Alexander Tilloch

Alexander Tilloch FSA (Scot) (1759–1825) was a Scottish journalist and inventor. He founded the Philosophical Magazine.

The son of John Tilloch, a tobacco merchant and magistrate of Glasgow, he was born there on 28 February 1759. He was educated at Glasgow University, and turned his attention to printing. In 1781 he began work on stereotypes. In 1725 William Ged had obtained a privilege for a development of Van der Mey's process, but encountered practical difficulties. Tilloch independently developed a process by 1782, and worked with Andrew Foulis the younger, printer to the university of Glasgow. On 28 April 1784 they took out a joint patent for England (No. 1431) for ‘printing books from plates instead of movable types,’ and another for Scotland about the same time. They made no great use of it, however. From Tilloch Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope derived knowledge of the process of making stereotype plates.

In 1787 Tilloch moved to London, and in 1789, in connection with others, purchased The Star, an evening daily paper, of which he remained editor until 1821. At that time forgery of Bank of England notes was common, and Tilloch in 1790 laid before the British ministry a mode of printing which would render forgery impossible. Receiving no encouragement, he brought his process before the notice of the Commission d'Assignats of the Legislative Assembly, at Paris, but then came the outbreak of war. In 1797 he submitted to the Bank of England a specimen of a note engraved after his plan, accompanied by a certificate signed by Francesco Bartolozzi, Wilson Lowry, William Sharp and other engravers, to the effect that they did not believe it could be copied by any of the known arts of engraving. He could not, however, persuade the authorities to accept it, though in 1810 they adopted the process of Augustus Applegath, which Tilloch claimed in 1820, in a petition to parliament, to be virtually his own.

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