LINOTYPE

2 modern composing machine used by printers, resembling the typewriter in its keyboard and similarly actuated by the operator. Once the fingers of the operator start it in moulding type, a number of automatic movements are set in motion that produce a ‘line of type,’ called a slug, which finds its place in a galley. The machine, which has become the standard typesetting device for newspaper, book and job work, was the invention of Ottmar Mergenthaler (q.v.) a German by birth, who perfected it in 1885 while living in Baltimore. It was first put into practical use by the New York Tribune in 1886. Etta LIP. Type machines first set single letter or ordinary type. The Linotype sets not type, but a complete mould of space: words as a matrix for the type. Th matrices which are flat pieces of bras with the type face on one side, slid singly from where they are collecte in magazines at the top of the mach in when the operator touches the keyboard and receive the imprint of the letter until a line is formed. A bell sound the completion of each moulded line which is mechanically transferred to th operation of a connected apparatus tha pours molten metal into the matrix. 4 line is thereupon produced like one se by the old hand method and a emble in a composing stick, but with the dif ference that it is a solid row of moulde type, not of individual type letters, The machine automatically withdraw the matrices, removes the mould, plane the cast-metal line, ejects and deposit it on a galley in proper order with thos preceding it, and ready for the pres: As soon as the line of matrices an spaces is withdrawn from the moulk< the machine automatically picks ther up, and distributes each matrix in it proper magazine on the top of th machine from which it started, read to repeat the proce for the next lin the operator taps. The automat i functions of the machine are many an they proceed in due order with th precision and regularity of clockworl