History of the Linotype Company

10. The Business of Type

175 THE BUSINESS OF TYPE 10 The business of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company ultimately was making and selling type, and the foundation for almost half its revenue came from two men—Linn Boyd Benton and Chauncey H. Griffith. LINN BOYD BENTON Early in the company’s history Ottmar Mergenthaler made his type punches by hand, cutting them, just as Gutenberg did. Thus the first Linotype types were inconsistent and slow to produce. Mergenthaler and his investors were very frustrated by these factors as the Linotype required large numbers of matrices to work, but there was no easy way to produce them. Typefounder Linn Boyd Benton (1844–1932) invented the solution: the punchcutter, which automated the cutting of the type punch that would be used to manufacture the matrices. A 1922 biographical tribute on Benton was written by ATF’s librarian Henry Lewis Bullen and published in the Inland Printer. Reproduced in part below, the article describes the problems of the Linotype (sometimes inaccurately) and disparages Ottmar Mergenthaler’s abilities and achievement. Keep in mind that Bullen writes as a competitor, whose business was hurt by composition machines, resulting in this valuable, yet biased, account. The Mergenthaler Company’s own account of the impact of Benton’s invention follows later in this chapter. HOW BENTON SAVED LINOTYPE: HENRY LEWIS BULLEN1 Mergenthaler had little originality—he was persistent in developing other men’s ideas, but never satisfactorily, and was by no means a brilliant mechanic. When he severed his connection with those who had poured out nearly two million dollars , the linotype machine was a failure. It was made marketable by Philip T. Dodge, who utilized the inventions of Benton, Schuckers, and Rogers to make it the success it ultimately became. This we declare on the highest authorities. It is the plain truth. [Tolbert] Lanston invented a most ingenious composing machine, but he was not a good enough mechanic to make his ideas practicable . Lanston’s ideas were made practicable by Sellers and Bancroft, who had the mechanical genius which Lanston lacked. But Benton’s invention of the machine for cutting letter punches was entirely novel in conception, and perfect in execution at the beginning, leaving little room for improvement in doing the work for which it was specially designed, though the scope of its usefulness was greatly extended a few years after it had made practicable both the linotype and the monotype composing machines. Benton, self-taught in typefounding, had the imaginative genius to conceive an entirely original machine, and the mechanical genius to make his ideas practicable, even to the point of constructing every part of it himself. Benton’s punchcutting and matrix-cutting machines, with the various appliances he invented as accessories of these machines , completely revolutionized the method of making typefounders’ matrices. These machines made the cutting of letter punches by hand a lost art. A generation ago the hand punch-cutters were the mainstay, the principal craftsmen of the typefounding art; today we would be surprised to learn that more than two are employed in American typefoundries, and these men are not employed in cutting type faces. Linn Boyd Benton, circa 1900 176 MERGENTHALER ON PUNCHCUTTING AND THE MATRIX FROM OTTMAR MERGENTHALER’S (AUTO)BIOGRAPHY, PP. 29–31: Probably the most difficult problem connected with the first manufacturing attempts was the production of the matrices at a price not prohibitive. Attempts to have them made outside under contract failed entirely. Mergenthaler, with a view to enlist outside help, called upon J. Ryan, a well known type-founder in Baltimore at that time. He showed him some of his matrices and told him that the machine required about twelve hundred of them and that they had to be produced at a cost not exceeding six cents apiece. Ryan took a look at his matrix, commenced to laugh, and said: “Young man, you see this matrix. It is one of our standard matrices and as you see it is a much simpler piece of work than yours. Now, we pay from fifty cents to a dollar apiece for the work of adjusting it after the impression has been made. If you can produce these matrices for the type founders at fifty cents apiece, there is a fortune in store for you on that line alone and you need not waste your energy in useless attempts to make impossibilities. Assuming that your machine as such is a success, yet it is bound to fail on the cost of the matrices...