A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Rack Cards
Cards that are generally given away for free as advertising. They are usually found in card rack displays but can be distributed in a variety of ways. Rack cards have been around since the mid 1990’s. They are a varient of the older give away cards once popular with hotels and restaurants.

Radiol
A form of bronzing specifically used by the Berlin publisher Paul Finkenrath to apply metallic colors to his cards. (See bronzing)

Rag paper
A paper made from plant fiber that is easily broken down into pulp without the use of chemicals. The fibers of cotton and flax are often used to create high quality papers but they are too expensive for most commercial printing. Cotton rags and mill sweepings are a cheaper source for high quality cellulose but they too can be expensive. Esparto grass provides quality fiber for rag paper but it is not commonly used outside of Europe. Rag papers often have archival properties and are very strong due to their interlocking fibers. While many rag papers are acid free the rag content in itself is no guarantee to its ph level. Its use in postcard production is doubtful except as a percentage of content added to chemical pulp. The quality of paper used for postcards varied widely between publishers.

Railway Hotel
A hotel owned by a railroad company near one of their stations. As railroads grew larger they began purchasing and building large hotels in order to offer more complete travel packages that would encourage tourism through their line. While some hotels provided rooms at important transfer points, many others became tourist destinations in themselves and an excuse for rail travel. Railway hotels also became major distribution points for postcards bringing railroads into the publishing business.

Railway Mail Service
The exclusive use by the U.S. Post Office Department of privately owned rail lines to sort and deliver mail. The Government first experimented moving mail by train in 1832. Six years later all rail lines were officially declared postal routes. As railroads and the country grew so did the Railway mail service. By 1862 Railway Post Offices were established on rail cars for the sorting of mail en-route. By 1930 there were over 10,000 such cars serving every American city and town that had arail line. These postal routes extended beyond the station terminals as trolley and cable car lines were added to the service to carry mail even further. But by 1971 all but the New York to Washington line had been closed and replaced by trucks and planes. On June 30th, 1977 the last Railway Post Office closed. Mail that was processed through the Railway Mail Service received special postmarks.

Real Photo Postcard
A postcard that is an actual photograph, not printed with ink. While photographs were sent through the mail in the 19th century, it was not until 1902 when Kodak introduced a Velox photo paper with a pre-printed postcard back that they began to appear in number. These cards were easy to make as they could be contact printed with the postcard size negatives available from Kodak cameras. Many other gaslight papers followed with AZO being one of the more popular. Because real photo postcards could be made at home it is sometimes impossible to tell if an image is one of a kind or was mass-produced. The specific characteristics of these cards varied as photo technology continued to grow. Real photo cards lost their popularity after photochromes were introduced and production all but ceased.

Rebus
The placement of a picture within a line of text to act as a substitute for a phonetic sound or an entire word. Rebus is occasionally found on greeting cards, especially valentines.

Receivers Mark
An official hand stamp placed on mail at the Post Office that accepts delivery to acknowledge receipt. As it is not used for cancellation it does not appear over the stamp and the words received or an abbreviation of it are included within its design. Before rural free delivery mail could sit in a Post Office for months before being picted up. The receivers mark let the addressee know how long it was sitting there. Receivers marks were only officially required prior to 1907 but many individual postal clerks continued to use them for many more years.

Reflectoscope
A type of magic lantern specifically designed for the projection of postcards. Rather than projecting an image through a transparency, an opaque flat image could be captured by a mirror and then its reflection projected onto a screen. Various models existed that could be powered by alcohol, electric, or gas. Reflectoscope was latter used as a brand name for a slide projector.

Registration
The perfect alignment of paper, esspecially over multiple printing surfaces so they will print in the proper location and create a single image. The more colors used in printing the more chances of non-alignment and waste. Many postcards entered into distribution with a printed color out of allignment as quality contol tended not to be a overiding issue.

Reissue
The second or additional printings of a postcard made from the same photograph. Postcards were usually ordered in quantities ranging from 500 to 6000 cards. Large orders were not usually placed because about half of the cards purchased needed to be sold just for a retailer to break even. The delicate nature of many printing plates prevented larger press runs even if they were desired. Popular images of cities or resorts had no trouble selling and many were reordered a number of times. Due to the nature of creating an image on a plate, no two reissues could ever look the same. Sometimes these differences were intentional to make a card look new and generate more sales. Reissues are responsible for most postcard variations.

