The Barth Type Caster

Images from the Traditional Printed Sources

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1. Introduction

It is my goal here to either reprint (when possible) or cite every image of a Barth Type Caster which has ever appeared in traditional printed sources. It's a depressing sign of the invisibility of the typefounder's art that it is possible to contemplate doing this.

There will of course be some overlap between this present Notebook and the Barth Literature Notebooks, as many of the accounts of the Barth were illustrated. Still, it is in my opinion useful to collect all of the images in one place.

For images from the Barth patents, see ../ Barth Literature --> Patents.

For images (or links to images) originally presented online, go up one level to the gallery of images From the Internet.

For photographs mostly taken by me, go up one level to the Galleries of Photographs.

I would appreciate learning of any images that I've missed.

Contents:

2. Inland Printer (1891)

The first non-patent image of a Barth of which I am presently aware appeared in an article in The Inland Printer in November 1891 which was devoted to the Cincinnati Type Foundry. {IP 1891} It was one of a short series of articles on American type foundries. The entire article is reprinted by CircuitousRoot in the Cincinnati Type Foundry notebook.

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(The version shown here was digitized by Google from the University of Michigan copy and is available via The Hathi Trust. Hathi ID: mdp.39015086781526. It is of regrettably poor resolution, but until I scan an original it is the best I have.)

This image was reprinted several times, most notably by DeVinne in The Practice of Typography, but it was not always reprinted accurately (most notably by DeVinne; see below).

3. World's Columbian Exposition (1893)

An ATF automatic type casting machine, presumably a barth, was exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (the Chicago World's Fair). There must be a photograph of it around somewhere, but as yet I have been unable to locate one.

4. MSJ One Hundred Years (1896)

ATF was amalgamated in 1892, but despite both immediate and ongoing consolidations of the original 23 foundries, it took a while for the idea of ATF to stick. In 1896, the Philadelphia branch of ATF (composed primarily of the former MacKellar, Smiths, and Jordan) put out a volume commemorating their 100th year of operation Despite the scant reference to ATF in this book, by this time the Philadelphia branch was using Barth casters in a major way. (They were also using pivotal casters and, I believe, Ziegler-patent automatic casters of their own construction for spaces and quads.) Without ever mentioning "Barth" or "Cincinnati," they illustrate their Automatic Casting Department and a (Barth) Automatic Casting Machine.

A complete, although low-resolution, digitization of MSJ's One Hundred Years has been done by Google from the Pennsylvania State University copy and is available online via The Hathi Trust (not Google Books). A local copy of this is available in the CircuitousRoot Notebook on American Type Founders.

Higher-resolution scans of the portions of this book concerned with the technology of typefounding are online in the CircuitousRoot Notebook of General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and types.

Here is a general view of the Automatic Casting Department of the Philadelphia branch of ATF (ex-MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan) by 1896. Note that casters along the far wall are not Barths. I believe that they are MSJ's Ziegler-patent automatic casters for spaces and quads, used through 1993 by ATF for casting spacing material.

(In 1902 a photograph of this same casting room appeared in Wylie's article "A Study of Modern Typefounding" and in ATF's American Type Founders Company: Its Business and Resources Illustrated. )

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(From {MSJ 1896}, p. 62. The image above links to a 2048 pixel wide version for general viewing. Here is a full-resolution (but JPEG) version of the original scan (67 Megabytes): mackellar-smiths-jordan-1896-1200rgb-0062-centered-partial-automatic-casting-department-rot90ccw.jpg)

Here, from the next page, is an individual Barth shown from the front.

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(From {MSJ 1896}, p. 63. The image above links to a 2048 pixel wide version for general viewing. Here is a full-resolution (but JPEG) version of the original scan (12 Megabytes): mackellar-smiths-jordan-1896-1200rgb-0063-automatic-casting-machine-crop-5577x4972.jpg)

Since the general view of the Automatic Casting Department is one of the more important photographs in the history of the Barth, here are two detail views extracted from it showing individual casters:

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(The image above links directly to a full-resolution (1200 dpi) JPEG version. 11 Megabytes.)

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(4 Megabytes)

5. Skopeo (1896)

The 1891 Inland Printer image was re-used (with "Cincinnati Type Foundry" removed) in an 1896 article in Typographical Journal by "Skopeo, of [ITU local] No. Six."

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(From {Skopeo 1896}, p. 255.)

6. DeVinne's Headless Barth (1900)

In the great printer Theodore Low DeVinne's The Practice of Typography (1900), the following image of a Barth appears. Ironically, it is an incomplete image of a "complete" type-casting machine. That is, it is clearly the same cut used at least by 1891 (see above) . But it has been cleaned up to remove not only the name on the caster but the pump structure on the melting pot (and the flywheel). Given the great authority and popularity of DeVinne's book, this error is regrettable.

