linotype

Square base lintoype machine; has basic design as later machines (letter rack and store, casting pot, etc).

Manufactured by Linotype Limited

This epoch-making invention began quite outside the world of printing, with the desire of a Washington lawywe, James Clephane, to find a satisfactory way of reproducing his shorthand notes of court cases. He came in touch with an inventor who devised a method of casting a whole line of type in one piecd from a paper-mache mould, the machine being built by Otto Mergenthaler.

Eventially Mergenthaler replaced the paper-mache with a number of matrices, which could be stored in a magazine, where they were returned after used.

This machine with one worker was four times as quick as earlier machines which needed the cooperation of three skilled people. It was completed virtually in its present form by 1890, and its use spread rapidly to England and Europe. This 'Square-base' model was on the erlier machines made by Linotype Ltd. in Altringcham in 1895.