A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DCharles Stanhope, Lord : 1753 - 1816
Charles Stanhope and Optics Charles Stanhope British politician and scientist, born in London, England, UK. He studied at Geneva, married Lady Hester Pitt, sister of William Pitt the Younger, in 1774, and became an MP in 1780. He broke with Pitt over the French Revolution, and advocated peace with Napoleon, becoming a "minority of one'. As a scientist he invented a microscope lens that bears his name, two calculating machines, the first hand-operated iron printing press, and a process of stereotyping adopted in 1805 by the Clarendon Press in Oxford. He also experimented with electricity, and wrote Principles of Electricity (1779).
The Stanhope Lens A cylindrical lens with spherical ends of different radii. The covering of the tube into which the lens is fitted is called the "cap"
Charles Stanhope, politician and scientist, was born on August 3, 1753. Among his inventions were a printing press, calculating machines, and the lens named after him. Used orginally as a powerful microscope lens, it is basically a circular glass rod about 3mm in diameter and 8mm long, one end convex, the other flat.
 Stanhope Viewer A monocular shaped bone viewer with five clear micro photos of views of the great Manchester (UK) ship canal. Actual length 19mm Image Source: Lionel Hughes Photographica
Photomicrography (first used 1853) made possible the production of the tiny transparent photos needed for the Stanhope Viewers. Lenses and photos usually made in France. Earliest date from 1860s, made well into 20th century - majority date from 1890s and later, and contain photos containing one to a dozen different views. Jull, Douglas, 1988, Collecting Stanhopes Source: The Projection Box
 Stanhope Sewing Needle Case c.1890's - English scenes Image Source: Mardina Enterprises
From the Antique Needlework Tools Files: "Did you know that Stanhope Viewer needle cases were the rage in the late 1800's to the early 1900's? These cases varied in shape and design but had one thing in common: a teeny 1/10th of an inch viewing magnifier in the top that when looked into, showed amazingly detailed photographs of popular resorts and travel destinations in the USA and Europe! A good case will now fetch from $100 to $400! Look in your Grandma's sewing tools box" Some other 'Stanhopes' Source: Online Auction Sites
 Gentleman's Stanhope Ring A turn of the century gentleman's Stanhope ring looking like a sterling silver diamond ring but the diamond is really glass. If you hold it up to the light and look through the small hole in the side, you see, by 'Victorian' standards, a somewhat risque 'Victorian' scene.
 Stanhope Pen and Letter Opener Stanhope pen and letter opener made of bone and showing views of Karlsbad
 Stanhope Key Ring Gold plated Stanhope key ring showing views of Paris.
Charles Stanhope and Computing The Stanhope Demonstrator The world's first real logic machine, in the sense that it could actually be used to solve formal logic problems (as opposed to those described in Ramon Lull's Ars Magna, which tended to create more problems than they solved), was invented in the early 1800s by the British scientist and statesman Charles Stanhope (third Earl of Stanhope). A man of many talents, the Earl designed a device called the Stanhope Demonstrator, which was a small box with a window in the top, along with two different colored slides that the user pushed into slots in the sides. Although Stanhope's brainchild doesn't sound like much it was a start (and there was more to it than we've covered here), but Stanhope wouldn't publish any details and instructed his friends not to say anything about what he was doing. In fact it wasn't until around sixty years after his death that the Earl's notes and one of his devices fell into the hands of the Reverend Robert Harley, who subsequently published an article on the Stanhope Demonstrator in 1879.
also...
 'Stanhope's Machine', 1775 Image Source: http://www.computer-museum.org/slides/027.html Please Note: that the image has been recreated from the unfortunately less than clear original image on the site above.
