NOTE: THIS 1 Item Lot IS PART OF THE Magazine! An Illustration of Rolling Armour-Plate at the Atlas Steelworks, Sheffield, England and Reverse with Articles from "THE ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS", London, England, ? ?, 18??.
ITEM 1.) Page 2?? has one full-page Illustration: "Process of Rolling Armour-Plates for Her Majesty's Ships at the Atlas Steelworks, Sheffield - See Supplement, Page 280."; The drawing is centered around a huge gang of men pulling a truck carrying a plate of armour.; M. Jackson, sculptor (engraver);
PROBABLE DATE: circa 1890; Mainly based on the descriptions of debt securities on the reverse;
PROBABLE MAGAZINE: Illustrated London News;
Page 2?? (Reverse of Page 2??) has: "Seventh Day's Proceedings" (An Academic conference in Manchester); "National Sports" (Mainly Horseracing, the "sport of kings"); "The Farm"; and "Monetary Transactions of the Week" (both debt and equities in Global Markets; various debt issues have dates ranging from 1839 thru 1888, since at least some of these are issue dates, not maturity dates, I have assumed that they are all issue dates and thus this page dates from circa 1890);
NOTE: I am not qualified to distinguish between the various types of illustrations (copper engraving, Steel Engraving, Wood Engraving, Etching, Lithograph or Photogravure); however, my understanding is that Harper's and other similar publications in this era generally used wood engravings; on request, I will attempt to provide any details of the prints which may help determine the type of print;
This sheet was removed from the newspaper; some very minor foxing and spotting, and edge tears, ; this page has been trimmed to the apparent limits of the illustration, no loss to the illustration, BUT some of the text of the reverse is missing; Otherwise the primary articles and illustrations are in good condition for its age and suitable for framing; will be shipped flat;
Aggregate Print Image / Sheet Sizes, Approximately 10" x 14" or smaller;
The primary item was part of the collection of Henry J. Hauschild Jr., who billed himself as a “Physiognomist – Bibliopolist – Cognoscente di Eccellentissimoâ€, and was the very proud owner of the world famous "Nose Gallery†at “The Oldest House†in Victoria, Texas; It is believed that earlier this item was part of the magazine and newspaper collection of Edwin Hunt Frost of Yonkers, New York;
HISTORICAL NOTE: "History of John Brown Plc: Since its founding 150 years ago, John Brown has changed its emphasis several times. It began manufacturing steel files, shifted to rails & rail coach springs, then to shipcladding & shipbuilding, & finally, in the 1950's to general construction. John Brown has been a consistent leader within its various realms & has weathered depressions & other financial crises successfully. However, in the late 1970's & early 1980's the company's fortunes fluctuated dramatically, eventually leading to a near collapse. Trafalgar House--the British construction, natural resources, & shipping & aviation conglomerate--resuscitated John Brown in 1986 with an £80 million takeover. Born in Sheffield, England in 1816, the company founder was the son of a slater. John Brown attended a local school, & when he was fourteen his father pushed him to learn the linen drapery craft. John Brown refused flatly; he wanted to be a merchant, & to that end entered the local firm of Earle Horton & Co. as an unwaged apprentice. Earle Horton & Co. went into the steel business & offered Brown a partnership in 1837. Unable to collect the capital needed to join the firm, he had to refuse the offer. The firm's owners then made a 2nd offer: for £500, Brown could be the firm's sales agent. Brown convinced a local bank to back him this time, & at age 21 he became a traveling salesman with a horse & gig. He carried his cutlery samples & drummed up so much business that he made enough money to start his own enterprise. Brown resigned from Earle Horton & Co. & set up the Atlas Steel Works, manufacturing crucible steel files. In the 1840's the railways' rapid expansion gave great impetus to the steel industry in England. More tracks were being laid & more coaches built all the time, creating a seemingly unlimited demand for steel. In 1848, Brown invented & patented the conical spring buffer for railway coaches, which increased both safety & comfort. His invention made Brown's name & fortune; he worked a representation of it into the company seal & later, when he was knighted, into his crest. The successful Atlas Steel Works continued growing, & in 1856 Brown transferred all of his works to a larger site he had purchased from a failed business. That year he renamed the firm Atlas Steel & Spring Works. In the following years Brown began