Hot metal – Handcrafting becomes industrial

Ottmar Mergenthaler, born at May 11th, 1854, has been the inventor of the first working typesetting machine, an innovation that has been tried to build successlessly by a 100 inventors before. 13 years old, he brought the clock of the church of his home town into function again. After his learning years he migrated to Baltimore/USA. There he built models of patent ideas of inventors.

The outline of a machine useful for typesetting and invented by Charles T. Moore, gave him the inspiration to do some things better, e.g. using matrices made of brass. The idea he got while thinking of the form of a christmas biscuit, what he cut out of wood when he was a child.

At July 3rd, 1886, he presented his machine to the editor of the New York Tribune, Whitelaw Reid. Spontaneously that man said: “Ottmar, you’ve done it again! A line o’ type!” So the name was born for an invention that would revolutionize the graphic handcraftship at that time, what was still working with Gutenbergs technology.

Nobody else as Thomas A. Edison, the inventor of the electric bulb, said about the Linotype to be the “eight world wonder”.

The machine had got a special keyboard, the so-called “klaviatur”. Pushing one of the keys forced a matrice to come out of its position, falling down into the elevator. When the line was going to be complete, the typesetter had to choose whether going into a new line or not. The letter spaces have been widenend to the full line width using spatiums able to be expanded. This spatiums have been pushed from the under side and spreadened til the width of the line had been reached.

The full line has been moved in front of a mouth what was going to press a liquid alloy out of lead, tin and antimona towards the line out of brass.

After that, the line has been cooling down and fall out of the machine at the front to the left. The matrices not in use anymore, have been lifted up by a metallic arm and fall down into their specific position again. So the mostly used letters have been in a closed circuit, while special characters had to be added by hand.

In the ongoing progress of developing the machine, there have been built types using up to four magazines for different typefaces, allowing for example to combine the regular with the italic and bolder versions. In the beginning, typesetting at the linotypes has been a handy process, while lateron was enhanced more and more by mechanical helps, such as pressured air, increasing productivity amazingly. To the end of the usage of this invention – Linotypes have been used til into the Eighties – they have been controlled by punched tape. The text has been set endless, while the Linos were working as robots.

Another lead typesetting machine, the Monotype, has a totally different principle of construction und set mono types inszead of lines. The monotype was used for hand typesetting too. By now, the german Wikipedia page is not available in english language – but you can look for an image.

And here – in english language – you may find a very detailed movie about the technology of the Linotype (Google Video): Part 1 and Part 2.

From top to bottom:

a) Linotype

b) Head

c) “Klaviatur”

d) “Elevator”

e) Farewell

f) Monotype

top: “Taster”,

bottom: “Gießmaschine”