Category: Composition

Model K Elrod Restoration

Thanks largely to John Nicholson of Hamilton, NZ, the Model K Elrod which had been in storage at the Taranaki Aviation Transport And Technology Museum (TATATM), New Plymouth, is now operational.

To the writer’s knowledge, the Model K had been in the lean-to store of the museum, on a heavy wooden plank base since its arrival at the museum and never used since de-commissioning at the donor’s premises (Taranaki Newspapers Ltd., New Plymouth) around 1985. Read the Full Article . . .

The Modern Typograph

Rogers Typograph
The new streamlined German Typograph machine, which sells for some $6000 crated for shipment at a German seaport, with one font of two-letter matrices. The machine will compose and cast a slug line 32 picas long, and has an electric driving mechanism and an electric pot. Two-letter matrices cost about $300 per font.

The fascinating story of how a new version of this old machine came to be manufactured in 1960.

Article taken from The History of the Printer by Dr. James Eckman, published in 1965 by North American Publishing Company, Philadelphia, USA. Read the Full Article . . .

July 3, 1886

Ottmar Mergenthaler

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. Read the Full Article . . .