M/S and C/Us of a man sitting at a desk, looking through a magnifying glass and working with a paintbrush on a stamp design; C/Us of the new one cent stamp of the United Nations as he puts the finishing touches to it. Commentator tells us "This is one of the largest stamp printing factories in the world, where - since 1855 - the postage stamps of a hundred and fifty different countries have been engraved and printed".



M/S of a man peering through a magnifying glass and engraving the stamp design on a piece of metal; extreme C/U as he works with a small metal tool. M/S of the man using a pentograph machine which assists in hand-engraving; as he follows a large copy of the original design of the United Nations logo with one arm of the machine, a needle automatically makes the same outlines on a stamp-sized steel dye. M/S of a man taking a proof of the stamp design from this steel dye; we see it come out the other side of a roller; the man turns it round so we see it the right way up.



High angle M/S of a man operating a machine which rolls a softened steel cylinder over the hardened steel dye; C/U of the process; the cylinder will then be used to print the design of the stamp. M/S of a woman at a large machine who feeds sheets of gummed paper into it for printing; M/S as we see sheets of printed stamps being taken off a roller and placed between two sheets of brown paper - presumably to blot.



M/S as two girls flick through a set of printed stamp sheets, then feed the batch into a machine to be perforated; M/S of the sheet coming out the other side of the machine and sliding onto a pile of finished stamp sheets.



Note: the factory seen is not mentioned by name in the commentary; it is Thomas De La Rue & Co Ltd in the City of London.
FILM ID:39.19

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