Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-09-26
AN INVENTION IN PRINTING.

Inventors have been very diligent in
searching out ways to lessen the laborious-
ness of the printers art, but not notably
successful. In the matter OF composition
there has been but little improvement.
The introduction of few logotypes, the
arrangement of ceases" holding the types
so as to lessen or shorten motions of the
hand, and some Improvements in the
boxes" to augment dexterity in picking
up the bits of metal, have marked about
the limits of progress thus far. OF course
we except the type-setting machine, which
is but partial success, and adapted, as yet,
only to very large offices and mainly to
certain classes of book work Recently.
however, an invention has come to the
front that, if its claims are well founded,
promises a good deal for the hard-worked
compositors. They have complained that
type founding in the past has not been
conducted in the labor-saving inter
est This claim goes to the extent of the
charge that type bodies are so cast as to
cause the printer unnecessary effort.
Without entering, however, into the
details of these complaints, and which to
the general reader would have but lin
tied interest, reference may be had to the
recent invention, that, if all claimed for it
is true, is in the interest of both printer
and publisher, since it lessons labor, aug
ments capacity and saves time. So, it is
claimed, that while the printer can set
more type and with less labor, he will
accomplish his task in a briefer time, and
this in turn will encourage the demand for
the typographers work.
The invention is that of self-spacing
type" When printer now sets out a line
of type, he must go back over it and with
a number of thick and thin bits of metal,
known as spaces, inserted between words,
Justify" the line and make it precisely as
long as the column is wide. In In doing this
he must, If he is good compositor, so dis
tribute the "spaces" among the words as
to make all the spaces as nearly equal as
is possible. This involves a mental pro-
cess that becomes superior in its results
only after long experience, and is known
among printers as "guess work" In an
ordinary FONT of type there are great
many widths of type-between one and
two hundred, we believe In the new style
of font" there are but eight sizes of char
acters and spaces. Thus, in the lower
case" or small letter assortment, it is
found that twenty-eight of the characters
can be made of the same size, and still pre-
serve the evenness and harmony of form
that is desirable. The new system pro-
ceeds with the construction of type on the
basis of 13 ems plea to line. A nonpariel
line Is ems plea long is considered as
made up of l52 parts or units. All other
sizes of type are based upon this standard,
and the units of their lines have COM
mon divisor with 152, and hence may be
set to the same measure. Thus while nom
pariel is given 152, minion has 136, bre-
vier 12s, bourgeois 100, long primer 1l2,
small plea 1O4 and plea 90. Every type
character, therefore, is made on body
exactly one or more of these units in
thickness. Thus the " az is four units
wide, the " e" three units, etc. Instead
of five thick and thin spaces and four or FIVE
kinds of quads7 (broad pieces of metal),