New Britain herald., 1918-01-03
THE FIRST LINOTYPE.
TypescttinS Invention Which RQolu. tionized Art of Printing Now on
 Exhibition in Washington.

The first machine from which lino- type bars and slugs were cast was de- posted during the last year in the division of graphic arts of the United States National Museum and is locat- ed in the Smithsonian building at Washington. This particular idea, the invention of Mergenthaler revolu- tionized printing: it was the first ma- chine to cast a complete line of type ready to print from. Previous to the adoption of the improved machine, now used so extensively many men were needed in the composing rooms, for on a modern example of this re- markable machine a competent oper- ator can set four times as much copy as by hand. Composition and distri-
 button by hand, are both tedious and expensive, thus the new machine saved the printers both time and money.
 Every big town daily newspaper in the country employs from fifteen to thirty five of these machines. and every daily uses one or two so that there must be about 24,0OO used in the daily newspaper offices in the United States and Canada alone. It was estimated in 1898 that there were no more than 5000 machines in ex- istence- This shows the present in- creased number used in the daily newspaper offices, but it does not show the whole demand. If the 24,- 86S publication houses listed in the current newspaper annual for the United States and Canada, each uses no more than five machines the total would be more than 120, ,00O, twenty years ago.
 There are three machines exhibited in the Smithsonian halls, which arc closely related to the development of this contribution to the art of print ing. Two of them are early models with indented strips of papier mache (matrices) from which stereotype casts were made. Some of these earlier machines consisted of cylin- der which held the type faces and the mechanism to bring it into position to indent the paper, all of which was controlled by the pressing of key. This style, called a rotary impression machine was built mainly by the late Ottmar Mergentha1er in 1877-7S un- der the direction of J. O. Clephane, who later organized the National Ty- pographic company. The second, called a stereotyper, worked well, but the casting of the slugs was found to be unsatisfactory, and MT. Mergen- thaler undertook the invention of one machine to do all the work
 He started work with L. G. Hine early in 1883, making a small experi- mental machine, which printed only twelve letters at time, but demon strated the fact that a full-sized ma chine built on this principle would be an enormous step In advance. This was accomplished when the large machine was built-the third of the series exhibited in the Smithsonian was the first machine from which linotype bars, or slugs were cast. On the printing face the characters formed a complete and solid line of type, similar to a line of individual type soldered together, and they were ready for use; a number of lines making up column or page just like the individual lines of this article
 The matrices Or dies for the diff chine, were on long tapered bars, ar ranged side by side vertically, each a complete alphabet, other and spaces. The operation of the keys in the keyboard set a number of stops, one for each letter