There were several inventors who thought to mechanize typesetting in the s; however his biggest competitor by far was James Paige, who patented the Paige Compositor in Huss 2.
Paige sought help from his best-known investor, Mark Twain, who put money into the invention of the Compositor—allowing it to become fully functional by Although it seemed as though everything was working out well for Paige and his Compositor, he felt the need to continue improving it. The production version was not released until , which was three years after the Linotype machine Lienhard. Despite the delay, Paige was confident in his invention because it was nearly sixty percent faster than the Linotype machine at setting type plus Twain was his financial investor.
Problems arose for Paige when the flaws in his design surfaced. The Compositor was not as mechanized as the Linotype. Additionally, the Compositor was much more complicated in that it contained eighteen thousand parts, as opposed to the Linotype which had five thousand.
These additional parts caused the price of the Compositor to skyrocket, thus making the Linotype a cheaper and more feasible option Lienhard. Furthermore, the failure of the Compositor had devastating effects for both Paige and Twain. The failure of the Compositor caused Paige to lose all of his money and caused Twain to go bankrupt. Although the innovative Paige had a revolutionary idea, he was unable to carry it out with the solid simplicity that helped drive the Linotype machine Huss 2.
Uses and its affect on written work and society. Linotype machines had a dramatic impact on the world of newspapers. They were first integrated for use in the New York Tribune in They revolutionized the newspaper industry by allowing newspapers to run longer than just a few pages they were previously limited to eight pages , as they had before the Linotype.
It also allowed newspapers to more readily distribute to the masses, thus increasing the spread of information on political and current events. It increased the spread of knowledge and made information more accessible to every-day people Hendel. By speeding up the printing process via the Linotype, education was made available to everyone—poor or rich.
Other art forms began to rely on it and it played a large role in religious movements, government, and business by allowing books and documents to be created in bulk and spread around the world. In the previous manuscript tradition, it would take months to years to make just one bible, which could not be spread to several people at a time. Additionally, handwritten manuscripts that were available in the s made it very difficult for both government and business to function because they were not easily recreated and only reached a small number of people.
Because books began to disintegrate, scribes would try to recreate books, but they were no able to meet the demand. Thus, the Linotype drastically impacted the world of government, business, and religion by its fast production Wilson. The Linotype spread to multiple regions of the world, spreading to parts of Europe such as France and Amsterdam and later arriving in Germany.
The spread of the machine initiated different languages to be incorporated as well, and in , the first Arabic text was set in a Linotype. In total, there were more than , Linotype machines in use worldwide Dreier By setting type faster, the Linotype was able to transform information by boosting the production of books, magazines, and newspapers.
This increase in print caused literacy in the United States to skyrocket because more books were being published. As a result, print became much more affordable and spread around the world. By , Linotype became the primary typesetting device around the world Wilson. What went wrong? He constantly wanted to improve upon the machine. This made investors angry because they wanted to ship the machines and make money right away, but Mergenthaler kept coming up with new ideas—delaying the shipping process.
He began to criticize the Linotype design, in hopes that the stock price would decline so that he could buy more and take complete control of the devices. This put a lot of pressure on Mergenthaler, who was already a perfectionist and worked late into the night.
His premature death meant that he never lived to see the success of his Linotype invention Schlesinger One of the major hazards of the Linotype was that it shot out hot molten metal that could be over degrees. Engineers began thinking of ways to create a machine that could be as successful as the Linotype, but with less hazardous consequences Dreier In , the Photosetter was introduced.
It used light to photographically carry out the mechanistic nature of the Linotype. New photographic inventions eventually phased out Linotype machines causing them to be hauled to junkyards and melted Wilson.
The Linotype machine did not arise as an overnight invention. There were multiple competitive machines and designs in the works before arriving at the Linotype, which overall proved to be successful due to its simplistic, yet reliable, design.
It truly revolutionized the print world by making text more accessible to the public and making the production of such work less laborious. Because of its essential qualities, it proved to be an international success as well, spreading all across the globe. Because technology rapidly evolves, the Linotype was phased.
According to Linotype lore, the machine was invented in Baltimore but manufactured in Brooklyn, New York, where the Linotype Company established a massive factory in that would produce tens of thousands of machines into the s.
In fact, the very existence of an autobiography busts another long-held Mergenthaler myth: that his memoir was lost in a fire. Howard streets in downtown Baltimore. Company directors restricted the use of these first one hundred Linotypes to a small group of newspaper publishers who had helped finance the machine. As a result, the new invention was not finding a market and company finances faltered. Four decades later, by , the number of Linotype machines in operation swelled to , The invention had become a critical part of producing newspapers, ads, books and more.
Furthermore, typesetters' wages were "relatively prosperous" in mid-century America, according to a Linotypist's long account in a issue of Texas Monthly. As interesting as the profile itself happens to be, little can match the punch of the subhead: They travel from town to town.
They drink hard, they work hard, they are dedicated to their craft. They're typesetters. Oh yes they are. The author of the piece, Pat Hathcock, later adds, "Typesetters have always been drinkers.
Benjamin Franklin mentioned it. Thorstein Veblen mentioned it. My wives even mentioned it. Hathcock recollects learning the trade in the s and s, first on a dummy keyboard before he could "contend with the added complications of the matrices and molten metal. Linotype had its own magic due to the ease and flexibility of the trade. Take note, for instance, of the people Hathcock called "the travelers":. I became aware of "travelers" -- men who moved across the country from print shop to print shop.
They spoke nonchalantly about every good-sized town in the country, and they always delivered their judgments in terms of the bars, women, and hotels, as well as the print shops and newspapers. Men who have traveled that much and most travelers were men have a sophistication that transcends formal education, an ease in any surroundings, and a brash confidence in their skills One of my friends, a Scotsman, has set type everywhere in the world that English is spoken. Yet by the time of Hathcock's profile, the world of Linotype was fading, as the writer acknowledges.
He talks about a union's attempts to train members in other areas of printing, "unable to do much more than slow down the flood of new processes.
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