User:Shreevatsa/Typesetting

(Mainly a history of the invention of the linotype machine, but might get into other topics.)

Typesetting by hand

Type case and a composing stick

Around 1450, Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press. Typesetting remained more or less unchanged for the next four centuries. Compositors (typesetters) had to

1. pick type from a case/compartment and arrange them on a composing stick,
2. (justification) choose line breaks appropriately, and insert "quads" to space out words where necessary
3. (distribution) return each piece of type to its proper place in the case.

Good compositors worked at amazing speeds — typesetting races were held and the best ones could set upto 1000 ems of type an hour. Despite this, compositing was still time-consuming. It was the most expensive part of producing a newspaper, and as a consequence almost no daily newspaper had more than 8 pages in the 19th century.

Many people did try to build machines capable of typesetting. As they envisioned it, the machine would have fingers to pick out the right pieces of type, carry them to the composing stick, drop them into place, choose line breaking, and return the pieces back to their proper places in the case. Justification was hard. Some of them tried types with hollow spaces, so that they could be squeezed together when the end was reached. Others tried rubber. Most of these people failed; some were driven to insanity. Some of them, especially a man named Paige, even succeeded. He had overcome the problem of distribution by having "nicked" types which would fit into only the right grooves. All these machines, however, were impractical Rube Goldberg machines — extremely difficult to mass-produce, operate and maintain — and were quickly relegated to museums within years of production.

All that changed, however, with Ottmar Mergenthaler's invention of the linotype machine, and within a few years hand typesetting had nearly disappeared.

Typesetting with the linotype machine

The linotype machine did away with compositors; instead a person would be appointed to operate the machine. The operator simply had to type out the letters of each word, and for each letter a "matrix" would descend onto an assembling space similar to a composing stick. Between words he would hit a special key that would insert a space band. When he decided that the next word would not fit on the same line and chose to break the line there, he would move a lever that would automatically perform justification for that line. This line of matrices would then be carried to a mould where liquid typemetal would be forced against it and a "slug" would be cast, which would cool in a moment and be passed to a tray. And distribution was also handled automatically, with matrices being returned to a "distribution bar" at a rate of 270 per minute.

Ottmar Mergenthaler

Ottmar Mergenthaler (May 11, 1854 – October 28, 1899) was a German inventor, who has been called a second Gutenberg because of his invention of a machine that could easily and quickly set movable type. This machine revolutionized the art of printing. Prior to Mergenthaler's invention of the linotype in 1884, no newspaper in the world had more than eight pages.

Early life

Mergenthaler was born in Hachtel, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He was the third of five children. His father Johann George Mergenthaler was a school teacher from Hohenacker in Waiblingen. The family of his mother, Rosina Ackerman, also belonged to the teaching guild. At a young age, he demonstrated mechanical aptitude; in particular he repaired the village clock. At fourteen, he decided that he did not want to become a teacher, and after considering various alternatives (his desire was to make mathematical instruments, but he did not possess the college degree that profession required), he apprenticed to a watchmaker, Hahl, the brother of his stepmother, from 1868 to 1872. He then decided to emigrate to the United States. August Hahl, the son of Hahl, was a maker of electrical instruments in Washington, D.C., and Mergenthaler began to work for him, arriving in the US on 1872-10-26.

With August Hahl

Electrical instruments were new to him, but he learnt quickly and in two years he became he leading worker in the shop, acting as business manager when Hahl was absent. Besides manufacturing electrical clocks and bells, much of the experimental work for the recently established Signal Corps was carried out at the Hahl shop by Mergenthaler. In addition, Washington was the centre of invention in the United States at the time, and as the patent laws at the time required a model to accompany every patent application, Mergenthaler came in contact with many inventors as well. He would often notice possible improvements and suggest them.

Following the Panic of 1873 that set off the Long Depression, business suffered, and Hahl decided to move the shop to Baltimore, Maryland. It did not help.

First brush with typesetting

In August 1876, Charles T. Moore approached Hahl's shop. He had been set to work on a machine for typesetting by James O. Clephane, but the machine he had build did not work. He attributed its failure to defective workmanship, and wanted it reconstructed. His financial backers, however, were unwilling to advance any money unless a satisfactory machine was guaranteed. Mergenthaler examined the machine and perceived that its design was faulty, and after giving it a few days' thought, decided that he could rectify its defects and even simplify it greatly. He told Hahl that he was confident of this, and Hahl made a deal whereby they would receive $1600 if the machine succeeded, producing results indistinguishable from hand typesetting, and receive nothing if it failed.

The machine had a cylinder on which the characters were present. By hitting keys as the cylinder revolved, its characters were printed in lithographic ink on a strip of paper. The strip was then manually cut into lines and justified, and transferred to a lithographic stone for printing. Mergenthaler incorporated his improvements into a model and then a full-sized machine, which he finished by the summer of 1877. While the machine produced perfectly sharp impressions on the paper, the stone did not always absorb ink uniformly, and they were forced to give up.

At this point, Clephane saw that lithography would not work, and suggested using stereotypy instead. He had been involved in the early testing and promotion of the typewriter, and hit upon the idea of using a typewriter to produce impressions on a papier-mache strip, from which a stereotype would be produced.

Inventing the linotype

In 1878, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

He invented the linotype machine in 1886, a machine that allowed an operator to automatically set metal type, which revolutionized the printing industry. He died of tuberculosis in Baltimore in 1899.

An operational linotype is on display at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, in the museum's print shop. Baltimore’s vocational high school, Mergenthaler Vocational Technical Senior High School, which opened in 1953, is named after him, although is it commonly referred to simply as "MERVO." Mergenthaler Hall on the Homewood campus of the Johns Hopkins University was constructed in 1940-41 with money provided by Eugene and Mrs. Ottmar Mergenthaler, son and widow of Ottmar Mergenthaler.

External links

• Baltimore History Site
• Overview of Mergenthaler's life

References

This article incorporates material from Leading American Inventors, a book in the public domain.