Typar Typesetting Machine

[Jaap Lieverse]

Are any of the technical specialists in this forum familiar with the Typar typesetting machine?

In OTM of 1934, se jrg, #3, p1, I come across a brief reference to it.


The Typar machine is mentioned in the second column of this Dutch-language publication.

A machine translation to English of the relevant passage:

One of these machines has years back many of them do talk and well the write-set machine Typar. A great advertisement wanted to show the printers, that the letter-seat was over and a new era of seat manufacturing - hey leadless seat - was in the offing.

After the experiences with the advertising of the sewing machine factories, the printers did not show the interest in the Typar which the firm had hoped. All the more, our occupational brothers - the stonecutters - were taken with the machine, which would bring them a new field of work. For when the letter-set is no longer necessary, also the desire of the printers to operate the set-machine alone, is no longer justified. Indeed, an agreement was reached in Switzerland at that time, which allowed the lithographers the operation of the Typar, while the printers exchanged the operation of the Offset machines for it. Also soon after the Typar appeared in the market, the construction of this machine was discontinued. A Swiss machine shop is instead, rebuilding the machine. Instead of the 15-character arrays, now come the individual arrays. However, the product of the machine is not changed. The machine produces on sheets of overprinting paper a print of the seat samples. When proofreading, the strip of paper should also be cut and the correct line should be pasted. Turning these sheets of paper into letter shapes

Furthermore, it seems to have been an [English?] attempt to trump the Linotype - which failed.
Any reference is welcome.

Kind regards,
Jaap Lieverse

[Dave Hughes]

Reading the translation, which I'm sure could be better, it sounds like a machine to produce what was once called "camera ready artwork"

[Franz]

It is funny that you just stumbled over this - as I myself happened to come across an advertising leaflet for the Typary only a few weeks back  at the Typorama Museum in Switzerland.

As David correctly concluded, the Typary was indeed a Schreibsetzmaschine - a typewriter typesetter to produce text ready for photographic reproduction. They did use typebars, similar to the first and second bandmachine, which made an impression on high quality paper.

Difficult to say which market this Swiss development targeted, but I would guess they were more aiming for magazines and lithography than to rival the Linotype in Newspapers and Books.

I only made a few pictures, not a full scan. Some confusion seems to be about the name: It is clearly the same machine, referred to as Typar in your dutch article, Otto Höhne (Die Geschichte der Setzmaschinen) calls it the Tybar.

Otto Höhne also describes in some detail how the columns produced by the machine are further processed, and that the largest size available was 12p.