manufacturing iron from ore in his own six puddling furnaces. The other, typically conservative, merchants in the area thought he was crazy not to order the iron needed for steel production from Sweden & Russia, the main sources at the time. Nevertheless, Brown's iron was good & cheap, & he was soon producing 100 tons a week. The last of Brown's three remarkable innovations was adoption, in 1858, of the Bessemer process for converting iron to steel. Once again the move went against conservative opinion, & again it was successful & lucrative. Brown began selling Bessemer-made steel rails in 1861. Shortly after introducing the new rails, Brown made a secret examination of a French warship to inspect the French "iron cladding," which usually consisted either of several thin pieces of plate riveted together or of single rolled-iron plates. Determining that he could do the job better, John Brown built a rolling mill, & in 1863 was the 1st steelmaker to roll 12-inch armor plate for warships. After files, then rails & springs, the company had now embarked on its third phase, shipcladding, which would develop into shipbuilding. The HMS Warrior was the 1st battleship to sail with Brown's armor. Brown spent over £200,000 developing the armor plate manufacturing business, & expanded his works to 21 acres. During the decade beginning in 1857, Brown's workforce grew from 200 to 4,000. Turnover expanded from an initial £3,000 to nearly £1 million in 1867, when John Brown was cladding three quarters of Britain's warships in iron. In 1859 Brown took two partners. The move had excellent results for the company but ended in personal disaster for Brown himself. William Bragge was an engineer, & John Devonshire Ellis was from a family of successful brass founders in Birmingham. By 1864 they had turned the firm into a limited company called John Brown & Co., with a capital of £1 million. Ellis contributed his own invention, the compound armor plate of rolled iron with a steel face. He also knew how to run a company, which Brown did not. Brown considered the company his own; after all, it had been his innovation & energy that founded the venture that now bore his name. Brown disliked working with people he considered outsiders--though they were, of course, shareholders--& having the directors criticize his decisions on expenditures. The increased tension damaged both the company & John Brown's health. In 1871 Brown resigned, leaving J.D. Ellis to take over as head of the firm. In the next several years Brown tried to form a few other companies, all of which failed. He died, impoverished, at age 80 in 1896, to the expressed sadness of his old partners. J.D. Ellis remained chairman until retiring in 1906. During his tenure he brought both his sons, Charles Ellis & William Henry Ellis, into the company. The former took over as managing director from his father in 1892 & held the post until 1928. Under J.D. Ellis the company bought a joint interest in Spanish iron mines in 1872 to secure a steady supply of iron ore. John Brown later bought the Aldwarke Main & Car House Collieries & started mining coal. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, several factors threatened John Brown's success. The British railway companies began to import cheaper supplies from foreign companies, new labor laws reduced workers' hours & raised their wages slightly, Britain had a rail strike, coal prices were depressed, & finally, there was a long coal strike. John Brown survived all these difficulties & the depression of 1894-5 through careful management, & at times managed to do quite well. The company bought the Clydebank Engineering & Shipbuilding Co., the most successful shipyards in the United Kingdom, in 1899. With this acquisition John Brown entered the shipbuilding industry, shifting its focus yet again. The next year the company produced a Japanese battleship, a Cunard steamship, & five destroyers. Ships John Brown built later included the Lusitania, the Aquitania, the Tiger, the Repulse, & the Hood. John Brown & another Sheffield steel company, Thomas Firth & Sons, exchanged shares in 1902 & agreed to work together. While the companies continued under separate management until they merged in 1930, their boards shared many directors. In 1908, the firms established the Brown Firth Research Laboratory in Brearley, where chrome stainless steel & "Staybrite" stainless steel were developed. The latter is still used throughout the world. The company bought the Coventry Ordnance Works in 1904 but saw little profit from the enterprise until the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, began to place orders for gun mountings on warships in 1910. Business was good through World War I, after which John Brown sold the