| Show UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION Blower was placed in experimental use at the New York Tribune It gained its nickname becauseblast of air was required to put the mats into casting alignment It gained its official name there too when Whitelaw Reid the publisher streamlined line-of-type into Linotype Three years would pass before Mergenthaler rebuilt the first version into the Simplex which by 1892 had been sold tothousand printing customers and was being ordered daily by others It was followed by the Linograph the Unitype and other Mergenthaler models including the Simplex and the Junior Linotype known in the trade as the wire baby Together they revolutionized typesetting and in combination with the competing Intertype remained the standard of the industry for more thanhalf-century before the advent of cold type Intertype came upon the scene in 1913 when patent pro tection expired for Mergenthaler Linotypes The two cornered the market in typesetting and were stout competitors until hot lead become virtuallything of the past If typesetting was drudgery transferring the type to paper was little better Early presses had great similarity to screwtype grape presses and muscular men were needed to handle the lever which cranked the screw bringing type and paper together Producing more thanhundred copies an hour requiredseasoned team of two one inking the type and placingdampened sheet of paper atop it the other levering the press against the paper Moistening the paper of course kept it from slipping which would result inblurred copy Though they offered minor improvements neither the English Common Press nor American variations of it appreciably improved the cumbersome printing process well into the next century The two presses which were similar to the English version were built by Christopher Sower in Pennsylvania and Isaac Doolittle in Connecticut Adapting compound levers did do away with the screw 214 Digital image 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah Al rights reserved |
