no deflection of the tracing needle, and all the lines would be spaced closely together at equal distances, When the tracing needle came across a raised feature, like the side of a nose in a human face, it would be moved vertically. If a feature on a coin stood 1/16 of an inch above the rest of the surface, the engraving point would be moved vertically 1/16 of an inch. This was repeated each time the tracing needle was moved back to a new starting point just 1/200 of an inch above the last trace. At each pass, the needle would be deflected proportionately as it moved across each point of elevation in the image."

He goes on to explain how these different spacings trick the eye. I strongly suggest readers get Bob McCabe's book if they are interested in this process.

Thanks, everyone. Great question, and some great answers, too. Dick's definition of anaglyptography follows in the next article. Dick cites several sources; one I'd never heard of before is an 1659 work, Anaglyptography, Medallion Engraving for Book Illustration. Below are a couple non-numismatic dictionary entries for the word. -Editor

Anaglyptography: The art of copying works in relief, or of engraving as to give the subject an embossed or raised appearance; - used in representing coins, bas-reliefs, etc.

Anaglyptography has been defined as “the art of copying works in relief, or of engraving as to give the subject an embossed or raised appearance; — used in representing coins, bas-reliefs, etc.” In point of fact, the process has also been used for portraits, frames, and other dimensional objects.

Anaglyptography is a pantographic process. As a tracing arm moves over an original dimensional item (coin, bas-relief portrait, plaster model of a medal or a frame, even a sculpture), linkage to a graver reproduces the contours of the original as a continuous-line engraving. Vertical differences in the original are translated into horizontal differences (contours) in the engraving. The engraved reproduction plate is similar to a contour map, and when inked gives the strong illusion that the object is embossed. In his 1972 book, Design in Miniature, Watson-Guptill, NY, page 91, David Gentleman shows an original relief cartouche and the anaglyptographic engraving made from it.