NICOLAS LOUIS ROBERT AND HIS ENDLESS WIRE PAPERMAKING MACHINE.
- Newtown, PA: Bird & Bull Press, 2000.
- folio
- cloth-covered portfolio with paper cover label and accompanied by small 4to. cloth-covered book with a paper cover label. Both inserted in a folio clamshell box with a leather spine label.
- 41, (3) pages and additional plates.
Price: $185.00 save 20% $148.00 other currencies
Order Nr. 58400
Printed in an edition limited to 150 numbered copies (Berger A63). The actual inventor of the paper machine was a thirty-three year old former artilleryman named Nicolas Louis Robert (1761-1828). The existence of five of his own ink and watercolor patent drawings was not previously known until Leonard Schlosser bought the set at auction and reproduced them. His reproductions have now been lost except for a very few copies, one of which was given to Schlosser's friend Henry Morris. These drawings are of historical significance because they describe in detail the very beginning of the paper machine, an invention that had almost as much impact as Gutenberg's printing press. The cheap production of paper and the resultant dissemination of knowledge and information would not have taken place without this invention. The five drawings are reproduced full size on 12" x 16-3/4" card stock and held in a separate board portfolio. The accompanying book provides background material on the inventor and his machine and a chapter on the paper collector and historian Leonard Schlosser.