Patent GB-626984-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in apparatus for producing justified type matter
IPC: B41B15/24
Filed: 1946-12-12
Abstract: 626,984. Photographic type-composing apparatus. INTERTYPE, Ltd. Dec. 12, 1946, No. 36736. Convention date, July 9. [Class 98 (i)] Apparatus, of a similar type to that described in Specification 590,553, for producing a line of type matter of a desired justified length by distributing among individual elements representing the characters and word-spaces forming the line and representing by their respective edgewise thickness dimensions the variant set-wise widths of such characters and wordspaces, the amount by which a line of such elements composed edgewise is short of such length, the,word-space elements being expansible in thickness, includes a primary lineexpanding means operable to expand the wordspace elements and increase the length of the composed line in the space between limiting stops spaced apart according to a pre-selected measure short of the desired justified measure, means to maintain the line in its expanded condition, secondary line-expanding means including gauging means for gauging the amount of measure still remaining short of the justified measure, means operating under control of the gauging means for distributing this remaining short measure among the character and wordspace elements to attain the desired justified measure, and means for reproducing the characters and word-spaces to form the line of type matter. The sliding-wedge space-elements used differ from the normal type in that they are much shorter when fully extended, have a considerably less range of expansibility, and have a stationary sleeve member preferably having the same general form as the characterbearing elements. The spaces may be expanded either by a manually-operable driver bar at the line-composing station or a mechanicallyoperated driver bar may be provided at the line-measuring station to effect expansion just prior to line-measuring. In the former case space-elements with frictionally-held sliding wedges are used ; in the latter case the wedges may be frictionally-held or freely-slidable. As shown in Fig. 3, a friction space-element comprises a stationary sleeve-member 66 with an aligning notch K and with teeth 67 to support the element on a ribbed bar when passing from the feed-channel to the distributing devices, and a short wedge-member 68 having an offcentre slot 69 to form two legs, either spread apart in the plane of the wedge or slightly sprung apart in opposite directions, perpendicular to the plane of the wedge. In the magazine, the wedge 68 nests with slight clearance in the V-shaped notch of an adjacent space-element. At the top of the verticalfeed (photographing) channel, a downwardlydepending blade 102 engages the top of the wedge to push it out to the non-expanded position. As shown in Fig. 7, the line is assembled between the assembler slide finger 9 and the star-wheel 6, and the growth of the line is marked by the movement of the pointer 13 towards zero on the em-scale 11 and by the movement of the right-hand edge of the finger 9 along the em-scale 82, which, however, is arranged to read one-half em more than the reading on scale 11. The tight-line release lever 15 is one-half em thick. Thus, even if the line is set by use of the lever 15 to a reading of zero on the scale 11, there is still a lineshortage of one-half em due to the off-setting of scale 82, while if the lever 15 is not raised, there will be a line-shortage of at least one em. A space-band driver 72 raised by operation of lever 79 is provided to expand the line to the measure between finger 9 and star-wheel 6, the line elements being restrained from lifting by the plate 81. The expanded line is still at least one-half em short of the justified length, and due to the use of the friction space-elements retains its length while passing to the linemeasuring station, where the line shortage is measured and used to increase the successive movements of the photographic sensitive surface as each character or space-element is withdrawn from the line by a fraction of such line shortage proportional to the width of the character or space involved, as described in Specification 590,553. As shown in Fig. 16, no expansion of the space-elements is effected at the assembly station, but on arrival of the line at the measuring station, the first step of a two-step cam slightly tilts the rail 31 to move the wedge 32 upwards and urge the plunger 39 slightly to the left. A second cam then raises the driver bar 84 to engage the depending wedges 68a and expand the space-elements, the bar 84 rising until either the line is tight or until stopped by the top of the cross-cut 92. A second step in the two-step cam then tilts the rail 31 still more to move the wedge 32 further and cause the plunger 39 to move until the line is tight, and the line-shortage measured by the tilting of the rail 31 is used to increase successive movements of the photographicsensitive surface as referred to above.