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TYPESETTING-MACHINES

1962

TYPEWRITERS

The types must be made with absolute accuracy in order to fit so exactly when placed together that they will form a solid body. To do this they are made in molds, into which the hot metal is injected. The letter to be made is cut on the end of a bar of soft steel, and then pressed into a piece of copper by the blow of a hammer, and the copper impression is fitted into the end of the mold and the metal poured in it, filling up the impression of the letter and the rest of the mold. Types are all of the same height, but of different widths according to the letter. A full set of types is called a font or fount, and has the letters in different proportions, as 60 of e, 45 of t and 40 of a, i, o, u etc. Large and small capitals, large and small italics, small letters, figures and punctuation-marks are found in a font. Types are of different sizes, called by printers nonpareil or six-point, minion or seven-point, brevier or eight-point, bourgeois or nine-point, long primer or ten-point, pica or twelve-point etc. Some of the names came from the first maker of the type, and others from the first book printed with that particular kind of type, as brevier from breviary and pica from the service of the mass called pica or pic. According to an inscription on a tablet to his memory in Mainz, Gutenberg is credited with making the first printing-letters in brass, in place of the wooden types first used in printing. The first type-founder in America was Christopher Saur, who cast the type used by him in printing a German Bible about 1735. A page of a daily newspaper will sometimes require 150,000 types.

Type'setting=Machines. The closing years of the last century contributed much to the development and advancement of the art of printing. To substitute machines for the slow, laborious and expensive process of typesetting by hand had been the aim and ambition of a number of inventors. The United States patent-office alone has recorded upwards of 500 patents for typesetting and divStributing machines with improvements; but the majority of these inventions have been noted more for their ingenuity than their practical use. Nearly all of the typesetting-machines were invented with the object of using the regular hand-type. A few machines of this class are still in use in America and England. Two of the most successful machines are the linotype and the monotype, both machines making their own type. The linotype (q.v.) was constructed by Otto Mergenthaler of Baltimore, Md., and is largely used by the

LINOTYPE

daily newspapers throughout the world. This machine casts a solid line of type (q. v.) from a group of matrices or molds that bear the impress of the letters. These are dislodged from their respective channel receptacles at the top of the machine and assembled by the operator in the form of words spaced out to the desired length of line; the operator simply fingering a keyboard, somewhat as in the typewriter. The monotype

MONOTYPE CASTER                   AND          KEYBOARD

was invented by Albert Lanston of Washington, D. C. This machine casts each type and space separately, but in lines of words spaced out to the length of line desired. This is accomplished by a machine called the caster, the mechanism of which is regulated by a long strip of paper previously perforated by the operator on the keyboard. The production of the monotype being movable types, the machine is largely used in book-work and job-work, as the matter is practically the same as type set by hand and can be manipulated as such. The linotype and monotype machines have been improved so greatly in recent years that any kind of printed matter can be handled by them as well as or better than by hand; certainly much more rapidly.

In combination with the improvements and inventions in other branches of the printing-trade, as printing-presses, folding-machines and bookbinding-machinery, the use of typesetting-machines has enabled the manufacturer to reduce the price of all classes of printed books and magazines, thus bringing literature of every description within the reach of all.

Perhaps there is no trade or profession that is a better example of the vast advantages accruing to mankind from the usefulness and utility of labor-saving machinery and new inventions. Instead of displacing the workmen, the tendency in the printing-trade has been to increase the number with every new device invented. To-day there are more men and women employed in the manufacture of printed matter than ever before, irrespective of the great number employed in making machinery for their use. W. H. AITKEN.

Type'writers, machines for writing by movable types instead of the pen. In 1714