Type and Presses in America / A Brief Historical Sketch of the Development of Type Casting and Press Building in the United States

So far our story has been one of failure. There is, however, plenty of evidence that the time was ripe for success. The new country was growing rapidly. The Americans, then as now, were insatiable readers, especially of newspapers. The demand for type was constantly increasing. America was becoming more and more independent, more and more desirous of supplying her own wants, and more and more impatient of the inconvenience, expense, and delay involved in ordering such merchandise as type from England. If the persistency and courage of the elder Bain had been shared by his family unquestionably fortune would have been easily within their grasp, but they paid the penalty of their lack of good business qualities.

We come now to the story of the first permanently successful type foundry in America, a foundry which continued in vigorous existence until the erection of the Jersey City foundry of the American Type Founders Company, with which it was merged. There met one day in an ale house in Philadelphia two men whose lives were thenceforth to run together. I suspect that they were drawn together in the first place by the fact that they were both Scotchmen, and that in their first contact they showed each other the qualities which bound them together. They were Archibald Binney and James Ronaldson. Binney had learned and practiced the trade of type founding in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ronaldson was a biscuit-maker, out of business because of the burning of his establishment, but with some ready money in hand. It seemed to Binney that here was a heaven-sent opportunity to combine his knowledge with Ronaldson’s capital and enter under the most favorable circumstances the business of type founding. At this date there was no active foundry in America. The successful Bain concern had been closed out. The Sauer business, if active at all at this time, was only an adjunct to a printing office, while Mappa was finding it impossible to get started. They accordingly agreed to enter the business as equal partners, Binney putting in his tools, which were appraised at $888.88, while Ronaldson put in the same amount in cash.

With this they started business, the first entry in their account book being November 1, 1796. We learn that they rented a frame house on “Cedar Street atwixt ninth and tenth streets” at $17.33 a month. In 1800 the frame house was valued at $40.00 and cost $82.09½ “to shove it to its present location.” It must be remembered that at this time a half-cent coin was in circulation and that accounts were kept down to a quarter of a cent. At the time of the moving of the house the firm bought the property and built a new house on the same lot. The new house cost $2,500 and they paid $72 a year ground rent, apparently for additional land not included in the purchase. Entries in their first account book show that one or both members of the firm lived in the house. They started with a small assortment of type, but of the most important faces. These faces appear to have included brevier (eight-point), bourgeois (nine-point), long primer (ten-point), small pica (eleven-point), pica (twelve-point), and some two-line letters. They probably employed as matrix cutter one Fürst, a die maker in the Philadelphia mint, who afterward cut a medal bearing Binney’s face on the obverse and an appropriate design on the reverse.

At an early period, as we have seen, they took over Mappa and his outfit, and in 1799 they bought the tools of the Bain concern, paying $300 for them. In 1806 the excellent Franklin outfit was in the hands of a man by the name of Duane. Duane became interested in Binney & Ronaldson and offered to lend them any of the Franklin tools and matrices which they desired to use. Ronaldson was so impressed with the superiority of a part at least of the Franklin equipment that, fearing that Duane might change his mind and not being willing to take any chances, he himself borrowed a wheelbarrow and moved the material over to Cedar Street in the middle of a very hot summer day.

Binney & Ronaldson were enterprising, thrifty, and obliging. They did good work, took good care of their customers, and were immediately and permanently successful. They prospered greatly from the beginning and both of them made fortunes, as fortunes went in those days, within twenty years.

A study of their account books is extremely interesting. Among other things they give the names of 114 customers who found their way onto their books in the first five years of the business. It would hardly be worth while here to give the names of these customers, but it is interesting to see where they were. They were located as follows:

In 1811 Binney invented an improved type mold which increased the output of the caster fifty per cent and saved labor. He experimented with a machine for rubbing type, but in this was not successful.

