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HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY, TECHNOLOGY, OBJECTS AROUND US
Linotype. History of invention and production
Directory / The history of technology, technology, objects around us A linotype is a type of printing equipment, a type-setting machine designed for casting lines of text from a printing alloy to form a page layout from them and reproduce by letterpress or gravure printing on crucible and rotary machines.
Bullock's invention was soon supplemented by important innovations in typesetting. Until the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the production of letters and typesetting remained manual and had changed little in essence since the time of Gutenberg. Meanwhile, in the middle of the XNUMXth century, fierce competition developed among the publishers of individual newspapers (especially in America), which led to the desire to give the most recent material: everything that happened the day before and even at night had to find a place in the morning newspaper. To do this, it was necessary not only to bring the printing of newspapers to the speed of a courier train, but also to produce the type itself so that the latest nightly news in a few minutes would not only be typed, but also typeset and inserted into the pages of newspapers. A manual typesetter, who typed no more than 1000 letters per hour, that is, 23 lines, was not suitable for this. At first, they tried to speed up its work by casting the most popular syllables (the so-called logos), but this did little to help the cause, since it increased the number of branches in the typesetting box and therefore only complicated the work. Then the idea arose to mechanize the recruitment process. In 1822, the English engineer Church, after fifteen years of work, designed the first, still imperfect, typesetting machine. This invention made a great impression on contemporaries, and the newspapers placed a detailed description of the mechanical compositor.
Church's machine consisted of a stable wooden frame (two perpendicular posts connected by crossbars) standing on the steps, and was driven by pressing the pedal. In its upper part there were music stands, on which cases with letters were located. A keyboard was placed on the lower bar of the frame, its buttons were held in the proper position by means of coil springs. By hitting the key, the lower letter was released from the pencil case to the front of the music stand and directed to its middle with a special device. By pressing the handle, the letter from here fell into the collecting channel. Thus, of all the manual operations that a typesetter had to perform, only one was mechanized here - the search and supply of a letter. Church's machine did not receive practical application, but its design served as the starting point for all subsequent inventors. Within a few years, several more typesetting machines were created, but all of them had a very significant drawback - they did not think through the disassembly of the set and the distribution of letters among the cash desks, and it was this work that took a lot of time from the typesetter. An important step towards solving this problem was the invention of the Danish compositor Christian Sorensen, who in 1849 created his typesetting machine "Taheogip". This machine was placed on the table and resembled a piano. A funnel was arranged in the middle, set with a hole up. Two cylinders were placed in the funnel, type-setting at the bottom, and collapsible at the top. Both were driven by a gear wheel. Next to each cylinder was placed the same number of upright copper rails (120 pieces) with a protruding rod in the form of a dovetail. Each letter had special slots (signatures) corresponding to the shape of one of the rods, they were strung on these rods one by one and sent to the middle of the apparatus. When a worker hit a key, the proper letter was released, which then fell through the groove into the funnel, and from there onto the workbench. When the line ended, the second compositor straightened it out. The disassembly of the font took place simultaneously with the set. The collapsible cylinder had as many channels as there were letters. Above the channels of the upper cylinder was a metal cash register, the slots in which corresponded to the signatures of the letter. The parsed line moved along the metal strip, and each letter fell into the corresponding hole, where it was strung on a rod. The idea of signatures turned out to be very fruitful and was used in later typesetting and type-casting machines, but the Sorensen machine itself was hardly used. Fraser's machine, which actually consisted of two - typesetting and collapsible, became more widespread.
In a typesetting machine, the letters were placed in rows in channels arranged horizontally. Rows of letters were pushed to the openings of the channels by a special spring device. The openings of the channels had devices that pushed out the letters; the last with each stroke of the keys fell one after another between the ribs of the funnel and fell into the collector. Line alignment was done by a second typesetter. A completely new principle was applied by Fraser for a collapsible machine. Parsing occurred through the work on the keyboard. Where there were channels with letters on the typesetting machine, there was a parsed galley in the collapsible machine. The format lines were separated from the latter by a special device and installed in one long line, which approached the funnel, which had an overturned appearance. The letters to be disassembled did not enter the channels of portable stores directly, but were first placed in distributors. Frazier's car turned out to be one of the best. It became widespread in England and America and was used in many printing houses until the beginning of the XNUMXth century. All the creators of typesetting and type-casting machines faced the most difficult obstacle that prevented the complete mechanization of the typesetting process - how to ensure that all lines have the same length? Even in the best machines, this operation had to be done manually. Only in 1872, the American Merritt Gelly patented a machine with automatic line alignment. The solution he found turned out to be ingenious in its simplicity. Instead of a space (when it was necessary to separate one word from another), a flat wedge was fed from the machine's magazine, thicker at the bottom and thin at the top, which became in line with the matrices. When the line set ended, it was enough to press on the letters. At the same time, the wedges moved, so that the distances between words increased and the lines received a certain equal length.
Simultaneously with typesetting machines, the technique of casting letters was improved. In 1838, the American David Bres invented the letterolith machine, which then came into general use. The machine contained a small melting crucible with molten metal for letters (it consisted of 70 parts of lead and 30 parts of antimony). All operations were performed automatically by the machine when the impeller was turned. During the first part of the movement, the pump piston rose and molten metal entered the pump. At the same time, the letter form moved, the opening of which adjoined directly to the opening of the tube, which sprayed out the molten metal. The piston then descended and the metal fell into the mold. After that, the form moved away, opened up and threw out the letter. But then it was still necessary to grind each letter and cut off excess metal along its edges. This work was done by hand. The Bres machine has been in use for 50 years. True, already in 1853 Johnson created a complex type-casting machine, in which not only casting, but also further processing of letters took place automatically. For a long time, type-casting and typesetting machines developed independently of each other. However, the real revolution in typesetting occurred only after the idea to combine these two machines into one. In 1886, apprentice watchmaker Ottmar Margenthaler from Baltimore, using the design findings of many of his predecessors, created a machine that was called the "linotype". She did not compose lines of letters, but cast them entirely, which immediately dramatically increased the performance of the set.
On the Margenthaler linotype, the work went like this. The typesetter, sitting in front of the keyboard and having the original set in front of his eyes, hit one or another key. With each blow from the store, located obliquely at the top of the machine above the keyboard, the matrix fell out of its groove and slid down along the endless belt to the workbench (matrix collector) located on the left side of the typesetter. At the end of the line, the typesetter, by pressing the lever, transferred the entire line of matrices to the casting mold, near which there was a pot with molten printing metal. When the row of dies was installed in front of the mold, its length was aligned with flat wedges as described above. After that, the casting mold was pressed against the hole near the crucible. From the pot, the metal was poured to the matrices, the string was cast, then immediately solidified, cut off, polished and, still hot, was pushed onto the string collector, becoming in line with other previously cast strings. Meanwhile, the wedges were separated from the matrices and fell into place, a special hand grabbed the matrices, lifted them to the upper edge of the store, and thanks to special grooves on the matrices, different for each matrix, the latter, sliding along the endless screw, each fell into its own groove.
Linotype had for each matrix several types and sizes of fonts and made it possible to type a newspaper from beginning to end, with headings, subheadings, announcements and more. An experienced typesetter managed to type up to 12000 letters per hour on it. Such a significant acceleration compared to manual work was extremely important and answered a long overdue need. This is also evidenced by the commercial success of the new invention. Despite their complexity and significant cost, linotypes are widely used around the world. Already in 1892, more than 700 of them were produced. Author: Ryzhov K.V.
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