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(From {DeVinne 1900}, p. 28.)

7. Wylie (1902)

In 1902, Donald Wylie wrote "A Study of Modern Typefounding" for The American Printer. It discussed the overall process, using illustrations of the Philadelphia Branch of ATF. (Many of these had appeared previously in One Hundred Years, but there were a few new ones in Wylie's article.)

Wylie's article is reprinted in the CircuitousRoot Notebook of General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types.

Wylie's article was almost immediately reprinted as a section of ATF's 1902 publication American Type Founders Co.: Its Business and Resources Illustrated ( {Wylie 1902}). However, the illustrations in Wylie's article and the ATF version are not entirely the same.

There is one illustration of a Barth in Wylie's article, and it is not one that appears in One Hundred Years (neither does it appear in the 1902 ATF version). It shows the Automatic Casting Department in Philadelphia - but what appears to be a later version than the 1896 One Hundred Years photograph.

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This illustration is the same photograph which appears in ATF's American Type Founders Co.: Its Business and Resources Illustrated (although there it is in the section of "Views of [ATF's] Houses and Foundries"). See below for a reprint of it from that source.

8. ATF Illustrated (1902)

As noted above, in 1902 ATF published a promotional book entitled American Type Founders Company: Its Business and Resources Illustrated. This consisted of several discrete sections. The first of these was a reprint of Wylie's article, with a set of images that differed slightly from those of the original piece. The second section was a photographic tour of the constituent type foundries of the firm. (This was just as the construction of the new Central Plant was getting underway.)

See {ATF Illustrated 1902}. This has been scanned by Richard L. Hopkins from the Skyline Type Foundry copy and is online in the CircuitousRoot Notebook on American Type Founders

In its reprint of Wylie's article, the 1902 ATF book used a new photograph of a Barth - one that had not been seen before (as far as I can determine). It is significant because, if my interpretation is correct, it shows a large sector-form rheostat under the machine. Barths began as gas fired machines, but at some point ATF converted all of them to electric pots. This is the earliest indication of an electric pot that I have seen.

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(From {ATF Illustrated 1902}, p. 26)

The second section of this 1902 book is a photographic tour of ATF entitled "View of its [ATF's] Houses and Foundries." These are all quite interesting to the modern typefounder, who can only dream of facilities such as these. Several of the views show the Automatic Casting Departments of some of the constituent foundries. The Boston (Foundry A), New York (B), Philadelphia (C), Cincinnati (D), Chicago (E), and St. Louis (F) branches are shown with their Automatic Casting Departments. The branches at San Francisco (Foundry G) and Baltimore (H) are shown without their foundry departments (but both are called "House and Foundry," not just "House"). Two cities formerly having foundry operations are listed as simply selling houses: Cleveland and Kansas City. Nine other selling Houses are shown: Pittsburgh Buffalo, Minneapolis, Denver Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Los Angeles, and Vancouver. Several foundries purchased by this date are not mentioned: the Bruce Type Foundry (acquired in 1900), A. D. Farmer & Sons (acquired in 1900), and the Richmond Type Foundry (acquired in 1901). See the Notebook on ATF: Early History through 1906 for a discussion of the consolidation of the constituent type foundries before the complete consolidation into a single Central Plant in the 1902-1906 timeframe.

Here are the views of the foundries:

Boston. The floor-level drive arrangement for these machines is interesting.

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The image above is from the Hopkins scan of the Skyline copy. See {ATF Illustrated 1902}, p. 31. This image has also been scanned by Stephen O. Saxe from his copy. Saxe's scan is online at: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/sos222/9456292939/in/photostream/.

Here is a local copy of the Saxe scan, used here with his kind permission. (The contrast is different in the two scans, and it may be possible to make out details in each of them not discernable in the other.)

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New York.

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Philadelphia.

This illustration is the same photograph which appears in Wylie's 1902 American Printer article "A Study of Modern Typefounding." See above for a reprint of it from that source. A view of this same room from 1896 also appeared in One Hundred Years.

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Cincinnati. Two photographs of the Automatic Type Casting Machines in the Cincinnati branch appear.

Here we have proof of the individual electrification of machine drives from no later than 1902. The rear-mounted motors and system used look very much like the gutted motor drive still in place on the surviving 60 point machine.

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The second photograph of the Cincinnati foundry is further interesting because it shows a machine in a state of partial disassembly.

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This image has also been scanned by Stephen O. Saxe from his copy. Saxe's scan is online at: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/sos222/9456293771/in/photostream/

Here is a local copy of the Saxe scan, used here with his permission.

