Sender: Rare Books and Special Collections Forum <EXLIBRIS@RUTVM1.BITNET>
Having tried unsuccessfully last week to send the message in
quotes below to EXLIBRIS under my own account, I now send it
under a friend's with this addendum because of Mr. Metzger's
message of this morning: my recollection is that the print
history, while varying somewhat from publisher to publisher, has
ALWAYS been constructed so that is was susceptible to having its
digits at both ends filed down, or knocked off as PG suggested.
I think you will have to retreat from the notion that the
roots of its form can be traced to the offset process. (The
series of digits at one end were usually 123456 etc.! to denote
the successive potential printings and at the other end
5756555453 (to denote the year of the 20th century in which a
given printing might be accomplished; the parts integrated:
123456789105756555453)
Matthew Caulfield
"I'm tired of copyright page print history lines, but do want to
remark to Philip Metzger's statement (if I understand him
correctly) that the phenomenon grew out of offset printing. That
cannot be true, since the convention has been around since before
I first became involved with books, which antedates the general
commercial use of photolithography to produce printing plates.
The conventions of the print history line are equally useful for
printing from standing type, wherein the printer (or whoever
manages the forme for the copyright page) can easily and quickly
file down the end numbers on the print history line so that they
are not type-high and thus do not print, though the types do
remain in the forme to keep it locked tight, without adjustment
of the furniture."