In 1812 Binney & Ronaldson published a specimen book which is interesting as showing the development of their business. This book shows eleven faces larger than pica, fifteen kinds of body type, the smallest being pearl (5 point), two sizes of Anglo-Saxon, four sizes of Greek, four sizes of Hebrew, two sizes of German text, six sizes of black letter, three sizes of German, four sizes of Oriental letter, one size of script and 120 kinds of “flowers” or borders, the greatest number of these being on English (14-point) body. It is not unlikely that some if not all of the foreign letters may have come from the Franklin and Mappa stocks. We know that Franklin had Greek and Hebrew and that Mappa had German. Mappa’s Orientals did not appear. Probably even if Binney & Ronaldson still had the matrices it would not have been worth while to include them in their specimen book. The preface says that they were obliged, contrary to their inclinations, to imitate European taste. Evidently America had not yet become independent except politically. They gave two examples of erroneously formed faces in long primer and small pica, which were really condensed faces as we should now call them. They appear to have invented the dollar mark $ in 1797 and the abbreviation l̶b̶ for weight pounds in 1798.

In 1819 Mr. Binney retired with an ample competence. Mr. Ronaldson ran the business alone for a while, but in 1823 he was succeeded by his brother Richard, who conducted the business for ten years.

In 1833 the business was taken over by Lawrence Johnson and George E. Smith. Johnson was able, enterprising, and energetic, and introduced new vigor into the conduct of the concern. Contemporaneously with Jedediah Howe he introduced stereotyping into Philadelphia. Smith retired in 1845 and Johnson took in as partners Thomas MacKellar, John F. Smith, and Richard Smith, young men who had grown up in the business and were thoroughly interested in it and devoted to it. The firm continued to prosper greatly. Johnson died in 1860, but his partners took in Peter A. Jordan, changing the firm name to MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan. By this time the house had acquired a great reputation and a leading position among American type founders. Mr. Johnson died in 1884 and the next year the firm was still further increased by the addition of William B. MacKellar, G. Frederick Jordan and Carl F. Huch. The firm name was again changed to The MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Company. During all this time, however, the house was known among printers as the Johnson Type Foundry. For many years it had acquired great distinction for its diligence in electrotyping foreign designs as well as in originating new faces for ornamental types and borders. The fashion of the time for typographical decoration was largely developed by the publication of a house organ called the “Typographic Advertiser,” a quarterly journal, edited by Thomas MacKellar, which contained a fund of matter of interest to printers and a vast quantity of fanciful borders and other material now out of fashion.

In 1892, when the American Type Founders Company was organized by the consolidation of some twenty foundries, the MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Company entered the combination and became the Philadelphia branch.

Now that we have told the story of this great house in detail, we may go back to consider some more of the early firms. The success of Binney & Ronaldson was due to a combination of personal qualities and favorable conditions. The increase of printed matter was very great. Americans have always been a newspaper-loving people, and after the independence of the colonies the founding of new newspapers went on apace. It must not be forgotten that all printing in the early days of the last century was done with foundry type, hand set. The demand for type, therefore, was not only large, but was increasing. Up to the outbreak of the war of 1812 the few type foundries in America were regularly from three to four months behind their orders, so greatly did demand outrun production.

Under such circumstances Binney & Ronaldson could not have the field to themselves. In 1805 we find Samuel Sower & Company at work at Baltimore. Sower belonged to the family of Christopher Sauer, and used the material of the old firm with additions. He made some fonts of roman and italic and appears to have made a specialty of small type faces such as diamond (4½-point), brilliant (4-point), and excelsior (3-point).

In 1809 the second permanently successful foundry was started by Elihu White and a man by the name of Wing in Hartford, Connecticut. Here again we have a sample of characteristic Yankee courage, resource, and ingenuity, qualities which have enabled Americans at all times to accomplish the apparently impossible. Neither White nor Wing knew the business of type founding. They had certain ideas of their own and for the rest they apparently worked backward from the finished type. Their attempt was to cast several letters at once, to be afterwards separated, instead of casting the letters singly as was the general practice. Probably partly for that reason and partly because of ignorance, perhaps also because of their confidence in their ability to improve on accepted methods, they did not use the approved moulds. The attempt to cast letters by wholesale, as it were, was not successful and their entire progress was slow and unsatisfactory. After many failures, they sent a man to Philadelphia in order that he might learn the trade secrets. In those days type founding, like many other trades, was to a great extent a secret trade and one of the chief duties of the workman was to keep his employer’s secrets. Their attempt to steal the trade failed and they were thrown back upon their own resources again. Finally, however, their efforts were crowned with success and they began to turn out commercially successful type. In 1810 White separated from Wing and went to New York, where he and his brother Julius established a business under the firm name of E. & J. White. From this time on they were steadily and brilliantly successful.

