Jonathan

A few days later, they had finalised the plan to modify the winepress.

After this, it was another few days of work, but they finally had managed it.

After their test runs worked, they invited the king over to demonstrate it.

Of course, during the waiting time for him to respond and the date the king set, they tested more things and experimented.

While at the beginning they used brushes to apply the ink, Jonathan remembered that in his world strange balls had been used, so they began experimenting with these, but, while they saw results, it became clear that this would be much faster, but would also need much more training.

It also might be slightly more efficient in its use of the ink.

For the ink, Julius Atramento came up with an oil and soot based ink.

They had some other inks in the beginning, but these inks were much superior, especially because of their low cost.

For different colours, new inks would need to be designed, but that was not important for now. Especially because using multiple colours of ink might make the process more expensive than just one colour.

What was feasible was the use of a mostly printed document where such things were manually added in a second step.

At the beginning they used different levels of viscosity in their inks, to find out which worked best. Experimentation led them to too two different ones.

For using a brush a more fluid ink was preferable, but with the balls, a more viscous one could be used.

This was preferable because it prevented that the ink spread onto the paper in ways unwanted.

When the king came, and after the greetings, Jonathan began to speak: “This here is the printing press. Mr Atramento will explain everything when we use it, but I will say that there are certainly problems we have not discovered yet and one glaring issue we know the answer for, but are unable to implement it right now. If you have any questions, your Majesty, you should feel free to ask them at any time, and we will do our best of answering them. Shall we begin?”

The king paused a moment before he answered, but it was clear that this pause was for melodramatic effect: “You shall begin and I hope you manage to impress me.”

Jonathan gestured to Julius Atramento and said: “You have heard the order of our king. Begin your work.”

Julius gestured to a plate, with some markings on it and began to provide commentary: “This here is the place where the letters will be assembled. Do you want to have anything specific printed, your Majesty, or should I use something we prepared? Please keep it short, because assembling the letters is not fast if you want to do it correctly.”

The King thought for a moment and stated: “We shall use the motto of my dynasty as the first thing printed in my presence!”

“This is acceptable and should not take long. He opened a box, standing on a nearby table and pulled out several letters, which he began to assemble in the middle of the plate. Around this, fixed in place by pins that were in the boundary markings, he placed a small series of fixing. The empty room in that boundary was filled with metal scraps, which were not as high as the letters.

During that, he explained: “As you can see, this is mostly unreadable. You can read it, especially with the right training, but it is not easy. The reason for this is that we made the letters wrong, in a special, purposeful way. These boundaries and the metal scraps fit the letters in place and prevented them from shifting, which can happen. We are still thinking about if it might be a good idea to make the boundaries permanent or let them be. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The greatest advantage of the approach we are using right now is that we can change the size of the boundaries, but it adds a step of work and makes things sometimes more difficult. In the end, it likely will come down to use and personal preference.”

After this he moved on to something weird sticking out to the front, or side, depending how you look at it.

“This here is the place we put the paper into. It took a few tries until we decided we need something like this and then a few more to get a workable design. This helps us to keep the paper always in the position we want it in and to remove it without sliding it over the ink, producing smeared pieces of paper, which we do not want. And now onto the step, we have the most problems with, applying the ink. We have found two workable methods that work, but we already know which one is the one that will be used in the end, outside of speciality tasks. The problem is that the second, better method needs training, which we do not have right now. So the results might not be totally representative. So I ask you, your majesty, if you want us to show you both methods, or only one, and if only one, which one. We plan to show you first the better working method and then the other one, demonstrating the main advantage of the printing press in the meantime.”

The king answered: “Show both, also, the assembly of the letters took fairly long. This is not advantageous at all, as I see it right now!”

Jonathan answered at that remark: “I never said that it was advantageous in producing single copies of one thing. I said that it was better for mass production. But you will see.”

During that interlude, Julius had taken out a pot of ink and a brush and began to carefully apply it to the letters.

He commented: “This method is slow and not sustainable. For speciality tasks, it might be useful, but this would need more experimentation.”

He then, after finishing, proceeded to lower the thing the paper was mounted into, onto the letters and then used a sliding mechanism to get the whole construction under an only slightly modified wine press.

For example, it had now a bit less give, which made the process faster and a bigger plate that would press downward.

He then proceeded to turn the handle, and, after a short while turned it again into the other direction.

After this, he slid the whole construction outward again, carefully raised the part in which the paper was and removed it, lying it to the side.

He then used a piece of fabric to wipe the ink of the letters, while saying: “Normally, this would not be necessary. It might be necessary to wash them regularly, but for that, we need more data. The reason I am doing it right now is to prevent interference with this fluid ink. For several reasons, you normally would not want to use it.

He then pulled out a box with a much more viscous ink as well as a small ball with a handle.

Julius then proceeded to rub the ball in the ink and then spread the ink with that implement over the letters: “You can see that we still need to figure out how exactly this works, but it shows promise, and Jonathan remembers that such implements were used for a long time in his world. So we are simply assuming that it is a good method.”

He then put in another sheet of paper and proceeded with the printing process.

After he was finished, he had a pretty clean print, where the words “The Power of Magic can do anything but Rule” was clearly readable.