Mechanical typesetting

Melissa Score, "Interred in Printing House Vaults: Pianotype Composing Machines of the 1840s," Victorian Periodicals Review 49.4 (Winter 2016): 578-597.

…the pianotype composing machine is not just a footnote in the inevitable rise of Linotype technology but an artefact that interro- gates preconceived ideas of the compositor’s role and raises the question of why, in the 1840s and 1850s, the mechanization of typesetting was inspired by the workings of the pia…

ers are revealing.” 2Pianotype machines may have failed commercially, but their mechanized construction of texts was adopted in the development of telegraphy, the typewriter, and writing machines for the blind.

I suggest that these inventions embody a key moment on the path to mass-market publishing. This history reveals the symbolic power of the printing press, the role of master craftsmen in the printing industry, and the role of gender in technological change.

Histories of the printing press, including several by the printer and pub- lisher John Southward, tend to imply that the journey to the Linotype was linear, albeit hampered by trade union opposition to the replacement of skilled manual compositors with less skilled women and boys. The reality is more complicated since the role of the compositor was multi-faceted and its history told of close adherence to traditions, rituals, and a fierce commitment to self-educati…

In stark contrast to the mechanization of the printing press in the nine- teenth century, the setting of type for printing resisted technological inno- vation.

Nevertheless, inventors were attracted to the keyboard style, partly because women could operate it in much the same way that they learned to play the piano.

Significantly, the idea of saving money by employing women as low- or semi-skilled operatives of machines was distinct from the feminist cam- paign to train women to be skilled manual compositors. The promotors of the machines emphasized that their inventions required little skill and minimal training, whereas in the 1860s, the girls employed by Emily Faith- full (1835–95) at the feminist Victoria Press learned traditional techniques that had been in use since the fifteenth …

The compositors’ trade associations viewed the employment of women as a threat to wages, but composing machines were also regarded as a threat to employment in the 1840s, a time when many journeyman printers were out of work. The only way the machines could absorb surplus male labour was if the number and circulation of titles increased significantly. In the 1840s, the taxes on newspapers, paper, and advertising were obstacles to mass-market publishing. In reality, early composing machines were too expensive to replace hand composition.

The compositor’s work was broken down into four stages: deciphering, punctuating, setting type, and justifying lines. The first two processes were mental activities, so any attempt to mechanise the process had to focus on the last two steps.

The comparison of the compositor’s work to that of a musician was not confined to the piano, however. The appearance of the composing room and the individual stands were seen as analogous to music stands in an orchestra, as the Quarterly Review noted in an essay on William Clowes’s printing works. 17…

Why did the piano inspire technical innovators in composing machines in the 1840s and 1850s in particular? The answer may lie in the rapid rise in the popularity of the pianoforte in the latter part of the eighteenth century in Europe.

The publicity given to the pianoforte as a musical technology may have inspired the decision to replicate the key- board in typesetting machines.

In a very short space of time, then, the piano keyboard was used for selecting and arranging type for books and newspapers, as well as for sending messages and producing typewritten documents.22

The challenge for Young and Delcambre was to persuade printing firms that the pianotype could be used alongside, or instead of, hand composi- tion. The political climate was not favourable. In the 1840s, many journey- man compositors were struggling to find work, and the trade associations fought to maintain the scale of payments that compositors had negoti- ated earlier in the century. 27There was an additional concern centred on the increasing presence of women in trades previousl…

If playing the pianoforte was a respectable female leisure activity, then operating a pianotype machine could be regarded as suitable employment for women who needed to work. The Morning Chronicle, among other newspapers, confirmed this view when the machine went on public display and young women were chosen to demonstrate its ease of use.

Less than two years after filing the patent, Young and Delcambre scored a notable success: the printer-publisher George Biggs established a new pop- ular magazine, the Family Herald, in 1842, to demonstrate the machine’s capabilities. The Herald was one of a new breed of cheaper weekly maga- zines that included fiction and was aimed at both male and female readers. The launch of the Family Herald demonstrates how technology changed gender roles in the printing in…

Contemporary critics commented on this image of a female “player” of the composing machine. What seems to have gone unnoticed is the second woman who sits on a stool next to what looks like a tapestry frame, her posture and attention evoking the pose of a hand embroiderer…

This image is striking in its references to both machine composing and domestic practices.

To the Reader” hints at the limitations of the machine: “In consequence of the peculiar nature of the machinery, emphatic and other words, usually printed in italics, will, in this publication, be in Roman types, with spaces between each letter, in the same manner as is still practised in Germany, the birth-place of the Art of Printing.” 39An inspection of the layout of the paper itself does reveal that there are a few headings in a different, larger font, presumably added by hand after the rest of the page had been set.

The composing machine continued to appear on the Family Herald’s masthead until May 6, 1843, and for the first few weeks it was featured in an advertisement claiming it could be used both in Britain and the colonies. However, the disappearance of the adverts after this date hinted at the furore surrounding the notion that a paper might be composed by female labourers. In the week of May 6, 1843, it published two editions. In the second, the word “supplement” appeared in place of the masthead engrav- ing of the machine. The following week, the appearance of the magazine was radically altered: its size was reduced from folio to quarto, its five columns were condensed to two, and its new masthead featured Britannia by th…

The use of the machine in the illustration and advert had provoked an angry reaction from printing unions, forcing the Family Herald to change its brand. It relaunched in a more conventional periodical format and was produced by male compositors.

On October 29, 1842, for example, the Mechanics’ Magazine’s detailed description of Rosenberg’s Type Composing and Distributing Machine was accompa- nied by two illustrations: in the first, two male operatives compose and justify type, and in the second, another male operative collects and sorts the type using the separate distributing …

…the newer machine was able to send several in one go. For words where letters appeared in alphabetical order, such as “act,” “add,” “all,” “accent,” “adopt,” and “envy,” the keys would be pressed at the same time and the letters would automatically leave in the correct order. Such words or syllables were termed “accords,” paralleling the for- mation of chords on a piano keybo…

However, in France, Pierre Leroux championed the pianotype as a sym- bol of democracy and a means of putting control of the press in the hands of the people.

Leroux later referred to this as his “pianotype.” 48His aim was to facilitate the publishing of liberal books, arguing that he had “created a means of placing the press beyond the power of all government censorship.”49

…pianotype is interesting in its own right as a tactile invention that relied on human interaction to create readable texts. It symbolised for some a challenge to existing hierarchies, whether industrial or political, and it offered a challenge to traditional gender roles in the printing industry. It simultaneously pointed the way to cheap commercial possibilities (the Family Herald) and non-hierarchal, democratic ideals (Leroux). If interpreted in this way, the pianotype is not a failure but an anticipation of future mass-media technologies.