This photographic postcard, which the seller said probably dated from the 1930s-40s, was recently offered for sale on Ebay.
The following was printed on the reverse of the postcard:
Blue Streak Linotype Exhibition
Category: Composition
The Graphotype
Many thanks to Robin Kenworthy for sending in this article, originally published in a book called “Typographical Printing Surfaces” shortly after 1907. The Graphotype was an early rival to the Monotype system, but had the keyboard and casting system in the one machine.
Robin has a museum-worthy collection of machines, type and matrices as well as an extensive library on the subject of letterpress.
Shaffstall Mat Detector
Tony Shaffstall from Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, got in touch with Metal Type to give us details of the Shaffstall Transistor Mat Detector that his father (Everett G Shaffstall) invented.
Tony sent in the patent application (10 pages with some nice illustrations) dating from 1960 and a 1965 copy of the Installation Instructions and Trouble Diagnosis (72 pages).
Express Gifts
Chris Johnson contacted Metal Type in November 2007 saying that he was an engineer working for Express Gifts, part of Findel PLC and had been looking after 3 working Intertype Monarchs for the past 11 years. The company had recently acquired a refurbished Intertype C4 to bring the count of working linecasters up to 4! The machines are used to produce slugs of people’s names to manufacture personalised gift items.
The machines all have a Decitek Floppy Disk Drive operating a Fairchild Teletypesetting unit. Chris very kindly sent in the following photographs.
Linotype Model 5 Restoration
George Finn, an Australian Linotype mechanic, sent in this photograph and details of the restoration project.
This is the oldest machine I have ever worked on. Checking the serial number (22971) against shipping dates, I find that it was shipped in the first half of 1918.
Abandoned Intertype C4
I FOUND this C4 Intertype abandoned at an Historical Preservation Society in Pimpama, just 10 km (6 miles) from where I live.
I asked the Publicity Officer what he could tell me about the machine. He said it was before his time, but that they had owned a number of machines but the rest had been given away, along with all the spare parts.
Model F Elrod
Andy Taylor sent in these pictures of his “brand new” Model F Elrod strip-casting machine. He’s hoping to send in some video of the machine in operation in the near future. He also has a Model K.
Linotype Comet 300 TTS
Many thanks to Bill Nairn, from New Zealand, for sending in these photographs — they show a Linotype Comet 300, complete with a Fairchild operating unit attached to the linecaster’s keyboard and the perforating keyboard. The whole set-up is in full operational condition.
Says Bill: “In New Zealand, we had the opportunity to restore a Linotype Comet 300, complete with Fairchild Operating Unit (attached to the Linotype keyboard) and the perforating keyboard.
Withy Grove, Manchester
The New Linotype
This article, taken from a Mergenthaler Printing Company publication, dated 1890 describes the “New Linotype” to newspaper proprietors, etc. It also compares the machine to the earlier “Blower” machine and the un-named “most prominent typesetting machine.”
The document compares “The most prominent typesetting machine” and the old “Blower” Linotype to the new model: