For many years it was thought impossible to find a short cut from
author's manuscript to printing press--that is, to substitute a machine
for the skilled hands that set the type from which a book or magazine is
printed. Inventors have worked at this problem, and a number have solved
it in various ways. To one who has seen the slow work of hand
typesetting as the compositor builds up a long column of metal piece by
piece, letter by letter, picking up each character from its allotted
space in the case and placing it in its proper order and position, and
then realises that much of the printed matter he sees is so produced,
the wonder is how the enormous amount of it is ever accomplished.
In a page of this size there are more than a thousand separate pieces of
type, which, if set by hand, would have to be taken one by one and
placed in the compositor's "stick"; then when the line is nearly set it
would have to be spaced out, or "justified," to fill out the line
exactly. Then when the compositor's "stick" is full, or two and a half
inches have been set, the type has to be taken out and placed in a long
channel, or "galley." Each of these three operations requires
considerable time and close application, and with each change there is
the possibility of error. It is a long, expensive process.
A perfect typesetting machine should take the place of the hand
compositor, setting the type letter by letter automatically in proper
order at a maximum speed and with a minimum chance of error.
These three steps of hand composition, slow, expensive, open to many
chances of mistake, have been covered at one stride at five times the
speed, at one-third the cost, and much more accurately by a machine
invented by Mr. Tolbert Lanston.
The operator of the Lanston machine sits at a keyboard, much like a
typewriter in appearance, containing every character in common use (225
in all), and at a speed limited only by his dexterity he plays on the
keys exactly as a typewriter works his machine. This is the sum total of
human effort expended. The machine does all the rest of the work;
makes the calculations and delivers the product in clean, shining new
type, each piece perfect, each in its place, each line of exactly the
right length, and each space between the words mathematically
equal--absolutely "justified." It is practically hand composition with
the human possibility of error, of weariness, of inattention, of
ignorance, eliminated, and all accomplished with a celerity that is
astonishing.
[Illustration: THE LANSTON TYPE-SETTER KEYBOARD
As each key is pressed a corresponding perforation is made in the roll
of paper shown at the top of the machine. Each perforation stands for a
character or a space.]
This machine is a type-casting machine as well as a typesetter. It casts
the type (individual characters) it sets, perfect in face and body,
capable of being used in hand composition or put to press directly from
the machine and printed from.
As each piece of type is separate, alterations are easily made. The type
for correction, which the machine itself casts for the purpose--a lot of
a's, b's, etc.--is simply substituted for the words misspelled or
incorrectly used, as in hand composition.
The Lanston machine is composed of two parts, the keyboard and the
casting-setting machine. The keyboard part may be placed wherever
convenient, away from noise or anything that is likely to distract or
interrupt the operator, and the perforated roll of paper produced by it
(which governs the setting machine) may be taken away as fast as it is
finished. In the setting-casting machine is located the brains. The
five-inch roll of paper, perforated by the keyboard machine (a hole for
every letter), gives the signal by means of compressed air to the
mechanism that puts the matrix (or type mould) in position and casts the
type letter by letter, each character following the proper sequence as
marked by the perforations of the paper ribbon. By means of an indicator
scale on the keyboard the operator can tell how many spaces there are
between the words of the line and the remaining space to be filled out
to make the line the proper width. This information is marked by
perforations on the paper ribbon by the pressure of two keys, and when
the ribbon is transferred to the casting machine these space
perforations so govern the casting that the line of type delivered at
the "galley" complete shall be of exactly the proper length, and the
spaces between the words be equal to the infinitesimal fraction of an
inch.
The casting machine is an ingenious mechanism of many complicated parts.
In a word, the melted metal (a composition of zinc and lead) is forced
into a mold of the letter to be cast. Two hundred and twenty-five of
these moulds are collected in a steel frame about three inches square,
and cool water is kept circulating about them, so that almost
immediately after the molten metal is injected into the lines and dots
of the letter cut in the mould it hardens and drops into its slot, a
perfect piece of type.
All this is accomplished at a rate of four or five thousand "ems" per
hour of the size of type used on this page. The letter M is the unit of
measurement when the amount of any piece of composition is to be
estimated, and is written "em."
If this page were set by hand (taking a compositor of more than average
speed as a basis for figuring), at least one hour of steady work would
be required, but this page set by the Lanston machine (the operator
being of the same grade as the hand compositor) would require hardly
more than fifteen minutes from the time the manuscript was put into the
operator's hands to the delivery complete of the newly cast type in
galleys ready to be made up into pages, if the process were carried on
continuously.
This marvellous machine is capable of setting almost any size of type,
from the minute "agate" to and including "pica," a letter more than
one-eighth of an inch high, and a line of almost any desired width, the
change from one size to any other requiring but a few minutes. The
Lanston machine sets up tables of figures, poetry, and all those
difficult pieces of composition that so try the patience of the hand
compositor.
It is called the monotype because it casts and sets up the type piece by
piece.
Another machine, invented by Mergenthaler, practically sets up the
moulds, by a sort of typewriter arrangement, for a line at a time, and
then a casting is taken of a whole line at once. This machine is used
much in newspaper offices, where the cleverness of the compositor has to
be depended upon and there is little or no time for corrections. Several
other machines set the regular type that is made in type foundries, the
type being placed in long channels, all of the same sort, in the same
grooves, and slipped or set in its proper place by the machine operated
by a man at the keyboard. These machines require a separate mechanism
that distributes each type in its proper place after use, or else a
separate compositor must be employed to do this by hand. The machines
that set foundry type, moreover, require a great stock of it, just as
many hundred pounds of expensive type are needed for hand composition.
[Illustration: WHERE THE "BRAINS" ARE LOCATED
The perforations in the paper ribbon (shown in the upper left-hand part
of the picture) govern the action of the machine so that the proper
characters are cast in the proper order, and also the spaces between the
words.]
Though a machine has been invented that will put an author's words into
type, no mechanism has yet been invented that will do away with type
altogether. It is one of the problems still to be solved.