type metal

A white alloy for casting type, composed of lead antimony, and tin. Large type has the largest proportion of lead: small type has more antimony to render it harder and enable it to resist wear. Type is sometimes faced with copper or with nickel, to render it more durable. The nickel has the additional advantage of not acting on or being affected by the chemicals in the ink. "Type- metal [is] the alloy of lead and antimony used in casting printers' types, the usual proportions being one part of antimony to three of lead, but a superior and harder kind of type is sometimes made by alloying two parts of lead with one of antimony and one of tin. Both these alloys take a sharp impre ion from the mold or matrix, owing to their expansion on solidification, and they are hard enough to stand the work of the pre , without being brittle or liable to fracture."-Brande & Cox . type-setter, s. 1. One who sets up type; a compositor. 2. A type-setting or composing machine (q. v.). type-setting, s . The act or proce of setting up or arranging types in the composing-stick, ready to be printed from. Type-setting machine: A composing machine for type. There are several varieties of machines for this purpose. Ordinarily, they have separate grooves, receptacles, or galleys for each sort, and the mechanical arrangement is such that on touching a key, arranged with others like the key-board of a piano, the end type of a row is displaced, and is conducted in a channel or by a tape to a composing-stick, where the types are arranged in regular order in a line of indefinite length, and from whence they are removed in succe ive portions to a justifying-stick, in which they are spaced out to the proper length of line required. Type-setting telegraph : A form of telegraph in which the me age at the receiving end is set up in type. The title is also held to mean, but does not correctly define, the instrument in which certain letters are made to deliver an impre ion in consecution, and so spell out the me age.