John Calvin Moss

Background

John C. Moss was born on January 5, 1838, near Bentleyville, Pennsylvania, the son of Alexander J. Moss and Mary Calvin.

Education

His mother intended him for the ministry, but the youth learned the printer's trade instead. The daguerreotype was then a sensation, and Moss learned something about making portraits in that manner.

On learning of William Robert Grove's attempts to turn a daguerreotype into a printing plate, Moss made a Grove battery and began to experiment in that direction. This probably started him toward what later became his life work.

Career

In 1859 Moss became publisher of the Colleague, at Washington, Pennsylvania, but in 1860 he was again working at his trade as a printer in Philadelphia. Here he haunted the libraries, studying optics, chemistry, photography, acquiring knowledge that would help him toward a realization of his ambition to engrave by the aid of the camera.

After the Civil War he got work at his trade in New York, and turned his home in Jersey City, New Jersey, into a laboratory. He became so confident that he had solved the problem that he induced a friend to invest some money and they founded in January 1871 the Actinic Engraving Company, 113 Liberty Street, New York. Printers would not accept his engravings so the enterprise failed.

Obtaining more capital (Moss established the Photo-engraving Company, May 2, 1872, which he moved later to 67 Park Place, New York. Here he was successful. He depended upon secrecy to protect himself from competition, but his workmen would leave him and begin business for themselves in a small way. Finally he decided to go into business on a large scale, employ hundreds of men, and retain his leadership.

In 1881 he accordingly sold out his business and established the Moss Engraving Company at 535 Pearl Street, New York. Here the dreams of nearly a quarter century came true; he became the best-known photoengraver in the world. In attempting to supplant the woodcut he found that he must train pen-and-ink draftsmen to imitate the line of the wood engraver in the treatment of portraits, figures, architecture, and landscapes, in order to sell his photo-engravings. So successful was he in counterfeiting the work of the woodengraver that the public could not distinguish the new from the old methods of engraving. He trained a new school of draftsmen from which many famous illustrators graduated. Moss's printing blocks were stereotypes, so shallow that it required a large staff of trained wood engravers to deepen them between the lines.

When printers complained that they could not get results from his engravings Moss established his own printery to prove that the fault was with the printer. In the meantime other experimenters had devised methods of photo-engraving that were improvements upon his and more artistic in quality. Moss was obliged to adopt these newer methods and died on April 8, 1892, a disappointed man.

Achievements

• John Calvin Moss was an inventor credited with developing the first practicable photo-engraving process in 1863. His work, and that of others such as William Leggo in Canada led to a revolution in printing and eventually to the mass marketing around the world of newspapers and magazines and books which combined photographs with traditional text.

Connections

In 1856 John C. Moss married Mary A. Bryant, who became as ardent as himself in the search for a method of engraving through the aid of photography. They had one son.

Father:

Alexander J. Moss

Mother:

Mary Moss (Calvin)

Wife:

Mary A. Moss (Bryant)