Inventors’ Hall of Fame

[Mechanic]

John Raphael Rogers was inducted into the Inventors' Hall of Fame in 2007. The main reason appears to be for inventing the spaceband. This is interesting as my research indicates that J. W. Schuckers invented the spaceband.  Rogers' invention for justification were wedge shaped discs Schuckers' firm merged with Rogers and Schuckers licensed Rogers to use the patented spaceband.
A patent number (837,127) is supplied for a Rogers invention but this is for a novel matrix that could produce type for documents where a strike through bar could be inserted. Not for the spaceband.

Following is an extract from the induction. The complete document can be found on:-

http://www.invent.org/hall_of_fame/361.html

John Raphael Rogers
Born December 11, 1856 – February 18, 1934

Matrix for Linotype-Machine
Patent #: 837,127
Inducted 2007

His work began by focusing on the problem of justification, attempting to vary the spaces between words so the ends of each line of type would align to produce columns. Before Rogers, skilled typesetters had to manually insert blank type of varying sizes once the line was completely set in order to justify it. Rogers invented a wedge-shaped mechanism that, together with a band, allowed each line of type to be automatically justified after it was set.