"The next improvements [in constructing a logic machine] were made by the Earl of Stanhope, in England, in 1775...and 1777. Neither [of the two] Stanhope machines embodied new mechanical systems, but they were ruggedly constructed and more reliable. Technical skills now had a chance to catch up with inventive capacity." Charles Stanhope "First reach your conclusion". An assessment of his work by Leonid N Kryzhanovsky in an article in Electronics World June 1993, p508
Charles Stanhope and Printing
 The Stanhope Press Image Source: http://www.invalid.net/content/imprimerie/illu2.htm
Stanhope, Lord Charles (1753-1816) - As an English philanthropist he conceived in 1795 for the first time a hand printing press totally built in iron. With new improvements in pressing and ink systems these printing press permits one production of 100 exemplars per hour. The "Stanhope" press arrived in France in 1814, process that Honoré de Balzac describes in his book "Illusions perdues" (1837).
In 1800 Charles Stanhope patents the Iron-frame printing press which enables large sheet printing and the development of thick advertising fonts.
Charles and Hester Stanhope by by John H. Lienhard The amazing William Pitt was only 24 when he first became prime minister of England in 1783. Pitt was an incorruptible reformer. Yet he never travelled, had limited knowledge of human nature, and lived outside the intellectual mainstream. He was a lonely, tightly-wired spendthrift who died penniless at 47 after a nervous breakdown during his second term as prime minister. Pitt's sister had married Charles Stanhope, borne three daughters, and died young. Charles's second wife took little interest in the daughters. Their schooling and upbringing were haphazard. But Charles had his own erratic genius, which he divided between politics and invention. As a member of parliament under Pitt, he'd opposed England's war against the American Colonies and supported the French Revolution. As an inventor he created the powerful Stanhope optical lens. He also invented the first iron printing press -- the first step away from the old winepress screw that'd been used since Gutenberg to press inked type against paper.
 The Stanhope Press Image Source: The Wonder Book of Knowledge, 1923
The Stanhope Press led the way to high-speed presses which made books cheap and available in the 19th century. He'd sown practical as well as political seeds of a new equality. But his revolutionary message seemed not to register with his daughters. Three years before his death, Pitt had asked Charles's eldest daughter, Hester Stanhope, to manage his household. Hester had all her family's brilliance, but she put it to shaping a place within the rarified atmosphere of the 18th-century rich. Pitt pampered Hester. The aristocracy loved her sharp undisciplined tongue. She was vain and self-dramatizing and had commanding personal magnetism. When Pitt died, Hester lost access to his lavish spending. So in 1810, now 34, she gathered a small entourage and set off for the Middle East. Adventure followed adventure. In Greece, she met young Lord Byron (who found her annoying). Later, she was ship-wrecked off the island of Rhodes. Finally, the Pasha of Acre gave her the ruins of a convent on Mt. Lebanon. She began dressing like an Arab, and she made the old convent into a medieval fortress. For 25 years she maintained 30 native servants and entertained European visitors who came to hear her rambling harangues. London followed her in the papers. She fed beggars, defended the Pasha against Druse uprisings, and became a frightening Holy Woman for the locals. When she'd spent all she had, she ran up huge debts. She smoked hash, grew sick, and turned old far beyond her years.v Why don't you cut your staff, a friend said. Think of my rank and appearances, she snarled. When she died in 1839 her servants stole all but the clothes and jewelry on her body. She'd barely outlived the old order of English aristocracy without understanding the political and inventive reforms her father and uncle had put in motion. In the exotic fortress of her powerful personality, Hester Stanhope had clung to the last outpost of imperial excess.
Printing Technologies The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw tremendous advances in the technologies of papermaking and printing which made it possible for the first time to produce cheap printed publications. In Stereotype printing, developed by Lord Stanhope from an invention by William Ged, printing was no longer done right off the bound movable type. Instead that type was used to create a mold from which a copy was formed and the printing was done off the copy. This effectively freed up the type itself to create new stereotype molds and meant that later printings didn't necessitate the re-setting of type. The steam-powered printing press, pictured below, made possible a sixteen-fold increase in the speed of printing. Instead of laying each sheet down, imprinting the ink upon it, lifting it off, and laying down the next one, the paper makes its way on rollers from one end of the press to the other in a matter of seconds. This invention was first used by The Times in 1814 and eventually made its way into commercial publishing. In addition to improvements in the technology of paper-making similar to those in printing, wood pulp papermaking was finally made feasible in the middle of the century. The culmination of all these improvements made it possible to produce printed material that nearly everyone could afford. The advent of cheap publication is one of the significant contributing factors to the tremendous growth of literacy during this period.