Ordnance Works & bought Craven Tasker Ltd., makers of several kinds of vehicles. Ship & gun orders dropped drastically in the years after the war, of course. Foreign competition in the steel industry & workers' strikes in industry in general compounded Brown's difficulties. Ironically, with everyone else in the world hoping for continued peace, John Brown was worried about where to get more orders for ships & armaments. A few came from Australia, but it was not until the 1931 order from Cunard Lines for the Queen Mary that John Brown's fortunes would begin to improve. Canadian Pacific soon ordered a liner, Cunard ordered the Queen Elizabeth, & the British government ordered two sloops, two destroyers, & a 9,000-ton cruiser. Profits were over £100,000 for 1934. The company made a move into another new realm in 1936 when it bought a large block of shares in Westland Aircraft Ltd. at Yeovil. The following year John Brown purchased the Markham & Co., Ltd., engineering firm. Markham was well known for its machinery, especially its tunneling machines, which were used in excavations for the London & Moscow Undergrounds & the Paris Métro. Throughout World War II, John Brown & Markham were, not surprisingly, at full production. The former built ships totalling a third of a million tons, & the latter made midget submarines. As a result of the British government's nationalization of the collieries after the end of the war, Brown consisted mainly of steel & tool works, a shipyard, & Markham Engineering. The company faced the need for modernization & conversion to some sort of peacetime production. Shell, gun & bomb manufacturing came to a halt. John Brown converted its armor plate shops to handle heavy engineering weldments & manufacturing. In 1947 the company formed a Canadian subsidiary & purchased Hispeed Tools & A. Wickman. A new division formed to build oil refineries took the name Constructors John Brown (CJB). The shipyard remained the largest part of the company, employing over 6,000 people & building, among other craft, the royal yacht Britannia. In the 1950's Brown's Cravens subsidiary produced rolling stock cars for railways around the would. It began making modern cars for the London Underground in 1959. The company expanded into Australia, South Africa, the United States, & Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) in that period. By the end of the 1950's, the company's profits had climbed to almost £2 million, where they hovered until 1965, when Japanese shipbuilding began to threaten Brown's market. John Brown responded by modernizing its Clydebank shipyards & by beginning to make gas turbines & pipelines, as well as by increasing its emphasis on general construction. In the 2nd half of the 1960's, Brown received the order for the QEII, & CJB was building factories in Sweden & the USSR. Nevertheless, by 1971 profits were only up to £3 million. Three years later, CJB. posted huge losses on three fixed-price contracts, causing a group loss of £2 million. By 1978, the losses had turned around & Brown had a cash reserve of nearly £20 million. The company's seesawing fortunes continued for some years, with large contracts followed by sudden losses. Eventually the company became known in financial circles for its dramatic rises & falls. In 1982 Brown announced deals worth £104 million & bought Olofsson, a U.S. machine tool manufacturer, for £44 million. Profits for 1982 were £14.2 million, much higher than at any time in the previous decade. However, the company's £25 million share issue that year was a failure. Furthermore, reorganization & layoff costs, & the loss of contracts in Argentina during the Falkland Islands War wiped out most of the record profits. The next year, pre-tax losses were £9 million, & the company began to try to sell part of John Brown Engineering. By the middle of the year, losses for the group totalled £26.7 million & the chairman resigned. Many of the company's problems were results of the U.S. government's opposition to western firms working on the Soviet pipeline; Brown had several large contracts to supply for & build lengths of the pipeline. After the near collapse, a rescue package was put together, involving new management, a £70 million recapitalization, asset sales, & layoffs of more than 7,000 workers. Key to the rescue was the £80 million takeover by Trafalgar House in 1986. Brown's engineering & construction divisions remain its largest. In 1986 Brown received contracts to build two British Nuclear Fuels plants, as well as one for a polypropylene project for the USSR. The latter is a plant with a 100,000-ton annual capacity to be situated near Stavropol. Scheduled for completion in 1990, it will increase the Soviet Union's polyester fiber production