Monotype - Letterpress Commons

8/9/2019 Monotype - Letterpress Commons

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Monotype

The Monotype SystemThe Monotype Compositi

Caster and Keyboard

The Type and Rule Caster

Other Monotype Machine

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MONOTYPE Edit

The Monotype, or more accurately, the Monotype System, was brought to

market in its most common current form in 1900. This followed a number of

years of experimentation that created working machines that were displayedbut not mass produced. While the competition between Linotype and

Monotype was fierce, the printing industry realized there were strengths and

weaknesses in both systems, and that the one chosen really depended on the

needs of the individual printing plant, not the inherent superiority of one

machine over the other.

The Monotype System

In many ways the key innovation in the Monotype System was not the

mechanical device, ingenious as it was. To allow the casting of fully justified lines of

type, Tolbert Lanston chose not to follow the path of Ottmar Merganthaler, who used

tapered spacebands to create word spacing. He instead devised a unit system that

assigned each character a value, from five to eighteen, that corresponded to its width. A

lower case i, or a period would be five units, an uppercase W would be eighteen.

This allowed the development of the calculating mechanism in the keyboard, which is

central to the sophistication of Monotype set matter.

The original Monotype system consisted of a Composition Caster and separate

keyboard, but over time, the Lanston Monotype Machine Corporation created a

number of machines based on similar principles that expanded the range of type sizes

that could be cast in-plant, as well as perfecting the free-standing Material Maker for

leading, rule and fancy borders. (See the Leading and Border Casting Machines article

for more information on the Material Maker.) These machines were all part of the

grand goal of non-distribution, promoted by Monotype forms that were entirely

cast in-house could be dumped and re-melted, including leading and borders, ratherthan laboriously sorted for re-use.

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TECHNIQUES EQUIPMENT FURTHER EDUCATION PRINT/TRIP GET INVOLVED
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L A N ST O N M O N O T Y P E C O M P AN Y

Monotype keyboard arrangement
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L A N ST O N M O N O T Y P E C O R P O RA T I O N

Monotype composition matrix case arrangement

Chat
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L A N ST O N M O N O T Y P E C O R P O RA T I O N

Monotype Composition Caster matrix case


Monotype cellular (composition) matrix

This tape was then fed into the caster, tail end first, allowing the caster to read the line

specific spacing requirements for that justified line. The remainder of the tape controls

the X-Y movements of a frame (mat case) holding a 1515 grid (later machines had a

1517 grid) of 1/5 inch square matrices. This moves the correct character matrix over

the mould for casting. The coordinates of the character in the case also informs the

machine of the correct set-width of the character, which is adjusted prior to the casting

stroke of the pump. The net result is fully justified individual pieces of type, ready to

print. (Though leading would, in most cases, be added when the form was made up.)

Supporters of the Linotype and the Monotype engaged in endless debates regarding the
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superiority of one system over the other, but in practice the Monotype system did excel

in several ways. Since the type is cast as traditional loose type, corrections and changes

are much easier than with slug-cast material. The sophistication of the spacing

capabilities of the Monotype made it the preferred device to set tabular matter such as

railroad schedules. Finally, the character sets available to the Monotype user make it

easier to do complex typesetting, such as math textbooks, or fine book work, though to

be fair to the Linotype, enormous amounts of these latter types of work were done byskilled Linotype operators.

The Type and Rule Caster


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Monotype Type and Rule Caster
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The Super Caster was developed by the British arm of the Monotype Corporation in

1928 and eventually replaced the Giant Caster and the Material Maker in the Monotype

product mix.

The Monotype Corporation purchased the Thompson Type Machine Company in 1929

and added that machine to its product line-up. It was produced until 1967. (See the

Thompson Type Caster article for more information on that machine.) Modifications to

the mould and mat holder converted the Thompson to use Lanston style display mats,

but the majority of the machine remained unchanged from the original design.

Resources

Hackleman, Charles W., Commercial Engraving and Printing.

Indianapolis: Commercial Engraving Publishing Company, 1924.

Hopkins, Richard L., Tolbert Lanston and the Monotype: The Origin of

Digital Typesetting. Tampa: The University of Tampa Press, 2012.

Huss, Richard E., The Development of Printers Mechanical Typesetting

Methods 1822-1925. Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia,

1973.

Lanston Monotype Machine Company, The Monotype System: A Book

for Owners and Operators of Monotypes. Philadelphia: Lanston

Monotype Machine Company, 1916.

Legros, Lucien Alphonse, and John Cameron Grant, Typographical

Printing-Surfaces: The Technology and Mechanism of their

Production. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1916.

Wallis, Lawrence W., The Monotype Chronicles. monotypeimaging.com,

ND.

Contributors
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h //l / /#Th M C i i C d K b d 10/10

Jeff Shay, Section editor

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