The Glasgow courier. [volume] (Glasgow, Mont.) 1913-current, 1915-06-25
INTERESTING STORY OF
THE LINOTYPE
What a Machine Has Accomplished
in World Advancement.

SafaSOn, ming VI CIldIUCd, nau a
library. The books were baked clay.
The imprints on them, beautiful and
minute, were made with bronze punch
es while the material was soft.
That was four thousand years ago.
King Saragon became forgotten. Chal-
dea became forgotten. Europe grew
great.
Columbus was born. 1t was three
thousand five hundred years after
King Saragon. Books still were being
written by hand.
Columbus was growing into a lad
when the first effective improvement
came. It was in 1854. Then Johann
Gutenberg ma'la the first book with
movable type.
Men had printed for ages. They
had even printed in %coiors, from wood
blocks and with other devices. The
greatness of Gutenberg's achievement
was not in printing, but in the sue
~cessful S of separate types. In that
moment the human spirit found means
of expression; and knowledge pos
sessed till then by the few, was given
to all.
Columbus found the New World.
Spain lost it, then France, then Eng
land. The young Republic flung it's
banners of states across the Appala-
chains. Printing still was almost as
laborious as in Gutenberg's day. The
printing presses did not accompany
the pioneer.
The Civil War came. It's news was
set by hand as Gutenberg had set his
first book. The compositor reached
into his case of type for each letter
separately and separately dropped
it into place to spell each word. To
set a page no larger than an ordinary
book the compositor's hand had to
move one-half mile.
It was 1886, four hundred and thir-
ty-two years after Gutenberg's first
type was set, before the printer was
emancipated from this painful, use
less labor. In that year there ap-
peared the first copy of a newspaper
whose type had been composed not
by hand, but by an instrument.
The newspaper was the New York
Tribune. The instrument was the
Linotype-Line O. type. (The name is
indicative of the fact that the machine
produces the type in a solid bar, the
length of each line.)
That was only thirty years ago. To-
day newspapers composed on the
Linotype greet the sun it it's flight
around the world. They are in Africa,
north and south. They are in Siberia,
India and China, Japan and the
Philippines, Hawaii. even the Ladrone
Islands in the Far Pacific, know the
Linotype. They tell the news in
Alaska. They produce it in Spanish
and Portuguese under the snow-hel-
meted Andes and a thousand miles up
the Amazon river.
1t is an achievement of our genera
ton, and typical of it. Thomas A.
Edison says that it is one of the Ten
Wonders of the World.
It is not a "typesetting" machine
1t has not a piece of type in it. 1t
makes its W type-a new letter
every time; and every time it forms
a sentence it does twenty-three separ.
ate and intricate things.
To tell how this complex, marvellous
instrument was devised, improved and
made perfect is to tell a story Of
courage rather than mere inventive
ingenuity.
The original device did not have
even the germ of the Linotype in it
It failed again and again. 1t sue
ceeded in nothing except in improv.
erishing all who had anything to dc
with it. But it planted in their brains
and spirits a dream.
They raised more money. They en-
gagged Ottmar Mergenthaler, then
working as a mechanic in a Baltimore
shop.
From that time on the story is the
story of improvement after improve
ment, that refused obstinately, for all
their wonderful ingenuity, to produce
a successful machine. More than one
great invention or discovery, beset
with such difficulties, has been aban.
doned in despair, to lie idle and for
gotten for years or even generations
till new men found new courage tc
take it up again. This invention
fortunately, had men behind it who
would not give up. They stayed
They heartened each other, and they
heartened the inventor, ever anC
again. Ever and again they re-flled
the over-emptying treasury.
Today, perfected to a degree that
Merpenthaler would not have con.