Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-04-07
Patent Office Wealth

| the last few years he has given of
revolutionary device liz the form of an
acoustic" cell which an1plifies normal
human speech and corrects reverber-
atoms in ecllo-ridden rooms. No less an
| achievement in his contribution to
telephony, the transmitter.
WHAT good is knowledge and philos-
ophy il it cannot be preserved?
Formerly the answer was written on
sheepskin laborious process by hand.
Gutenberg made movable" type, which
was wonder of his time.
1t appeared about 145o, and books
became common and even cheap for
those times. Then the news" books
and newspapers The Frankfurter
zeitung was the FIRST newspaper,
founded In 1915. Americas first news
paper was Publick Occurrences, started
in Boston In 1890.
Type casting and founding developed
slowly. Ben Franklin tried his hand
at inventing method of rapid duplica-
ton but failed. Type was cast by hand
until 1898, when David Bruce Of New
York patented type-casting machine
which did the work much faster
Thereafter, American inventors per-
ACOOCO d1 t1lC Improvements
that made printing the vital industry
Of today. Just recently, in 1888, Henry
Barth Of Cincinnati invented the rapid
type caster. producing 200 per minute.
Frederick Wicks invented a rotary type
caster. turning out $4,000 per hour.
Small type was not achieved until
die cutting was perfected. l.. B. Benton
in 1890 cut the IS words Of the Lords
Prayer on q piece of metal one-sixth
Of an inch square-too small to print.
Laboriously, thousands of typesetters
bent over type cases and built up words,
sentences, paragraphs and pages. Why.
they had to memorize $50 compart-
ments in each case. Machines. unfor-
every line had to be Justified" so 1t
would lock in the standard form.
Mechanical typesetters appeared In
| termittently, spasmodically. The piano
type was used in England in $40.
About 1874 Charles Kastenbein's ma
| chine was used to set the London Times.
But these were not ore-man ma
chimes. Really, two machines and three
men were needed to carry out the per-
| Torrance.
James w. Paige, a real Connecticut
Yankee, had begun working on a type
setting machine as early as 1878. He
| produced marvellous contraption. His
| faith was so boundless that he sank
| Eighteen thousand parts! Mark Twain,
| a printer by trade, saw bountiful pos
| sibilities In Paige's machine and lost
| good fortune by helping the inventor.
Alas! This same Paige entered Chi
| cago poorhouse in 1921. The mortality
Of invention.
The mechanical typesetter lurked
| around the corner until 1t was routed
out by Ottn1ar Morgenthaler. His first
apparatus looked like little church or
gan. because it had series of vertical
tubes, each containing matrices for the
| alphabet. In July, 1885. the New York
| Tribune used the first machine. White
| law Reid. the editor, called 1t the limo
| type. Tolbert Lanston, a Pension ONCE
clerk, contributed the monotype. Today
these two machines, the linotype and
| monotype, perform 80 per cent of the
| Nations printing. They cast brand-new
| type for each Job. So no printer need
fear that he will be out of a job when
his type grows old, as was once said
of Franklin.
Today we have typesetting by proxy.
A corps of linotype operators sitting in
Washington could set type for every
| newspaper in the United States simply
BY linking them to one telegraphic sys-
tenn.
THE automobile was steam buggy in
infancy. william Murdoch built
one-cylinder steam engine modelled
sis. He ran around Piccadilly Circus in
1874 and his majesty's subjects had a
panic.
But a Frenchmat1. Nicholas Cugnot,
preceded Murdoch by 20 years. While
serving as captain In the French army,
he sought some method of moving
heavy cannon. He succeeded in
mounting steam engine on a three
wheeled tractor. but the thing coll
lapsed upon being driven into stone
wall.
Steam was the exploited motive power
for many years. Steam road coaches
and steam railroad engines began to
flourish. Two years before the Civil
War an oil well was drilled at Titus
vile, Pa. and 1000 gallons Of petroleum
gushed forth daily. Chemists learned
how to crack" petroleum, but gasoline
was waste product in those days.
Nobody saw any earthly use for IL.
What now is precious flowed through
sewers and streams into the sea.
Amedee Bollee. q Frenchman, drove
kerosene burning steam carriage
from Paris to Vienna. He sent Paris
scurrying when he sped down the
boulevards at 10 miles an hour.
Meantime, Yankees senSed the COM
ing Of automotive transportation. The
Stanley brothers built and sold an In
genious model Of q steam automobile.
John Walker built factory at larry
town and made thousands Of steam
mobiles. AMI Barber founded tina
Loccnobile Co. In 1899 and built more
than $500 machines before the close