In 1820 they opened branches in Buffalo and in Cincinnati to meet the requirements of an expanding trade. The business remained in the family until 1854, when it was bought out by three employees who continued it under the later well-known firm name of Farmer, Little & Co.

Another famous name in the annals of American type founding appears at about the same time as that of White. This was the name of Bruce. David Bruce was born in 1750, in Wick, Caithness, Scotland. When a mere boy Bruce was impressed into the British navy after the bad old custom of that day and served for a while in the Channel Fleet under the command of Lord Howe, afterwards well known, together with his brother General Howe, for their part in the Revolutionary War. After he left the navy Bruce was apprenticed to a printer. He came to New York in 1793 and obtained work on a newspaper. Shortly afterward he sent for his brother George and apprenticed him to a printer.

In 1806, after George had become a journeyman printer, the brothers were offered by publishers the printing of Lavoisier’s Chemistry. The fact that they had no plant, no equipment, and no money did not deter them from accepting the offer. Bruce managed somehow to secure a place and a press, and he borrowed a font of type. He introduced the standing press for dry pressing his sheets, and he turned out so good a piece of work that the publishers offered him all the printing that he could do. From this start he set up a successful business.

In 1811 Bruce, with his usual business acumen, recognized the importance of stereotyping and went to England to study it. As we have seen, however, it was not easy to learn other people’s trades in those days and Bruce met with great difficulty. He did, however, succeed in learning something from a Scotch workman, perhaps helped by a certain sense of kinship, which is common among the Scotch, and returned home to make experiments for himself. Times were not favorable for keeping business running, to say nothing of starting new business. The conditions preceding the war of 1812 were disastrous for business in the United States. American commerce was crushed between the upper and nether millstones of England and France, who had been at war for many years and were attempting to fight each other’s commerce and industries as well as each other’s soldiers. The condition was very similar to that which preceded the entrance of the United States into the great war of 1917, excepting that it continued much longer and, owing to the comparative weakness of the United States, was much more serious than the later difficulty. The war did not mend things industrially and its close in 1815 left the United States in a bad business condition for a good many years. Nevertheless, the courage and persistency of the Bruces enabled them to weather the storm, and they not only held their own but developed along new lines.

In 1814 and 1815 Bruce produced the first two sets of stereotype plates made in America. They were a common school testament in bourgeois type and a 12mo Bible in nonpareil. Bruce invented a machine for planing the backs of the plates to make them of uniform height. This was a great improvement and was so successful that it is said that of the entire two sets of plates only a single plate needed a slight overlay.

The development of the stereotyping process, however, brought to light difficulties with type. Foundry type was sold with the shoulder beveled off for ordinary printing and this was not favorable for stereotyping. The type founders would not make the high spaces and quads which were needed. As the best way of meeting these difficulties, Bruce, in 1815, went into company with the Starr brothers for the manufacture of type. It soon appeared that type founding and stereotyping promised to be more profitable than printing and Bruce sold out his printing establishment to devote himself to the other branches. Bruce and the Starrs were unable to agree and the partnership was soon dissolved, Bruce deciding to carry on the business alone in spite of the difficulties of every sort which surrounded it. In addition to the business conditions of the time, neither of the Bruces had any practical knowledge of type founding and the matrices of their only complete font were stolen, presumably by someone who was interested to secure their failure. It needed more than that, however, to discourage this persistent Scotchman. George Bruce set himself at work to learn punch cutting and mould making. His first efforts were crude, but he had an artistic temperament, a critical spirit, and a practical knowledge of printers’ needs. By these qualities and his own persistence he soon became very proficient.

