Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/194

182. Thus equipped, he can, I believe, do steadily and regularly the work of three fair hand compositors. He does not handle type; has no "stick"; is not required to do any justification nor any distributing. He sits in front of a machine and works a key-board and a lever, and the machine does everything else.

Now to outline the working of the type-casting machine. A key-board similar to that of a type-writer fronts the machine There is a key for each letter of the alphabet. The operator sits in front of the key-board. Let us suppose that he wishes to set the word "new." He touches the key n. The touch on the key releases from a magazine in rear of the machine a mold technically called a matrix, for the letter n. The matrix, which is of brass, slides down into a receiver near the key-board Next the operator touches the key e. A matrix for the letter e is released and slides down alongside the letter n. The operator touches the keyw. A matrix for w comes down and ranges itself alongside e. Now, in the receiver we have, what?—the word new in type? No, nothing of the kind. We have three little brass molds standing side by side, from which, if we poured molten metal into them, we would get the word new in a solid cast. But there is no type. The machine knows nothing of type whatever, though, for convenience' sake, we are calling it at present a type-casting machine.

But the time is not come to put molten metal into the three little molds or "matrices." An entire line should be set not merely a word. Suppose the line is to be, "new things come to pass." The operator proceeds to touch key after key for the successive letters until the matrices for the whole line are ranged side by side. Now at this point comes in what was for years the great problem in type-casting by machinery. As the end of a line of matrices or type is approached, it may not be possible to fit in an even word or syllable. Padding, or "justifying," becomes necessary. In setting by hand, the compositor does this with little lead slugs, called "spaces," inserted between words. How is this to be done by a machine? Inventors long stuck at it. But they have found out how. The process is simple in action, though difficult to describe without a model. Roughly speaking, the "spaces" or slugs which are used between each word in the line of matrices are compensating wedges, the bottoms of which project below the matrices. When the line of matrices requires justification," a touch on a lever by the operator causes the bottoms of the compensating wedges to be struck by a cross-bar, which forces the wedges up between the words until the line is solidly filled out.

The line of matrices or letter molds is then ready to receive a cast. Where is the molten metal? It is in the machine. This