With the great expansion of printing in the early part of the nineteenth century, and with the invention of greatly improved presses, there appeared a natural impatience with the slow process of hand composition. It seemed a strange comment on human inventiveness that while new machines had been found for doing so many kinds of man’s work, while the simple screw press of Gutenberg had developed into the steam-driven platen and cylinder, and while so many improvements had been made in the manufacture of type, the setting of type was exactly where it was in 1450. More than 350 years had introduced practically no changes in the primary process of arranging type into words and sentences. What could be done to apply human ingenuity to this process?

This question was asked by inventors all over the world. Naturally the first line of approach to the answer was from the direction of a machine which should mechanically take up the types and place them in the stick, in other words, a mechanical composer or typesetting machine. Unsuccessful attempts in this line were made as early as 1820 or 1822. The experimenters were not deterred by failures and commercially successful typesetting machines were finally invented, among which may be named the Rogers, the Thorne, and the Simplex. The mechanical typesetter was successful for certain kinds of work and went a long way toward meeting the general need.

It would probably have been developed to the point of meeting it far more fully had it not been for the epoch-making invention of the type caster. The first successful type composing and casting machine to be put on the market was invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. Mr. Mergenthaler was born in Germany in 1854, and there learned the trade of an electrical instrument maker. In 1872, when he was eighteen years old, he came in sight of the period when the law would call him into military service. The war of 1870 with France was a very fresh memory. The political stability of Europe seemed then much less assured than it did at a later date. Young Mergenthaler had no desire to expose himself to the danger of being called upon to participate in another great war. Therefore, like many other young Europeans, he came to America to avoid military service.

Arrived in this country, he worked for some time at his trade. The turning point in his career came in 1876 when he was engaged as an expert mechanic to work on the development of a typewriter transfer machine in which a group of people were interested. His work on this machine, although long continued, was not successful, but his study and experimentation led him to conceive the idea of a type-casting machine which should be controlled from a keyboard similar to that of a typewriter, but larger on account of the greater number of characters necessary. The first model was produced in 1884. The machine was far from perfect, but was sufficiently developed to make it clear that he was on the track of a revolutionary invention. Two years later, in 1886, Mergenthaler produced his first successful machine. This was put into the composing room of the New York Tribune. Whitelaw Reid, the distinguished editor of the Tribune, afterward American ambassador to Great Britain, and other wealthy gentlemen became interested in Mergenthaler’s work and formed a syndicate, making a contract with the inventor whereby he was hired to work for them with a share in the profits of the business. The machine was named by Mr. Reid himself the linotype because it cast a “line o’ type.” The great success of the machine and the enormous growth of the business of manufacturing it are too familiar to need description, while the consequences of the invention in making possible an enormous increase in the output of printed matter can hardly be estimated.^[1]

Mr. Mergenthaler severed his active connection with the syndicate in 1888, although he continued interested in it and made from time to time such minor improvements in the machine as suggested themselves to him. He died in 1899 at the early age of forty-five.

While Mergenthaler was at work Tolbert Lanston was experimenting along the lines of a different machine. His aim was not the production of a machine which should cast type, by lines, but of a machine which should cast type and spaces separately and at the same time arrange them in galleys ready for taking proof. Obviously, the line slug is of use only for the special purpose for which it was cast, while the separate types cast by the monotype can be distributed just as if they were foundry types and can also be used for hand composition. The type thus produced is not quite as perfect as foundry type, but is substantially as useful for many purposes.

Each machine has some advantages of its own and their use is dictated by the result which it is desired to produce. The Lanston machine appeared in 1892. These two machines are representative of the types of type-casting machines in the market. Other successful machines of the same general types have been invented and are in extensive use.