Volume 1

1840] UNIFORMITY OF STAMPS. 407
issued requirements which made extreme cheapness
difficult.
The Queen's head was first
engraved by hand on a
the effigy being encompassed with lines
single matrix;
too fine for any hand, or even any but the most delicate
machinery to engrave. The matrix being subsequently
hardened, was employed to produce impressions on a
soft steel roller of sufficient circumference to receive
twelve; and this being hardened in turn, was used,
under very heavy pressure, to produce and repeat its
counterpart on a steel-plate, to such extent that this,
when used in printing, produced at each impression
two hundred and forty stamps;
all this being of
course done, as machinists will at once perceive,
according to the process invented by the late Mr.
Perkins.
In this manner there were produced in the first
more than three thousand millions of
fifteen years
stamps; all, as being derived from the same matrix,
of course absolutely uniform. At the end of that time
it was thought desirable to create a second matrix, but
as this was obtained by transfer from the first save
that the lines were deepened by hand the deviation
from identity was at most very slight. With plates
procured from this, the process, however, being somewhat
modified, there had been printed, up to July,
1867, more than seven thousand millions of stamps;
thus making up a total of considerably more
than ten thousand millions, in all of which the
impression is, for all practical purposes, absolutely
uniform.*
Now it will easily be perceived that, if imitation
*
Up to December 3ist, 1879, have been printed more than twenty thousand
millions of penny stamps. By the kindness of the Board of Inland Revenue, I