Linotype machine

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Linotype (Deutsches Museum)

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Linotype Keyboard

In printing, the Linotype machine (pronounced "LINEotype" ['laɪnəˌtaɪp]) uses a 90-character keyboard to create an entire line of metal type at once - hence a 'line o' type'. This allows much faster typesetting and composition than the original hand composition with the Gutenberg-style system, in which operators place down one pre-cast metal letter, punctuation mark or space at a time. The machine revolutionized newspaper publishing, making it possible for a relatively small number of operators to set type for many pages on a daily basis.

First produced by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1886, the Linotype was 6 ft 11 in (2.1 m) tall. Keystrokes retrieved letter molds (matrices) from the magazines. Once an entire line of matrices and spacebands was assembled, the machine poured molten type metal, which is an alloy of lead, tin and antimony, into the line of matrices and spacebands. This produced a complete line of type in reverse, so it would read properly when used to transfer ink onto paper. The completed slugs (lines of type) were then assembled into a page 'form' that was placed into the printing press.

The complexity of a Linotype machine was necessary not just so that it would place matrices in the proper place as the operator typed on the keyboard, but so it could return the matrices to the proper channels (slots) in the magazine in preparation for their next usage. This was vital, because returning letters to the proper part of a case (termed "redistribution") is the slowest and most difficult part of setting type by hand. The Linotype machine used a clever design of 7 binary-coded notches on each matrix (the notches corresponding to their position within the main 90-channel or the 34-channel 'auxiliary' magazines). Certain seldom-used characters (referred to as 'pi' matrices or simply 'sorts') had none of the teeth on the matrix notched, so they would proceed the entire length of the distributing mechanism, down a tube, and down to a tray at the operator's right, ready to be manually placed in a line when needed.

In addition, a Linotype machine could produce "justified" type (where the spaces on the lines are expanded so that the text fills the line to the right-hand margin). It did this by inserting "spacebands" rather than simple fixed-width blank matrices whenever the operator pressed the spaceband key just to the left of the main keyboard. These spacebands were wedge-like devices that could expand side-to-side when the wedge was pushed upwards by a lever within the machine. When released from the spaceband box, they would be at their minimum width with the wedge all the way down. When the line was completely composed, the operator would press down on a lever at the right side of the keyboard which would raise the matrices and spacebands into the delivery channel. This delivery channel would then transfer the composed line into the 'first elevator' which then positions the matrices and spacebands in front of the mold. The matrices would be aligned, then the justification levers would rise to expand the spacebands as needed, then the line would be 'locked up' against the mold and the slug is cast. Except for the determination of which lines to justify and which lines to leave "ragged right", this process was entirely automated. Once the line was cast, the machine would then automatically trim the slug to size while simultaneously returning the matrices and spacebands to their magazines.

The "hot type" (or hot metal) method of typesetting is virtually extinct today, replaced first by "cold type", in which lines of type were generated by computer-controlled exposure devices onto photographic paper and pasted onto large paper "flats" by hand, and then by pagination and desktop publishing systems in which the entire page is created in the computer and output as complete pages directly to film or printing plates.

The Linotype may be best remembered for the layout of its keyboard, which had letters arranged in decreasing order of frequency in everyday English. The first two vertical rows were usually ETAOIN SHRDLU, a phrase that occasionally appeared in print because Linotype operators who made mistakes would run their fingers down the keyboard to fill out the line with nonsense (it was often quicker to cast a 'bad' slug than to hand-correct the line within the assembling mechanism), and sometimes the slug of type would accidentally get used. This phrase is in the Oxford English Dictionary and has been used as a character name by a number of authors.

The keyboard usually had the following alphabet arrangement given twice, one for lower-case and once for upper-case letters, with extra keys for numbers and symbols located between the two cases:

etaoin / shrdlu / cmfwyp / vbgkqj / xz

Initially, the Mergenthaler Linotype Company was the only company producing linecasting machines, but in time two other companies produced linecasting machines. The Intertype Company (which machines are typically more streamlined than their Linotype counterparts) started up around 1914 and a friendly competition developed between these two companies to add improvements to the machine. Mergenthaler's other competitor was the Linograph Corporation - the one distinguishing feature of their line-casting machine is that the magazines on this machine are vertical. Both Mergenthaler and Intertype produced linecasting machines well into the 1960s, but the Linograph Corporation was likely a casualty of the Great Depression.