 The Stanhope Press
The stereotype improvements of Lord Stanhope, which we have already described, and the printing-press invented by that nobleman, which bears his name, offered the first great practical improvements in the art of printing, with the exception of Blaew's press that had been called into operation during a period of 350 years. The Stanhope press is represented in the [above] woodcut. It is unnecessary for us minutely to describe this very ingenious instrument. It is as superior to Blaew's wooden press as that was to the rude press that preceded it. Being composed entirely of iron, the surfaces brought into contact when the impression is given are perfectly level; and the combination of levers which give motion to the screw diminish the labour of the workman, while they add to its efficiency. This invention undoubtedly enabled printing of a better average quality to be produced; but it added very slightly to the speed with which impressions could be thrown off. Both at the Stanhope press and at the wooden press the same general rate of work was maintained, namely, 250 impressions on one side of a sheet per hour, to be produced by the joint labours of two men, one inking the types, the other laying on the sheet and giving the pressure.
The process of stereotyping was invented by William Ged in 1725. Not until the improvements developed by Lord Stanhope, however, did the procedure become widespread. This process is by no means universally applied to all printed books. Its peculiar advantages are confined to works in very large demand, and of which the demand is continued long after the first publication. In the case of the 'Penny Magazine,' there is another great advantage afforded by this process, namely, the facility of producing several metal copies, or plates, of each number, as we shall presently explain. In the mean time we would direct the reader's attention to a brief account of the process of stereotyping.
As long ago as the year 1725, William Ged, an inhabitant of Edinburgh, discovered the principle of casting metal plates. He carried the principle into commercial operation, for he was actually engaged by the University of Cambridge to print bibles and prayer-books. The compositors thought that the invention would injure their trade; and both they and the pressmen did every thing in their power to lessen the credit of Ged's books, by secretly making errors in the moveable types after the pages had passed the reader. The bibles, therefore, were so defective, that the University was obliged to give up the scheme. The art was revived, fifty years afterwards, by Mr. Tilloch, was subsequently prosecuted by Didot of Paris, and was ultimately brought to pretty nearly its present perfection by the late Lord Stanhope If its progress had not been interrupted for three-quarters of a century by the ignorance of Ged's workmen, it is probable that during all that time the cost of producing bibles and prayer-books, and other standard works, would have been materially diminished; and the capital thus saved would have remained to have set the compositors and the pressmen to work in other directions. For the encouragement of all labour there must be a previous accumulation of the results of labour, which becomes a real labour-fund for the payment of wages. Every saving of previous labour renders this fund more productive in the encouragement of future labour. In the case of stereotyping for books of huge numbers, not only is labour prevented from being wasted, but the equal evil of converting active capital into dead and unproductive stock is at the same time prevented. Whatever diminishes the risk of the capitalist ensures a more constant demand for labour, and therefore increases the rate of wages.
William Ged: William Ged (1690-1749), inventor of the stereotyping process. He died in poverty as a result of the industrial sabotage described here by Knight. (DNB) Mr. Tilloch: Alexander Tilloch (1759-1825) "re-invented" stereotyping in 1782, apparently unaware of Ged's prior innovations. In 1784 he took out a patent for "printing books from plates instead of moveable types." (DNB) Didot of Paris: Firmin Didot (1764-1836), member of the prominent family of printers, was among the first in France to adopt stereotyping. He experimented with a variety of stereotyping techniques from 1795. (Annals;Clair) Lord Stanhope: Charles Stanhope, third early of Stanhope (1753-1816), a politician, scientist, and inventor. He invented and improved many printing devices, including the iron hand-press known as the Stanhope press. With the aid of Robert Walker, a London mechanic, he perfected the stereotyping process. (DNB)
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