Relief Printing
A printing process using plates (blocks) that have a raised printing surface. Ink is dabbed or rolled onto the printing surface, then transferred to paper either by hand rubbing or using a press that pushes the plate into the paper. The recessed areas do not print. Traditionally a woodcut technique, relief printing developed into letterpress for the printing of text and wood engraving to provide accompanying illustrations. It is one of the oldest printing techniques known.

Reminder Card
Letter writing sereved as important agent in reaffirming social bonds the 19th century, but as postcards became popular they largely took over this function. While postcards were advertised to ease the burden of letter writing, many did not accept this break with etiquette. And the expectation of receiving mail from friends and family grew regardless of sloven habits. Many postcards contain written messages complaining about the absence of long overdue correspondence. This was such a common occurrence that pre-printed reminder cards were published with such messages as Why Donít You Write?

Retoucher
An artist or tradesman who alters a photographically produced image in the production phase of its creation. Retouching was not only used to remove mechanically created flaws or unwanted objects, it was an absolutely necessary step in the production of early postcards. The retoucher was responsible for separating the colors on printing plates before photographic separation techniques were available. They were also responsible for adding clouds and other atmospheric effects that were not recorded in photographs. While retouchers followed the instructions of their managers they were often left to work with much discretion.

Reverse Negative
A negative where the image it contains has been reversed from the original so when transfered to and printed from a plate it will read correctly. In all photographic processes, images are transferred emulsion to emulsion so there is no space for light to scatter and blur the image. Some film may be thin enough to produce a satisfactory image from the non-emulsion side, but this is impossible to achieve when a glass negative is used. Printing from one emulsion to another is not a problem when making photographs, as the single transfer from negative to paper was the final product. But when printing from a plate the final image would mirror the plate’s image. A second negative in a reversed orientation (mirror image) was needed before exposing it to the plate. This is known as a double transfer.

Reward Cards
A marketing strategy developed in the 1880’s where cards carrying appealing images and subject matter were included free with packaged goods as a reward for the purchase. Since they were produced as collectables and were not meant to be mailed, descriptive information as well as advertising was placed on their backs. They were issued in sets to encourage multiple sales among those anxious to collect them. Reward cards were usually larger than trade cards but not quite up to that of a standard sized postcard. Cigarette cards became the most popular form of all reward cards.

In Great Britain another type of reward card appeared between the 1880’s and the 1920’s. These cards were issued by schools on a quarterly basis to act as a reward for good attendance by students. They were initially produced in a standard postcard size, and without advertising on their backs they could be mailed. A wide variety of subjects such as animals, plants, ships, scenery, and fairy tales appeared on them, which were mostly rendered by drawn illustration. In 1903 these cards were printed in larger sizes, making them impossible to mail without trimming them down. As they became difficult to place in standard sized albums their collectability and popularity declined.

Richkrome
A brand name for a type of early photochrome postcard printed by the Steelograph Company in New York City during the 1950’s.

Risqué
Postcards that invite the viewer to engage in sexual fantasy inspired by the suggestive expression, attitude, or pose of the subject. These are never nudes. They are based on notions of teasing and cannot be explicit. The specifics of this definition have changed over time. Many seaside postcards were published with known risqué overtones just by showing women in bathing dresses. At times a card depicting an exposed female ankle was enough to have it seized by postal authorities.

Road of a Thousand Wonders
The name given to the Southern Pacific Railroad’s 1300 mile Shasta Route, from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon, in an effort to encourage tourism. A great many postcards were created of the views along this route, and references to the Road of a Thousand Wonders are often found printed on them.

Roosevelt Bears
A pair of anthropomorphic bears used in illustration. In 1902 Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a tethered bear on a hunting trip and the incident was rendered into a political cartoon whose popularity attracted national attention. This incident inspired the creation of the Teddy Bear, which quickly became a best seller. By 1906 the New York Times added to this craze by publishing a comic strip by Adolph Ochs depicting two bears traveling east to meet the President. The following year Seymour Eaton published a children’s book on the travels and adventures of the Roosevelt Bears. As the bears became nationally recognized characters their images began appearing on postcards and in advertising.

Rosin
The sap from resinous trees that has been hardened through a purification process. Rosin is available in crystal or powdered form. It is hard and brittle, melts at low temperatures, and is soluble in alcohol. It is often used in intaglio printing as a component of acid resists, especially with the aquatint method.