by 40% within its first two years of operation. Also in 1986, the Markham division provided large-scale tunneling equipment for main sewer bores in Cairo. Based largely on that unit's efficiency, Markham received a contract to build two even larger units for excavation of the rail tunnel under the English Channel. At the same time, the engineering division compiled its best order list in many years; its most notable project was a large gas turbine order for China. In addition, the division hoped privatization of power in Britain would open up a major new market. Toward that end, it began to develop new business areas such as flue gas desulphurization. In September 1987 Brown announced it would sell its Craven Tasker& East Lancashire Coachbuilders units, its only ventures in the road transport industry. Though the two had combined annual revenues of £25 million, Brown managers had determined that the road transportation industry was now outside its major business areas. The plastics machinery business has become the fastest growing part of the group. The weak dollar of the late 1980's allowed the plastics division to make important inroads into the U.S. market. John Brown has fared well since Trafalgar House acquired the company in 1986, but given Trafalgar's policy of letting its constituent companies carry on their own management, it cannot yet be said with certainty that Brown's troubles are over. However, with the support of such a powerful new owner, the company undoubtedly has a better prospect for the future than it would have had left on its own. Principal Subsidiaries: Bone Markham Ltd.; Brecon Construction Co., Ltd.; John Brown Engineering Ltd.; Carmodine Ltd.; Dollain Ltd.; Firth Brown Tools Ltd.; Eric Johnson, Stubbs & Co., Ltd.; Penroyson Ltd.; Roxby Power Engineering Ltd.; Sanctuary Holdings Ltd.; Wickman Ltd..;"
HISTORICAL NOTE: "As in the early history of most newspapers, there was a period when the success of The Illustrated London News was by no means assured; for although 26,000 copies of the 1st number were disposed of, there was a great falling off in the sale of the 2nd & subsequent numbers. Mr. Ingram, however, was determined to make his property a success, & one that is still spoken of as a brilliant stroke of journalistic enterprise. He sent to every clergyman in the country a copy of the number containing illustrations of the installation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, & by this means secured many new subscribers. The 1st volume of the paper ended with the close of 1842, & with the new year several improvements were introduced. Henry Cockton, whose "Valentine Vox" was the success of 1840, contributed a story called "A Romance of Real Life," & stories by Thomas Miller ("The Basket Maker") & others followed. It is claimed by Mr. Mason Jackson that this "was the 1st attempt to infuse a new interest into newspaper literature by the introduction of fiction." The circulation by the end of the 1st year is said to have reached the high figure of 66,000 copies weekly; & the 1st year of the papers existence was celebrated by the publication of a double-number mainly illustrated by Gilbert, Harvey, & Kenny Meadows. When The Illustrated London News was started, there were very few draughtsmen on wood whose services were available for such a publication. Most of these were employed in book illustrations, & their style of drawing was not suited for rapid reproduction in a newspaper. Foremost among "the black-and-white men" of the day were William Harvey, Kenny Meadows, W. B. Scott, William Dix, G. F. Sargent, W. H. Prior (the last two being landscape & architectural artists exclusively), John Gilbert, George & Robert Cruikshank, John Leech, Alfred Forrester ("Crowquill"), & S. Williams. Some of these men as we have seen, early devoted their talents to the service of the new paper, & it gradually attracted other artists of repute; notably George Thomas (elder brother of Mr. W. L. Thomas, the manager of The Graphic), Birket Foster, E. Duncan, Dodson, J. L. Williams, son of S. Williams, a clever architectural draughtsman & engraver who executed such subjects as Barry's new Palace of Westminster, T. Beech, who used to copy old & modern pictures, L. Huard, a Belgian figure draughtsman, Harrison Weir, & many more. Among the early literary contributors were Mark Lemon, Stirling Coyne, & Henry, Horace, & Augustus Mayhew. Howard Staunton was the 1st editor of that chess column which has always been a "feature" of The Illustrated London News. In 1847 & 1848 Mr. W. J. Linton was the chief engraver, & the work he contributed to the paper in those years has not been surpassed at any later period in its history. In 1848, Dr. Charles Mackay, the veteran poet & journalist, succeeded to the literary & political editorship, & in 1852 he took the entire management & control of the paper. Under him worked for many years the late John Timbs, author of "The Curiosities of London," & many another excellent piece of paste & scissors work....";
