The Compositor Superseded.

[Mechanic]

On Saturday 27 December 1890, the Brisbane newspaper "The Queenslander", now the "Courier Mail" carried a feature article expounding the virtue of the new methods of producing type. ie the Linotype and the Rogers Typograph. The following is a summary of the article. Also in the article they refer to a Typograph pamphlet extracted from "The New York World" newspaper promoting the Typograph. I manage to find a copy of the pamphlet from the Hathi Trust digital library.

Newspaper story:- http://tinyurl.com/cj5y8or

The New York World pamphlet:- http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015077899774

The summary

It will probably be two or three years before either the Linotype or Typograph can sensibly affect newspaper workers in Australia, but compositors who wish to be prepared for contingencies would act wisely by learning to operate with facility on the typewriter; while parents intending to bring up their sons to the printing business should be careful not to bind them for the usual long term of apprenticeship to learn the business of mere typesetting. Indeed, there are far too many compositors in Australia already, especially of the mediocre and causally-employed class, who could not be, trusted with the manipulation complicated, machinery. Such men would do well to turn their attention to some other occupation in which they might excel, or in which the penalty of inefficiency would be less disastrous. In one respect the new machines will be a great advantage. Operating upon them will be a far more pleasant and healthful occupation than typesetting, while the average earnings of operators will be greater, unless, indeed the machines should attract to the business some of the vast numbers of young women who have already learnt to work the typewriter, or are on the lookout for a genteel means of winning a good livelihood; in which case it would be impossible to predict the far-reaching effects of the general use of the Linotype or Typograph.

The first Linotypes were installed in Australia in 1894 at the Daily Telegraph in Sydney. I can find no record of the first Typograph.