The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-06-07
NEW MACHINE
 FOR SETTING
 TYPE SHOWN
Members of Board of Trade Witness Wonderful Mechan-
 ism in Practical Operation
General Manager Hammond De. scribes Process and Type is Set to Illustrate What
 He Says


 He Says
 The Bellows Compassion, new typesetting machine, made an impress sion on men familiar with mechanism | of this class. The machine was ex- hibited before large meeting of the Board of Trade. last night. It was succinctly described by General Man agerd G. l.. Hammond, and operated 1 in practical typesetting by an expert l of the Electrical Compassion Com pany.
 The word electrical" in the title of
 the company is misnomer. The
 machine is entirely mechanical in it's operation.
 l The Bellows Compassion is a slug 1 machine, but the spacing principles are entirely different than. those used l by the Merganthaler machine, which has hitherto had a monopoly of the l market for slug casting type ma l chines
 Mechanically the machine seems to be pretty nearly perfection. l 1t. was described by General Man ager Hammond, in a lecture which was attentively listened to- as fol- lows:
 MIR. PRESIDENT, MEMBERS OF THE BRIDGEPORT BOARD OF TRADE AND GENTLEMEN:-
 I want to have it clearly understood at | the beginning that your worthy President | is entirely responsible for this feeble att tempt to treat with a subject that is so broad, and fully realize my inability to l do small portion of it justice. Before | hand it is a common thing for one in my position to say that he is not speaker, etc, and pitch right in and make a splendid showing. I can't say that this is unexpected. I know that you will shortly realize that am out of my ele- ment in addressing this gathering, and I believe fully appreciate my position. l am only doing this to partially repay your able leader for the thousand and one things that he has done for our company. He has inspired us with the Made in Bridgeport" slogan until we are proud that we are here. Personally, I have such a bad case of it that have even bought an automobile, just because it was Made in Bridgeport" and the other night re- quested my wife to insist on getting food that was Made in Bridgeport"
 do not believe that many of you can realize what great work your President
 
 had an experience like the one we are go- any idea of the immense amount of de tail he so patiently wades through, or how attentive he is to the newcomer and how much this newcomer relies on him. He is sort of an unabridged business direc- tory. He can tell you where to get a tack hammer or a lawyer, a pound of putty or banker, and fifteen minutes after he has imparted this useful infor- nation he will call up and want to know if there is anything else he can do for you. You have no idea what help he is to stranger. After month or so he has you so thoroughly in his power that he makes a suggestion that you help out his work little by saying few words about your business at the next Board of Trade meeting. Perhaps you do not take kindly to this suggestion. Then comes another period of solicitous attention. By this time you are helpless, and then he says with some emphasis that you are down for an hours talk at the first June meet ing. I am trying to make this talk, but want to assure you that it will not take an hour.
 Our business is building typesetting machinery, and In order to get at the be- ginning of its history we have to go back about two thousand years, to the alphabets of the Phenicians, Egyptians and Greeks, which the Romans amalgamated into one that is to all practical purposes our pres ent alphabet. Some notifications and an addition or two have been made, but it is safe to say that our present alphabet has been in constant use for twenty centu- ries. Until the discovery of typography, or printing from types, which was made by John Gutenberg in 1450, all our rec ords were either written on parchment, engraved in metal, cut in stone, or made in some plastic substance that would soon harden. There were no standards limit ing the size or shape of the characters made by the man who did this work, with the result that for over 14OO years each individual who had mastered the use of the alphabet took many liberties with the design. Some added so many flour ishes the letters were hardly recogniz- able, with the result that so many differ ent styles were made that there have been very few, if any, entirely distinctive fonts gotten out for several hundred years.
 Typesetting machines are nearly en- tirely an American product. The first machine to be patented was invented by an American, and the best machines used all over the world are American 1nven- tions. Several European inventors have gotten out machines, but so far none have been as satisfactory as ours. It is not out of place to mention the poor quality of printing to which we have grown so accustomed that we scarcely no- | tice it.
 If there were legal standard for the quality of printing there would be fewer people wearing glasses and fewer people suffering with headaches. Extreme care should be taken with children's reading | matter. See that the type is large and i plain in their books, and do not let them | read too much in the average newspaper. Our company's title is a misno omer, as 1 far as this machine is concerned. The only electricity used is for a quarter horse power motor, which drives the en- tire mechanism, and for the lights. The machine can be driven from any con- | venient source of power and any kind of lights used. The inventor, B. F. Bellows, | originally had the machine electrically controlled, hence the name Electric Con- pOsitor Company.
 In explaining our machine I will try