Digital Extra: The Journal's 175th Anniversary

07.21.2004

1889. Linotype speeds process of printing

Not much had changed in the craft of setting printed type in some 400 years, before the invention of the typesetting machine. For The Journal's first six decades, printers had set type by hand, assembling individual letters into columns.

The Journal in 1889 invested in a new technology that promised to speed up the process.

It was the Mergenthaler Linotype Machine, which allowed a printer to create a line of type by punching a keyboard.

"The machine in its present compact form is the result of many years of patient and most intelligent study and labor," the paper reported in an article on the new machines, May 6, 1889. ". . . The machine may be said to be the product of Mr. Ottmar Mergenthaler of Baltimore, the inventor whose name it bears."

The long article described the mechanics of the machine in intricate detail:

"This has as its basis a series of small disconnected matrices of brass, each containing a female letter or character -- that is, the mold or such an impression as the face of the type would make if pressed into fine molding sand -- in one edge. The assembly of these matrices is controlled by the keyboard, somewhat similar to that of a typewriter. The operation of the keys and the delivery of the completed line of matrices to the casting mechanism is all that manual labor is called upon to perform."

Journal files

The Linotype Machine, introduced at The Journal in 1889, allowed its operator to set type for the newspaper by striking a keyboard.

The Journal Co. bought 10 of the machines to typeset The Journal and The Evening Bulletin.

"The Linotypes will be given a thorough and exhaustive trial, amid all the pressure of instant service involved in the publication of two newspapers a day," the paper wrote. "Some estimate of its work may be made from the fact that this article as well as some other parts of this edition of the Journal, is set upon the new machine."