By 1820 the Bruce foundry was the best in the country, doing better work than even Binney & Ronaldson at that time. In 1822 Bruce undertook to remedy the confusion in sizes which was then and for a good many years a source of difficulty, annoyance and expense to printers. He devised a scientifically correct system by which the size doubled with every seven sizes of the system. This was uniform throughout, so that wherever you touched the system, you found any given type twice as large as the seventh below and half as large as the seventh above. In spite of the fact of the simplicity and scientific correctness of the system it did not prove suited to commercial work and was not adopted.

In 1828 William M. Johnson had invented a type-casting machine in which a pump forced the liquid metal into the mould, giving the type a sharper face than was possible with hand casting. The machine was a step in the right direction, but was crude and imperfect. White took it up and tried to improve it, but he did not succeed in removing its fundamental defects. The types were not cast solid. Being hollow they were light and too weak to withstand the pressure of the presses. The first successful type-casting machine was made by David Bruce, Jr., in 1838, in development of the Johnson idea. George Bruce bought David Bruce’s patents and used the machine until 1845, when David Bruce made further improvements and produced the type of machine which is now in general use not only in this country but in Europe, where the method was soon adopted.

James Conner, a printer of New York, began business as a stereotyper in that city in the year 1827. His was the first stereotype edition of the New Testament. He also earned a good reputation as the publisher in the United States of the Bible in folio form. To the business of stereotyping he soon after added that of type founding, in which he was remarkably successful. With the aid of Edwin Starr, then in his employ, he made the electrotype matrices which enabled him largely to increase the stock of his foundry. After the death of James Conner, in 1861, the foundry was managed by his sons and grandsons, who finally merged the business in that of the American Type Founders Company.

Meantime the business of type founding spread from its original centers and new fields were occupied. By 1818 the Boston Type Foundry had been founded by Beddington & Ewer, and undertook to cast types, set types, and make stereotype plates. Samuel N. Dickinson was taught the trade of a printer in the State of New York, but afterward was employed as a compositor in the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry. In 1829 he began business as a master printer and in 1839 he began type founding after having designed for an Edinburgh foundry a series of Scotch-cut letters. The success of this face determined him to cast type for himself. In 1845 he had a full assortment of types and issued a specimen book. Dickinson was not a strong man, however, and died of consumption in 1848, at the age of forty-seven. The business was continued by Sewall Phelps and Michael Dalton. Both the Boston Type Foundry and the Dickinson Type Foundry had unusually successful careers and were later absorbed in the American Type Founders Company.

Type foundries were started in Albany, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and in New York, where there were at least seven foundries. This led to over-production, competition, and the failure of many weak concerns, a condition of things which was not entirely remedied until the organization of the American Type Founders Company in 1892.

In 1840 Augustus Ladew and George Charles opened at St. Louis the first foundry west of Cincinnati. This firm continued in successful operation until it was merged into the American Type Founders Company at its organization.

In 1806 Robert Lothian, of Scotland, tried and failed to establish a type foundry in New York. His son George B. Lothian, who had been taught the trade of stereotyping in the stereotype foundries of John Watts, of New York, and B. & J. Collins, of Philadelphia, had also received instruction from his father and from Elihu White in type founding, undertook to establish a type foundry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was an unsuccessful enterprise and Lothian returned to New York. In 1822 he undertook to make type for the old firm of Harper & Brothers. The face of Greek, which he cut for the Anthon Classical Series, was very much admired. He died in 1851, but the foundry continued in business under other hands until 1875.

The next year Louis Pelouze, the founder of a distinguished family of type founders, started a business in Philadelphia. This was another of the successes from both a commercial and artistic point of view, and was another of the constituents of the American Type Founders Company.

The Boston Type Foundry, which started as a stereotyping plant, passed through an experience as a co-operative concern under the direction of the employees who owned the stock. As is usually the case with such enterprises, it was unsuccessful until finally the majority of the stock got into the possession of Gorham Rogers, from which time it was operated as in the ordinary way and attained a high degree of success, doing very fine work. Mr. Conner, foreman in this foundry, who had started as a stereotyper in 1827, was sent to St. Louis to open a branch establishment which was very successful and later became famous as the Central Type Foundry. Conner invented an electrotype matrix to take the place of the matrices which had formerly been made by driving a steel punch into copper.

