It was shown that immersing iron wire or filings in these inks destroyed ordinary inks. He therefore recommended that all legal deeds or documents should be written with quill pens, as the contact of steel invariably destroys more or less the durability of every ink. The author concluded his paper with a few remarks on copying inks and indelible inks, showing that a good copying ink has yet to be sought for, and that indelible inks, which will resist the pencilings and washings of the chemist and the forger, need never be looked for."Professor Leonhardi, of Dresden, who had given much attention to the subject of inks, introduced in 1855what he termed a NEW ink, and named it "alizarine ink," alizarin being a product obtained from the madder root, which he employed for "added" color in a tanno-gallate of iron solution. It possessed some merit due to its fluidity, and for a time was quite popular, but gradually gave place to the so-called chemical writing fluids; it is now obsolete.
Champour and Malepeyre, Paris, 1856, issued a joint manual, "Fabrication des Encres," devoted almost exclusively to the manufacture of inks and compiles many old "gall" and other ink formulas.
In 1856 Dr. Chilton of New York City published the results of ink experiments which he had made.
The accompanying extracts are taken from the local press of the month of April of that year:
"Some ingenious experiments to test the durability of writing inks have recently been made by Dr. Chilton, of New York City. He exposed a manuscript written with four different inks of the principal makers, of this and other countries, to the constant action of the weather upon the roof of his laboratory. After an exposure of over five months, the paper shows the different kind of writing in various shades of color. The English sample, Blackwood's, well known and popular from the neat and convenient way that it is prepared for this market, was quite indistinct.
"The American samples, David's, Harrison's and Maynard's are better. The first appears to retain its original shade very neatly; the two last are paler. This test shows conclusively the durability of ink; and while, for many purposes, school and the like, an ink that will stand undefaced a year or so, is all that is necessary, yet there is hardly a bottle of ink sold, some of which may not be used in the signature or execution of papers that may be important to be legible fifty or one hundred years hence.
"For state and county offices, probate records, etc., it is of vital importance that the records should be legible centuries hence. We believe that some of the early manuscripts of New England are brighter than some town and church records of this century.
"In Europe at the present time, great care is taken by the different governments in the preparation of permanent ink--some of them even compounding their own, according to the most approved and expensive formulas.
"Manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries now in the state paper office of Great Britain, are apparently as bright as when first written;while those of the last two hundred years are more or less illegible, and some of them entirely obliterated."While the information sought to be conveyed in the last statement may be in some respects correct, it must be remembered that most of the MSS. extant dating before the thirteenth century were written in "Indian"ink, while the great majority of those of the last two hundred years were not; and this fact alone would account to some extent for the differences mentioned.
The German (Prussian) government in 1859, as the result of an investigation, employed what they termed "Official Ink of the First Class," i. e., a straight tanno-gallate of iron ink without added color; and if permanence were required as against removal by chemicals, it was accomplished by writing on paper saturated with chromates and ultramarine.
In 1871 Professor Wattenbach of Germany published a treatise entitled "Archives during the Middle Ages," which has some valuable references to the color phenomena of inks.
William Inglis Clark in 1879 submitted to the Edinburgh University a thesis entitled "An Attempt to Place the Manufacture of Ink on a Scientific Basis,"and which very justly received the commendation of the University authorities. His researches and rational deductions are of the greatest possible value judged from a scientific standpoint. The introduction of blue-black ink is a phase of the development towards modern methods which he discusses at much length.
