ORIGINAL PRINTING PLATES

The original “letterpress” printing plates used in the production of the Monthly magazine have been variously claimed to have been lost, sold, stolen or destroyed. A large number of plates from books 49 to 52 did turn up for sale online in around 2017 and perhaps others exist.
Each one is a unique “reverse image”, on a metal plate usually still attached to a wooden block and would have been used several thousand times to produce a monochrome image on a page or part-page of the magazine.
They include photographs, text, incidental cartoons and headings and several parts might be used together to produce a complete page.
In theory these can still be used to produce prints.

The first plate pictured above is a photo image of Paul used on page 28 of Monthly number 49.

The second image is of a printing plate for the text from page 21 of Monthly number 51.

A second plate would have been used to print the “Behind the Spotlight” and paragraph heading in blue.

In the final issue of the magazine, Beat Publications offered a number of the copper photographic printing plates for sale. These were treated with a special coating to produce a positive image and to prevent them being re-used (see under “EXTRAS” for more information on these).

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