Stereotype (printing)

Stereotype (printing)

In printing, a stereotype, also known as a cliché, stereoplate or simply a stereo, was originally a "solid plate of type-metal, cast from a papier-mâché or plaster mould (called a flong) taken from the surface of a forme of type" used for printing instead of the original.

The compositing of individual cast metal sorts of type into lines with leading and furniture tightly bound into a page forme was labor-intensive and costly. The printer would incur further expense through loss of the sorts for other uses once held in formes. With the growth in popularity of the novel, printers who did not accurately predict sales were forced into the expense of resetting type for subsequent editions. The stereotype radically changed the way novels were reprinted, saving the printer's recompositing expense while freeing the sorts for other jobs.

...while Nathaniel Hawthorne's publishers assumed that The Scarlet Letter (1850) would do well, printing an uncharacteristically large edition of 2,500 copies, popular demand for Hawthorne's controversial "Custom House" introduction outstripped supply, prompting Ticknor & Fields to reset the type and to reprint another 2,500 copies within two months of the first publication. Still unaware that they had an incipient classic on their hands, Ticknor & Fields neglected at this time to invest in stereotype plates, and thus were forced to pay to reset the type for a third time just four months later when they finally stereotyped the book.

Stereotyping was invented by William Ged in 1725, who apparently stereotyped plates for the Bible at Cambridge University before abandoning the business. Wide application of the technique, with improvements, is attributed to Charles Stanhope in the early 1800s. Printing plates for the Bible were stereotyped in the US in 1814.

Read more about Stereotype (printing):  Etymologies

Famous quotes containing the word stereotype:

    Once women begin to question the inevitability of their subordination and to reject the conventions formerly associated with it, they can no longer retreat to the safety of those conventions. The woman who rejects the stereotype of feminine weakness and dependence can no longer find much comfort in the cliché that all men are beasts. She has no choice except to believe, on the contrary, that men are human beings, and she finds it hard to forgive them when they act like animals.
    Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)