July 3, 1886

Many thanks to the Rutgers University Libraries, John Depol Collection for permission to use this picture.

On July 3, 1886, seated at the keyboard of his new machine, Ottmar Mergenthaler handed to Whitelaw Reid a slug of metal. Reid exclaimed, “It’s a line-of-type!” Thus was christened the forerunner of today’s modern linecasting machine: the Linotype.

Illustration produced for the 75th Anniversary, April 1961.

Linotype fan? Don’t miss the Linotype Chat section of the Metal Type Forum.

Printle: A Word Puzzle for Printers Try our word puzzle – there’s a new one every week.
German “new line” linecasters The story of the most advanced linecasters ever made, with illustrations of all models.
British Print Trade Union Cards – A unique collection of typographically exquisite membership cards from Dave Bowles.
Glossary of Printing Trade Terms – George Clark’s list sheds light on a whole new language!
The Whittaker Collection – Photographs of this definitive collection of linecasters stored at the UK’s Manchester Science Museum.
Banging Out – Fleet Street Remembered -Video documentary about the UK national newspaper industry.
Farewell etaoin shrdlu – A look at the production of the last hot metal New York Times.

Re: Photo-lettering 1938
Back in the early 1960's one of the many products sold by Canadian Linotype were the Letraset transfer sheets.I had installed a Linotype at a trade show in Ottawa, and afterwards I was having drin...
Photo-lettering 1938
Some great pictures from the Canadian Type Archive showing a very early system of photo composition for fancy headlines in advertisements, etc. View this post on Instagram //www.instagram.com/embed.js https://www.instagram.com/p/C53CK8HOiHd/?img_index=1
China's Phonetic Script and the Linotype
Doug Wilson's still doing research for his forthcoming book all about the Linotype machine.According to some promotional material that Doug has recently discovered Linotype were "Making a Simpl...

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