The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-10-31
TYPE-sETTING MACHINES.

The ingenuity of inventors has been con-
stantIy ON strain for many years to devise
a machine for setting type. Scores of
machines have been devised, each of them
possessing more or less merit and giving
promise of better development; but an I'M
qualified success has not yet been pro-
duced. 1t is an easy enough matter to set
the type in lines, but when it comes TO ad-
just it in pages or columns there is trouble.
It requires skilled compositor to do this
and what with his time and the time of the
one or more operators on the machine the
type-setting usually costs a good deal
more than if done by hand. The
inventors have striyen for three things
to lessen the cost, to do away with skilled
labor and to increase the speed. If at least
one of these objects is not achieved, me-
chanical type-setting will possess no advan-
tages over the old style, where the COM
positor picks up the little pieces Ct metal
slngly and adjusts each in his stick all the
time on the watch for STAT takes and
''pick- ups"
Three or four years ago machine was
brought out in the east and is now in use
in two or three newspaper Offices. 1t does
the work fairly well, and the cost of type
setting is not increased; but as the ma
chine costs between So, coo and 81, 600, it can
not come into general use and must
be confined to big and rich offices,
and there held only for use
in tie event of strike by
printers, as it requires little or no appren-
81 fo
was developed in New York last winter
and formidable company organized TO
manufacture and lease it on royalty, as
none was to be sold Before the machine
was perfected litigation between the i'll
ventor and the company set in, and the
invention has since been tied up in the
courts, only one machine, and that hand
made affair, having been manufactured.
Now comes the announcement from Mus
kegon, Mich, that q practical printer
named BEATS has produced type setting
device which promises to revolutionize the
! type-setting business. His invention con-
sists of two machines, and a
newspaper man who has carefully exam
| ined them says the first corresponds to a
typewriter, and IS operated by compos-
itor, who works from the copy. This, in
stead of being printed, as on typewriter,
is transferred to strip Of paper by per-
| forations made by striking the keys on the
| fnger-board, the particular letter or char
acter being determined by the distance of
the perforatlon from a base line. When
the copy has thus been transferred to the
strip OF paper, the latter is taken to the
second machine which is worked automat-
ically By electricity and as each line is
composed impresses it into matrix paper in
q way that makes perfect mould of the
line. The matriX paper moves along auto
matically as the lines Sre composed, until q
mould.is obtained for a column. 1t is then
ready for the electrotyping process. The
machine can be operated as rap
idly as typewriter, an average
operator going at a speed of fifty
words a minute, or doing about as
much as twenty compositors at the case,
The aligning and imposing machine can
handle the matter turned out from three
of the perforators.
The revolution which this invention, II
it shall do what 1t promises, will bring
about in the printing business is almost in