History of the Linotype Company

3. Mackey's 1936 History of the Linotype Company

49 In 1936, Joseph T. Mackey, then president of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, wrote a history to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the day on which the first Linotype machine was put to practical commercial use. (Mackey had started his Linotype career as office boy to P.T. Dodge in 1895 and progressed up the corporate ladder until becoming president in 1936.) There is one known copy of this manuscript, kept in a binder with hot metal proofs showing Mackey’s handwritten edits.1 But Mackey’s work never saw the light of day. In that year, Adolf Hitler nationalized many foreignowned companies in Germany. The Mergenthaler German subsidiary was a major part of the Mackey history, along with the British Linotype & Machinery company, so the history was shelved and forgotten. In 1967, as Linotype was moving from Brooklyn, NY, to Plainview, NY, we were told to discard much of the material that had been stored on dusty shelves for years. I discovered this manuscript and saved it for more than 50 years. Here is an extract from that history, incorporated with Mackey’s proof changes. (Chapters VI, X, and XVIII have been omitted.): INTRODUCTION. In July, 1936, will arrive the fiftieth anniversary of the day on which the first “Linotype” machine was put to practical commercial use. In July, 1886, MACKEY’S 1936 HISTORY OF THE LINOTYPE COMPANY 3 Ottmar Mergenthaler, and the indomitable men who had helped him and encouraged him, at last saw the dreams, the experiments, and the failures of nearly twenty years mature into success, when for the first time the “New York Tribune” was printed from slugs set and cast on the Linotype machine. Since that day, now 50 years back, the machine which had effected the greatest revolution in the printing art since Gutenberg, has progressed and developed until it has become the mechanical one-man printing office which we now know, with its eight magazines, capable of setting a whole page of any newspaper, with varied faces and sizes, from one keyboard. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the leaders of the Linotype organisation to-day, successors to the pioneers of fifty years ago, deem it an appropriate time to place on record a brief story of the men who, in face of failures and losses and rebuffs persisted in their efforts until success was achieved. This then is the story of those great men; of the machine they conceived; of that machine as it has now become after the efforts and inventiveness of other men have been lavished upon it; and of the organizations which have made possible the profitable use of the machine by the printers of the world. Scores of booklets and articles, in America, England, and Germany, have dealt with this subject before, but this is an endeavour to bring together into one volume all the ascertainable facts. So voluminous are the records of those fifty years, so widespread the remembrances, that it has been an arduous task to collect them, and in all probability much is missing. It stands, however, as a memorial actually of nearly seventy years of constant, unflagging experiment and progress, by which the world has benefited in no small degree. Joseph T. Mackey, 1940 50 CORPORATE EVOLUTION C. T. Moore—J. O. Clephane—E. V. Murphy—Andrew Devine—F. J. Warburton (1872) The Typographic Machine Printing Co. (1874) The National Machine Printing Co. (1877) The Consolidated Machine Printing Co. (1881) The Metropolitan Machine Printing Co. (1882) The National Typographic Company of West Virginia (1883) Ott. Mergenthaler and Company (1888) The Mergenthaler Printing Co. (1891) J. R. Dougall (1891) The Linotype Syndicate (1889) (UK) The Mergenthaler Linotype The Linotype Company (1889) Company of New Jersey (1891) The Mergenthaler Linotype Toronto Type Toronto Type The Linotype The Machinery Mergenthaler Company of New York (1895) Foundry Co. Ld. Foundry Co. Ld. Company Trust Limited Setzmaschinen (1904) (Canada) (Outside Canada) Limited (1896) (1893) Fabrik G.m.b.H. (1895) (1902) Canadian American Linotype and International Linotype G.m.b.H. Linotype Corporation Machinery Linotype Ltd. Limited (1902) Limited (1903) (1909) Canadian General Printing Linotypo Do Linotype Machinery Brasil (S.A.) Limited Corporation (1930) (1928) (1932) The Printing Société Società Sociedad Société British Linotype and Machinery Linotype Linotype Linotype Linotype Printing Machinery Co. Ltd. Française Italiana Española Belge, S.A. Machinery (South Africa) S.A.(1898) S.A. (1913) S.A. (1911) (1920) Ltd. (1923) Ltd. (1925) (1914) (Ottmar Mergenthaler Company...