Rosette Pattern
A flower like pattern created when four-color halftones are overlapped with specified angles of difference between them. The exact positions are 45-degrees for black, 75-degrees for magenta, 90-degrees for yellow, and 105-degrees for cyan. The rosette pattern that emerges recreates the look of a color photograph. When a screen is positioned at an improper angle a discernible pattern is created (moiré pattern) breaking the illusion of continuous tone.

Rotary Press
A printing press where the plate is mounted on a cylinder and a roller system applies ink to the raised area of the plate. The paper passes between the plate cylinder and an impression cylinder where the resulting squeeze between the two rollers produces the printed impression on the paper. These presses can either be sheet-fed where individual pieces of paper are mechanically supplied, or web-fed where the paper is unwound from a large roll. After printing, the web is cut into individual sheets. Web-fed presses are used for larger print runs. The letterpress web-fed press usually contains several printing units so that multiple colors can be printed during a single run. Rotary presses were first with letterpress but eventually adapted to print gravure and lithography after a workable method of stereotyping was developed for them. The general process for these techniques remains the same except for the manner in which the image is attached to the cylinder, and the inking mechanism that must cater to the specific needs of each medium.

Rotogravure (Gravure)
An intaglio printing process in which an image is transferred to a rotary cylinder by photochemical means. Early attempts to utilize rotary presses to print gravure were hampered by the seemingly impossible problem of exposing a cylinder to a halftone screen. Karl Klic found a solution to this problem in 1895 when he discovered a way to infuse a gelatin tissue with a halftone screen, optically diffusing an image when exposed to a transparency. In addition to the pattern formed by the screen, rosin dust was melted onto the cylinder to further break down the printing surface into small irregular markings. This helped create the methods deep rich printed look. Because the tonal quality of gravure creates soft edges, text was often overprinted by another method such as letterpress if needed. By 1904 this method was in common use despite Klic’s efforts to keep it a company secret.

Two textile printers, Eduard Mertens and Ernst Rolffs took rotogravure’s development further in 1908. Rolffs developed a method by which a gelatin tissue is double exposed, first to a non optical gravure line screen that hardens the fine screen lines but creates a series of soft square cells between them. A second exposure is then made with the transparency that holds the image, which causes the square cells to harden in proportion to the amount of light filtering through the film image. It is then adhered to a copper coated cylinder and washed out with water, where it forms a reliefed acid resist. The cylinder can now be etched by rotating it in a tray of acid. This incises a continuous toned image into its surface by creating small ink cells of substantial but varying depth. The deeper depressions transfers more ink to the printing surface creating darker areas while the shallow areas print lighter. The areas of the cylinder that are not etched become the non-image areas. During printing the etched screen cylinder revolves in an ink fountain where it is coated with fluid ink. Mertens invented a wiping blade (doctor blade) that clears ink from the surface areas while leaving the ink in the depressions of the screen cylinder, protected by the grid. The fine lines of the screen pattern which were not etched and should theoretically print white but they disappear as the ink spreads on the paper’s surface. When paper passes between the etched screen cylinder and an impression cylinder, its soft rubber covering pushes the paper into the incised steep ink cells and the image is transferred onto the paper. For small runs such as postcards, sheet-fed presses were most often used. Because cylinders were expensive to make they were most often used with web-fed presses for very long runs. For runs of a million or more, the cylinders are plated with chromium to provide extra durability. When printing with process color, blue, red, yellow, and black are used instead of the usual CMYK colors of offset lithography. A separate cylinder would be made for every color used in a print. This process was patented in 1910 and was soon being used in commercial printing.

Rural Free Delivery
A free mail delivery service provided to rural areas by the U.S. Post Office Department. Postage was traditionally paid to cover the cost of transporting mail from post office to post office. Home delivery was only available through private companies for an additional fee. It was not until 1863 that the Post Office Department started city free delivery to locations with over 10,000 inhabitants. This represented less than a quarter of the nation’s population. Even with rising urbanization most American’s continued to live in a rural environment and in 1896 an experiment was initiated to deliver mail to regions outside of cities. This was a difficult task since most mail went out by horse and buggy until the service was motorized in 1914. By 1902 rural free delivery became official postal policy. This greatly fed the postcard craze as it created a new audience of millions.