The Dickinson Type Foundry also did work of a very high grade. Perhaps the most fortunate thing that ever happened to it was the entrance into its service in 1868 of Mr. Joseph W. Phinney. Mr. Phinney was born in 1848, and after a varied experience as a printer in several places, went to Boston in 1868, later entering the employ of the old Dickinson Type Foundry, in the selling department. He soon distinguished himself in the service of the Dickinson Company and after a time became one of its partners. His skill, artistic taste, and ability soon made him one of the leaders in type design as well as one of the great figures in the type founding business. For many years Mr. Phinney has exercised an influence for good in type founding which it would be difficult to overestimate. On the establishment of the American Type Founders Company in 1892 the Dickinson concern became one of the constituent firms and Mr. Phinney’s leadership was recognized by his election to the position of Vice-President of the new concern. Mr. Phinney has remained in Boston as the head of the New England branch of the business and is one of the active and leading officers of the great type founding company.

Certain improvements in the manufacture of type which have brought it to its present perfection remain to be recorded. The most important of these were made by Barth, Marder, Benton, and Nicholas J. Werner. Henry Barth was born in Leipsic, Germany, in 1823, and learned the trade of mathematical instrument maker. Before 1840 the Bruce type caster was seen in Germany and (not being protected by German patents) was imitated by German type founders. Barth was engaged by Brockhaus, one of the more important German printers, who maintained his own bindery and type foundry and now added a machine shop primarily for the purpose of building Bruce machines. Barth spent several years in the employ of Brockhaus making type foundry tools and had two years’ service in the German navy. He came to America in 1849 and at first practiced his trade as a maker of mathematical instruments, but before long connected himself with the Cincinnati Type Foundry. Here he invented a machine to cast type by direct steam pressure without the pump. The machine was successful, but for various reasons did not come into general use. He then built a 14 × 18 job press, long well known as the Wells jobber. During his service with the Cincinnati Type Foundry the hand-casting machines were entirely replaced by steam machines, and in 1853 he invented the kerning machine. About the same time the first shaved leads were made under Barth’s direction. At first the shaving was done on a hand machine, but later he devised a steam shaving machine. During the course of a long service to the industry Barth was the author of many important inventions and improvements in the details of type founding. He died in 1907.

To John Marder we owe the development of the American point system of type bodies. The Marder system was not immediately adopted, but as developed by later inventions its superiority was so great that in spite of the trouble and expense involved in the standardization of type it finally became universal.

L. B. Benton introduced the use of accurate unit width of type. Previously the width of the letters had varied with each character. This resulted in a multiplicity of widths of type. Benton’s theory was that quicker typesetting and more uniform spacing could be obtained by having the types standardized on a minimum number of widths and securing the proper space between characters by modifying the shapes of certain letters to conform to these widths. Benton’s type was popularly called “self-spacing” although the name was misapplied. Another disadvantage then existing was that similar style type faces from different foundries did not line, and even the height-to-paper of types varied. Type sizes which were supposedly the same, in reality varied considerably in different foundries. The confusion and difficulty for the printer arising out of this lack of standards may easily be imagined. Each foundry had its own width and size of type, and in many cases its size varied by a considerable fraction of a point from that of other foundries. Very probably this condition was deliberately maintained by some foundries for the purpose of holding the entire trade of their customers, the idea being that if the types coming from different foundries did not go together well the customer would naturally be led to buy all of his type in the same place. The improvement of these conditions was brought about by the introduction of the point system of bodies, Benton’s unit width, and the perfection of the lining and unit set systems now in use.

Some important foundries held out against these improvements for years, but the demands of their customers, who perceived the great advantages of the standardized type, finally compelled adhesion to the new system. One important result of these changes was the invention of the punch-cutting or engraving machine. The adoption of the improved system required the production of a vast number of new punches which had formerly been cut by hand. It was impossible to find enough skilled workmen to meet this demand and the engraving machine now used for making punches was accordingly devised by Benton.

The field for the artistic development of type is inexhaustible, but it is difficult to imagine how type, as a mechanical product, can be improved beyond its present condition. The completeness and perfection of the system, the excellence of the machinery, and the skill in processes which have been developed make the product apparently perfect.