Yesterday’s Technology . . . Today!
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Robert Griffith sent in some scans of this 1920s advertising brochure for the Model 14 Linotype. It appears to have been produced by the Chicago office of Mergenthaler.
This Linotype may be equipped with one, two, or three full-size magazines which are interchangeable with those of all single- and multiple-magazine Linotypes using quick-change Model 5 magazines.
Many thanks to Jim Daggs, of Ackley Publishing Company, Ackley, Iowa for sending in these photographs.
The advertisement states: “Model 12 Linograph — The All Purpose Machine.
