It took until 1894 for the competitive failure of the Compositor to become complete. After that, Paige died penniless in a poorhouse and Mark Twain went bankrupt. The last surviving Compositor is housed in the Mark Twain Memorial in Hartford, Connecticut. It's a beautiful machine, but it reminds us that good designs have to do more than carry out a function. They have to be robust and uncomplicated.
Good designs find that solid simplicity which is at the root of anything worthwhile.
I found that a comparison of the 1897 and 1970 Encyclopaedia Britannicas was instructive here. The 1897 Britannica Supplement doesn't yet mention Mergenthaler. The 1970 Britannica account is dominated by Mergenthaler's Linotype and its subsequent evolution. Paige is not mentioned in either account. This is a reworked version of Episode 50 .