Kahan 2000

Kahan, Basil. Ottmar Mergenthaler: The Man and His Machine. Oak Knoll Press, 2000.

""typesetting by hand as the major bottleneck in newspaper production" (1)

Church's keyboard

"Church, and many others, tried to emulate the hand compositor using movable type, but at least two operators were required to make those early machines effective - one to set text continuously and another to justify it. An operator who broke off setting to justify lines took more than twice as long as two people working together. Most of these inventions were not successful commercially and it was reported that the cellars at The Times, which tried to encourage new inventions, were blocked with discarded machines. The bottleneck in the composing room became so critical that in 1869 the New York World, then owned by Manton Marble, proposed that publishers subscribe to a prize fund of $500,000 for a machine that would speed up composition and reduce costs by at least 25 per cent. No records have been found to confirm either that the money was raised or that any prize was awarded." (2)

"Clephane's machines were based on the idea of making impressions; his concept of machine composition did not call for the distribution of type, because typewriters produce print immediately from an inexhaustible, but limited, master alphabet. Further, every machine was designed to be operated by just one person." (14)

"is only fair to point out that printers would have found the quality of this process far from satisfactory, but engineers and shorthand reporters who wanted a quick turn round of legible text, regardless of style, may have found it acceptable in the short term." (15)

"After he left Clephane's project Mergenthaler became obsessed with the problem of inventing a successful typesetting system." (17)

Miss J. Julia Camp — fastest operator; “in the biography, Morgenthaler referred particularly to the operating skills of Miss J Julia camp who always obtained better results than other operators.” (21)

"Over 80 years before the second band machine, Herhan obtained French patent No 285 for composing lines of matrices but his idea, which was not developed commercially, was to make a stereotype directly from a page of character matrices assembled by hand. The novelty of Mergenthaler's invention was in the mechanism by which an operator assembled and justified lines of matrices from which lines of type were cast and which were automatically restored for the matrices to be used to set the next line." (21)

"October 1884, the Printers' Register reported, without naming the source: 'An American contemporary says a new type-setting and manufacturing machine is attracting much attention in Washington.' It mentioned that $50,000 had been spent so far, that Mr Rounds, the Government printer, had declared (possibly referring to Miss J. Julia Camp) that 'a girl with sense enough to run a type-writer can set up as much as ten men now can, and make her own type as she goes along, too,' and that it cast lines of type 'at the stroke of a finger.' These details could apply to the demonstration at the Bank Lane workshop." (23)

"Mergenthaler was a steady precise workman who tended to be cautious rather than rash but was sometimes reckless and intemperate. He claimed that having no printing background had been an asset because he was not bound by preconceived notions." (24)

First Linotype output is printed in the New York Tribune, “the only perceptible difference in appearance, being that the lines of the type were finer and sharper” (36) — December 1885

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“By this time the Remington typewriter had been on the market for over ten years and many typists were familiar with the QWERTY keyboard. Reid wrote to Mergenthaler on 29 December 1885, that Clephane had said that recent improvements would allow him to use the typewriter keyboard on the machine. If using the typewriter keyboard involved no mechanical difficulties and would not delay matters it would be a great advantage over the current keyboard. It would give them the benefit at the outset of a large body of operators who could be called upon in case of need. Mergenthaler replied by return of post that Clephane was mistaken. The improvements to the keyboard related to speed and reliability, and it was not convenient to apply the typewriter keyboard to the machine.” (37)

July 1886, first machine in New York Tribune and used to set a large book called The Tribune Book of Open Air Sports (40)

First article and illustration — Scientific American, 9 March 1889, nearly 3 years after Linotype came to Tribune (41)

Linotype used after the paper was put to bed to se The Tribune Book of Open-0Air Sports; took an hour to change from news to book setting (41)

Tribune Book of Open Air Sports offered for sale to Tribune readers by subscription in November 1886

“Mergenthaler invited Thompson, Reid's machinist, to discuss the arrangement of the keyboard and the matrix question. The original layout of the Blower keyboard is not known, but diagrams submitted with early Mergenthaler patents suggest that it may have been alphabetical. About 50 years later Charles Letsch recalled that when operators complained that some of the most used keys were too far apart, Mergenthaler tore out a two column story from the New York Sun and asked him to count the frequency of each character. He used this data to modify the keyboard to the standard 'etaoin/shrdlu' layout that remained largely unaltered on all later models. This made it simpler to operate the machine and, by putting the most frequently used characters in the longest tubes to the left of the magazine, ensured that they were among the first to be distributed. Every Blower machine was restricted to one size of type which could only be changed by replacing all 107 matrix tubes; machines were identified by type size, such as minion or nonpareil, see 'type sizes' in glossary.” (45)

Need to find the right metal — soft enough to take a good mould and hard enough to cast from without melting (48)

Problem of inperceptible variations in typeface from punches (48)

Machines for syndicate use — only Providence Journal was outside the syndicate (59)

Many machines in rooms would be hot and noisy — note about Mergenthaler making disparaging comments about “lady typists” (71)

Mergenthaler Printing Company not widely known outside the trade; 40-page booklet of 1887, but no company publicity; only some rumors in trade journals — secrecy because of syndicate (73)

19 May 1889, New York Tribune article on composing room costs, claiming Linotype was saving the paper thousands of dollars a year (77)

1890, Rogers Typograph challenges Linotype; exhibited at Pulitzer’s newspaper in September 1890, which became the sales office of the Typograph Company (89)

