Electrical Type-Setting.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5025, 5 June 1889, Page 3

Electrical Type-Setting.

Two Melbourne residents, one a journalist, the other a merchant—one the inventor, tbo other the financial friend, probably—have applied to patent in New Zealand an invention for an improvement in the art of typographic printing, whereby the setting or composing of type is avoided. By and by no doubt our books and our newspapers will bo vastly cheapened by reduction of the labour required to produce them. It is stated that tbo New York Tribune is r:o longer “ set up." 'ihe occupation of tbo compositor in the Tribune office is not, like Othello’s, gone, but it has been profoundly altered. Mr Samuel Story, M.P., describes in. the Newcastle Chronicle how that paper is now put in type, without “ setting," by electrical machine'. “ There fchejstood in a row, thirty grim silent demons. At the turning of a little handle they are instantly full of life. Each has a key board like a piano, and in front of the operator a series (105 in number) of oblong tubes, like the attenuated reeds a miniature organ. These hollow tubes are about two feet in length, as broad internally as type is high and with a frontage os large as the typo is thick. Each is HUM with brass squares, with a section cut out. Uucli bus its own

series of nicks on the inner edge ; and there ( is a square edged space at the side which is the matrix or reverse of the letter. Tho operator, sitting with the copy before him, touches the keys, and each_ letter falls in due order till tho _ lino is complete. Two steel fingers seize tins, push it along, space it, and justify it. Again two fingers seize it and push it in front of a little cistern full of molten lead. As it roaches its place the machine pushes out from the cistern a layer of lead, line long and type thick. The faces of the cooling load and the brass edge come into contact, the matrix letters are impressed as positives on tho lead, and thero remains a solid line of type. This goes in due course to tho galleys and columns, and pages are made up and stereotyped in the ordinary way. Meanwhile the machine whisks the brasses up to a series of little waggons, running on an endless wire above the tubes, and as each brass reaches its own nick it drops into the tube, and is ready again for use. It has only been out of its nest one-third of a minute at tho utmostAs a consequence few brasses are needed. The letter oftenest used, e, has only sixteen. ‘And what will a machine perfect ’ said I. ‘ One machine with one man, will set 5000 ems in an hour,’ said Mr Lyman, ‘ and doits own distributing. And there is no waste of type, no wear and tear. It is equal to six men.’ ‘Do other papers use it ? ’ ‘lSoncin New York ; a few in the country where they don’t compete with us, and are owned by our friends.’ ‘ And England ?’ ‘ Nona in England as peV ‘ Bad news for compositors, oh?” ‘Not a bit of it, my copy of tho Tribune the other day of twentyfoe r full pages. The introduction of electric selling will only end in making existing papers bigger and fuller of interest to the public, whilst it will make now papers possible iu scores of places where now they can t be made to pay.”