The Empire machine, first known as the Burr, was a modification of the Kastenbein. It was produced in New York. and required three operators. It therefore fell into disuse as the one-man machines became common. Nickel type was employed, and a machine would handle only one body size of type.
The McMillan machine, developed in Ilion, N. Y., was provided with automatic justifica tion, thus dispensing with the labor of one operator. The distributor was a separate ma chine, operating quite simply at a speed of about 10,000 ems an hour. These machines were used for some years by the New York SUR and the DeVinne Press.
The Cox type-setting machine attracted con siderable notice in the printing trade in Chicago and New York in 1898. The most unique feature of Cox's machine was the employment of crimped or corrugated spaces made of lead. The line was overset in length, and then squeezed. down to measure by compressing the corrugations. This justification was satisfac tory in some respects, but the crimped spaces created difficulty in many others, and its use was abandoned.
The Calendoli type-setting machine, devel oped in France by a priest of that name, at tracted much attentiorr because of the won derful claims made for its speed. Though ex ploited for several ye-ars, it was never per fected for the market. It employed short types grooved so as to slide on rails, and the key board had numerous combinations to enable the operator to strike whole words or syllables at a single motion of the hand.
There was exhibited at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, in 1901,2 one-man type setting machine that appeared to work success fully. It was the invention of Alexander Dow, and handled founders' type, being adapted to use the several sizes in one machine. The justification or spacing out of the lines was entirely automatic, requiring no thought by the operator. Had this machine been brought out at an earlier date, doubtless it would have secured a large sale.
Among other composing-machines that have been built in the United States, and•attracted the attention of the printing trade at one time or another, are the Converse, projected about 1894, which did good work, but was obstructed by previous patents; the Paige, on whose devel opment nearly $2,000,000 was spent, and which proved too costly to construct for the general market, the two machines built being now stored with Cornell and Columbia universities as mechanical curiosities; the St. John Typobar,
consisting of cold-pressed metal clamped on a steel base, to form a line; the Lagerinan Typotheter or Chadwick, a little machine for enabling a compositor to set type with both hands; the Johnson, which justified the lines by sawing a space of the required width; the composite type-bar machine, in which short, notched type were transformed into a line or type-bar by casting metal around their bases and between them; the Sears, in which dies were impressed in a blocic of wood, and a slug cast from the matrix thus formed; the Risley and Lalce, in which the type were impressed in a soft sheet like blotting paper, and a stereotype taken after a quantity had been thus impressed, and the Heath Matrix Typograph, of the same class; and the Goodson Graphotype, which re sembled the Monotype, but was much smaller, employing only 100 characters. The Grapho type was later rebuilt, but failed to find com mercial sale.
The Scudder Monoline machine produces a slug like that of the Linotype, and was barred out of the United States as an infringing ma chine. It was much smaller than the Linotype and did a more restricted class of work. Early in the present century it passed into the hands of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, and was never placed on the American market.
The Linotype is a machine designed to do the work of both type setting and type casting, by substituting for lines of individual type metal bars or slugs with raised letters on one edge. These bars, when arranged in page form, have the same appearance as pages of separate type and may be used either to print from direct or to produce stereotype or electro type plates in the usual manner. The machine will produce type faces of any kind desired, from 5 to 36 point, some up to 60 point; re quires but one operator, and gives a product equal to five or six hand compositors, furnished with ordinary type.