HISTORICAL NOTE: "The Illustrated London News was the world's 1st illustrated weekly newspaper. Founded in 1842, it was published weekly until 1971. Printer & newsagent Herbert Ingram moved from Nottingham to London in early 1842. Inspired by how the Weekly Chronicle always sold more copies when it featured illustrations, he had the idea of publishing a weekly newspaper which would contain pictures in every edition. He originally considered having it concentrate on crime, as per the later Illustrated Police News, but his collaborator, engraver Henry Vizetelly, instead convinced him that a newspaper which covered more general news would be more successful. In association with Mark Lemon, the editor of Punch, as his chief adviser, Ingram rented an office, located artists & reporters, & employed as his editor the writer Frederick William Naylor Bayley (1808-1853), former editor of the National Omnibus. The 1st edition of The Illustrated London News appeared on 14 May 1842. It contained 16 pages & 32 wood engravings, & covered the current war in Afghanistan, a train crash in France, a steam-boat accident on the Chesapeake, a survey of the candidates for the US presidential election, in addition to length crime reports, stage & book reviews, & three pages of advertisements. Costing sixpence, the 1st edition sold 26,000 copies. Despite this initial success, there was a falling off in the 2nd & subsequent numbers. However, Herbert Ingram was determined to make his paper a success, & sent every clergyman in the country a copy of the edition which contained illustrations of the installation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, & by this means secured a great many new subscribers. Its circulation soon rose to 40,000 & by the end of its first year reached 60,000. In 1851, after the newspaper published Joseph Paxton's designs for the Crystal Palace before even Prince Albert had seen them, the circulation achieved 130,000. In 1852, when it produced a special edition covering the funeral of the Duke of Wellington, sales rose to 150,000, while in 1855, mainly due to the paper reproducing some of Roger Fenton's pioneering photographs of the Crimean War (& also due to the abolition of the Stamp Act which taxed newspapers), it sold 200,000 copies per week. By 1863 The Illustrated London News was selling over 300,000 copies every week, enormous figures in comparison to other British newspapers of the time. Competitors appeared but did not last long; Andrew Spottiswoode's Pictorial Times lost £20,000 before it was sold to Ingram, while Henry Vizetelly, who had left Ingram to found the rival Pictorial Times, eventually sold it to Ingram, who closed it down. Herbert Ingram died on 8 September 1860 in a paddle-steamer accident on Lake Michigan, & he was succeeded as proprietor by his youngest son, William, who in turn was succeeded by his son, Bruce Ingram in 1900. The Illustrated London News was published weekly until 1971, when it became a monthly. From 1989, it was bimonthly, & then quarterly. The magazine is no longer published, but the Illustrated London News Group still exists. It produces in-house magazines & websites, & offers consultancy services, in addition to owning the archive of the Illustrated London News. The 1st generation of draughtsmen & engravers included Sir John Gilbert, Birket Foster, & George Cruikshank among the former, & W. J. Linton, Ebenezer Landells & George Thomas among the latter. Regular literary contributors included Douglas Jerrold, Richard Garnett & Shirley Brooks. Illustrators & artists included Mabel Lucie Attwell, E. H. Shepherd, Kate Greenaway, W. Heath Robinson & his brother Charles Robinson, George E. Studdy, David Wright, Melton Prior, Frederic Villiers, Edmund Blampied, Frank Reynolds, Lawson Wood, H. M. Bateman, Bruce Bairnsfather, C. E. Turner, R. Caton Woodville, A. Forestier, Fortunino Matania & Louis Wain. Writers & journalists included Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy, George Augustus Sala, J. M. Barrie, Wilkie Collins, Joseph Conrad, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, G. K. Chesterton, Agatha Christie, Arthur Bryant & Tim Beaumont (who wrote on food). Editors: 1842: Frederick William Naylor Bayley, 1848: John Timbs, 1852: Charles Mackay, 1859: John Lash, 1891: Clement Shorter, 1900: Bruce Ingram, 1963: Hugh Ingram, 1965: Timothy Green, 1966: John Kisch, 1970: James Bishop, 1995: Mark Palmer.";
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