“The obvious potential customers for the Typograph were newspapers that were not supplied with Linotypes because they were in the same town as a syndicate member. It was reported that the Typograph in America had a keyboard like a Remington typewriter, but the British keyboard was not in QWERTY form.” (90)

Typograph won 6-day trial of type composing machines run by American Newspaper Publishers Association in November 1891 (91)

Justification and spacers — major issue (and patent concern)

Hairlines, lack of italics and proper fonts setback Linotype (116)

25 October 1898, Mergenthaler writes in diary “that he had finished the sketches and written the description of a machine with 256 characters, 64 keys and 4 channels for casting single words (logotypes)” — casting single words then set in a line (125)

Friedenwald Company, first book printer in the world to install a Linotype — printed a shorter version of Mergenthaler autobiography to distribute to friend (135)

British industry “largely unaware of the Linotype before it was demonstrated in the United Kingdom in the early summer of 1889” (151)

Linotype demonstrated to William Gladstone at 52 New Broad Street on 26 June 1889 — Gladstone set up a slug with his name and made a short speech (154)

Sun paper in England attacked; “‘The Linotype is to be in the composing room what it was fondly hoped the Moldacott [a new sewing machine] would prove in the nursery — a combination of amusement for the young and gratification for their elders.’” (Quoted in 155)

Woodcut published in Railway Press, 21 June 1889, p 12

British launch of Linotype Company “failed because both printers and investors had misgiving.s Experts were intrigued by the mechanism but doubted its durability, criticized the printing surface, and objected to paying over twice the development costs for the manufacturing rights. … British printers found American type faces unacceptable and the American concept of rental without the option to purchase was alien to British marketing practices.” (165)

First reactions to Linotype in Britain were mixed (169)

Southward, didn’t like it at first; 3 October 1890 addressed the Balloon Society of Great Britain and called it a type-composing machine of the past; praised Thorne typesetting machine (170)

British Printer, may-tune 1890 — image of Thorne composing machine with Edison phonograph attached

First “improved” Linotype imported to UK and erected at The Economic Printing and Publishing Company, demonstrated at general meeting on 27 February 1891 (175) — moved to Printers’ Exhibition at the Agricultural Hall, Islington, on 16 March 1891

First Linotype installed in Britain was at the Leeds Mercury in 1890 in most accounts “although it may have been the first English newspaper to use the machine” — but the actual first British installation was used to set Lawrence’s railway magazines, at Stilson Hutchins’s offices, 27 Southampton Buildings; setting these journals in 1889 (175-6)

“From 1878, when Clephane first suggested making a stereotypic mould by impressing characters into paper machine, every model was designed to produce lines of type. Before the introduction of direct casting it took at least two processes to produce a printing surface. The main advantage of the hot metal machine was that the line of type was produced by a single operator. This made it superior to all contemporary machines that set movable type.” (177)

Keystrokes set to pins to stop the band where required (178)

Not possible to set characters that were not on the band in first machine, and each band carried a full alphabet (179)

Individual matrix Blower Linotype — keyboard designed to put the most used matrices to the left of the magazine; 107 typewriter-like keys on the four row keyboard; keyboard completely manual (179-80)

“The original keyboard layout is unknown, but diagrams from early patent suggest that was probably alphabetical. Mergenthaler refused to adopt the typewriter ‘QWERTY’ arrangement because it would have been ineffective. When users complained that the keyboard layout was inconvenient he devised the ‘etaoin/shrdlu’ arrangement which put the most used letters in the leftmost tubes and therefor distributed them first. In 1889, the Scientific American stated that there were alternate keys for the most used letters and several compound characters (ligatures) on the keyboard.” (180)

cams turning round a vertical axis — “After journalists described this mechanism as the brain of the Linotype, some people actually believed that the machine could think.” (180)

Square Base Linotype — keyboard completely changed; ‘etaoin/shrdlu’ sequence retained by keyboard arranged in 6 rows of 15 keys grouped in 3 equal blocks of 30 characters — lower case on the left, numerals, special characters and punctuation in the middle, capitals on the right — and keyboard was power driven (not manual like before) (183)

Simplex Linotype — definitive model; came to be known as Model 1; sequence of operations similar to square Base

General lack of flexibility in machines; best for narrow newspaper setting (186)

Later added things like two-line letter printing for drop letters

Linotype “put constraints on type face design because the machine could not emulate all the features of manuscript” (190) — no vertical overlap — Linotype Company dismissed the problem by announcing the death of the very in September 1898

Before UK advertisements of Linotype, little known about the machine in the US (193)

William Blades thought it only fit for newspaper work (194)

Southward eventually changed his mind

Around 1901, Model 1 cost ~10x as much as a workman’s cottage (198)

Lowered demand for compositors, higher demand for other types of workers

Lintoype had big impact on typefoundser, putting some out of business and reducing income of others (200)

Impact on papers: “The Linotype encouraged existing newspapers to expand and provided the means to introduce new ones, particular in London’s Fleet Street which produced national rather than regional newspaper.” — enabled Alfred Harmsworth to launch the London Daily Mail in 1896 (201)

Mergenthaler’s method “involved the logical application of binary arithmetic, although he probably did not realize the mathematical significance. Each matrix carried a unique combination of up to seven teeth that identified its letter. If the presence of a tooth is denoted by 1 and the absence of a tooth by 0 it can be shown that there are 127 possible arrangements with at least 1 tooth. The number 127 was reserved for extraneous sorts because a matrix with af all set of teeth could not fall until it reached the end of the distribution bar which had no retaining teeth.” (206)