1862 London Exhibition: Catalogue: Class 7.: Youngs Patent Type Composing and Distributing Co
1750. YOUNG'S PATENT TYPE COMPOSING AND DISTRIBUTING MACHINE COMPANY (Limited), 77 Fleet Street.
Type composing machine, and type composing and distributing machines.
For some time past the necessity of discovering a means for increasing the speed of setting-up types, and superseding the present slow hand method, has been strongly felt.
While printing from the composed types has, by the improvements in the steam press, been carried to a most advanced stage, setting-up by hand is not now done more quickly than it was 400 years ago by the earliest printers. In order to save a few minutes' time in printing, large sums are paid for improved steam presses, when much more time might be saved by the use of a well-devised composing machine.
The type-composing machine invented by the late Mr. James Hadden Young accomplishes this object completely, as a single example in reference to its use by a daily newspaper will show.
Let it be supposed that half an hour before the usual time of putting to press important news arrives, enough to extend over three columns of the paper, or say 45,000 types have to be set up in thirty minutes by hand: this would require the assistance of ninety compositors, each having a scrap of paper put into his hand to set up in such a manner that it may tally with his neighbour's piece, technically called " making even." With the machines, the work would be done in the same time by six players and twenty-two justifiers, therefore, only six pieces of copy, instead of ninety, would be required, and the system would besides, offer immense facilities for correction.
It must be remembered, too, that for this very work steam presses are waiting to throw off copies at the rate of 20,000 per hour, so that the saving of only five minutes would be a gain of 1,500 copies.
Mr. James H. Young's type-composing machine fulfils all the conditions necessary to make it of practical utility. It is simple, durable, not likely to get out of order, and causes no damage to the type. It is provided with separate keys for all the letters of a fount, to admit of each letter being set up in the order required by the compositor's copy, with a speed which is only limited by the skill of the player. In reference to this it will suffice to say that the present ordinary speed is at the rate of 12,000 to 15,000 types set up in an hour's time. The art of playing the machine can be easily acquired by any compositor after a few weeks' practice.
As the type-composing machine sets up the type in long lines, they require previous to going to press to be put in page. For this purpose Mr. Young invented his -
JUSTIFYING APPARATUS, which is intended to replace the compositor's stick, which, however, it resembles. It is fixed to a frame, and is used as follows: —
The compositor places the galley filled with the long lines set up at the composing machine. He slides one of these lines into the apparatus, divides it into the proper length, reads it, makes any obvious corrections, and having justified it, he moves a handle, by which the completed line is depressed, and room is made for a succeeding line. It is found that a compositor can justify at the rate of 4,000 types per hour, and the calculations of saving are founded on this rate, but it is probable that a rate of from 5,000 to 6,000 will be reached. So that if 12,000 types are set up by a player in an hour, three justifiers, as now, will nearly simultaneously have prepared that quantity for the reader.
Mr. James H. Young also invented a DISTRIBUTING MACHINE, which, besides collecting the different types of the same character together, sets them up in rows ready for the composing machine.
This operation is effected by means of distinguishing nicks cast or cut in the type.
In Mr. Young's distributing machine 71 per cent. of the types require only a single nick—a very shallow one —not larger than those now used to distinguish different founts; 20 per cent. have two nicks, and the remaining that require more are, for the most part, thick-bodied types. The machine, attended by two lads, will prepare upwards of 18,000 types per hour, and, if desired, this quantity may be doubled simply by increasing its size.
It is calculated that by the use of Mr. Young's type composing and distributing machines 50 per cent. saved in the cost of composition.
Young's Patent Type-Composing and Distributing Machines Company (Limited),
WILLIAM YOUNG, Manager, 77, Fleet Street, London.