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This booklet also contains a portrait of Henry Barth. But while Barth was on the Board of Directors of ATF, he is not shown in the set of five portraits in the Frontispiece (while Benton is). He is shown and identified only on p. 45 as the "Manager [of the] Cincinnati Foundry." He isn't even the Manager of the Cincinnati House (H. S. Kibbe is shown and identified in that position), even though he was once the President of the Cincinnati Type Foundry.

Bow ties are cool.

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Chicago. There are again two images of the Chicago automatic casters.

They have a rather neatly done under-floor belt drive.

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St. Louis.

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9. Kaup (1909)

In 1909, W. J. Kaup wrote an article on "Modern Automatic Type Making Methods" for The American Machinist. He got it mostly right (his description of the metallurgy of typemetal is wrong, but in 1909 nobody knew any better). He illustrates the Barth caster (calling it an "Automatic Molding Machine," which is one way of describing it) and mentions explicitly both the water cooling and the air jet.

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(From {Kaup 1909}, p. 1046.)

10. ATF Views of the Central Plant (Circa 1912)

At some unknown date (probably around 1912, based on similarities to the images in {ATF Specimen Book 1912}), ATF published a booklet of Photographic Views of [the] Central Plant. This booklet survives in a single copy rescued by Theo Rehak. It was reprinted in 2002 by Theo Rehak, Dave Peat, and Rich Hopkins as a keepsake for the American Typecasting Fellowship conference of that year (Provo, Utah) and the Typophiles meeting of that year. The scans from it shown here are reprinted with the kind permission of Dave Peat, who sold the remaining copies of this booklet for many years. {ATF Central Plant ca. 1912}),

In each of the full reprinted views below, the image links to a 2048 pixel wide version suitable for ordinary viewing. A text link to a 1200 dpi version follows. (In the unlikely event that 1200dpi is not sufficiently detailed for your research, I do have 2400 dpi scans of this. But if you need something at that resolution you're probably studying the history of halftone dots rather than the history of Barth type casters. (A single 2400dpi PNG image is half a gigabyte in size.) You'd be better off acquiring the reprinted book, which was done via analog photography and offset lithography.)

"Central Bay Automatic Casting Department":

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1200 dpi version of the Central Bay view

"West Bay Automatic Casting Department":

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1200 dpi version of the West Bay view

Note that the two machines shown in the foreground of the view shown above are not Barth casters. They are, I believe, Ziegler-patent automatic casters for spaces and quads.

"North Wing Automatic Casting Department":

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1200 dpi version of the North Wing view

Here are some cropped views of individual Barth casters from the first and third of the general view shown above. For these the high-res versions are 2400 dpi.

Central Bay, front left machine:

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2400 dpi version, Central Bay front left machine

Central Bay, front middle machine (which seems curiously narrow):

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2400 dpi version, Central Bay front middle machine

North Wing, left machine:

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2400dpi version, North Wing, left machine

North Wing, right machine:

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2400dpi version, North Wing, right machine

11. ATF Specimen Book (1912)

The 1912 ATF Specimen Book of Type Styles contained a page of illustrations of their "automatic" casting bays (by that time in the Jersey City Central Plant). This specimen has been reprinted twice online (from the University of California copy and the Brigham Young University copy) and is available online via The Internet Archive. See the CircuitousRoot Notebook on American Type Founders. (Bibliography for the Barth Notebooks at {ATF Specimen Book 1912}.)

For the study here, however, I have scanned this page from my own copy.

(Note that the machine shown in the lower right hand corner of the bottom photograph on this page is not a Barth. I think that it is a Ziegler-patent automatic casters for spaces and quads, originally developed at MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan.)

Curiously, the two Barth casters to the right in the upper photograph look as if they may be out of service (note the lack of services to them, and the missing front handwheels).

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(The image above links to a 2048 pixel wide version suitable for ordinary viewing. Here is a full resolution (1200 dpi RGB, but JPEG) version: atf-1912-american-specimen-book-1200rgb-0000-10-crop-7184x11040.jpg)

Here's a a cropped image of just the Barth vignette. It appears to be the same photograph used in a retouched form in the 1923 specimen book (see below).

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12. ATF Specimen Book (1923)

By the 1923 Specimen Book and Catalogue, Henry Barth has been re-elevated, posthumously, to the position of Manager of the Cincinnati House.

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(From {ATF Specimen 1923}, p. 10.)

13. ATF Type Speaks! (1948)

In 1948, American Type Founders released the film Type Speaks!, which described their type-making practices at that time. (The methods at ATF were not static; several quite different methods of matrix making, for example, were practiced over their 101 years of existence.) The film features Ben Grauer (full name: Benjamin Franklin Grauer), who in addition to being a radio and television announcer was also a member of the Grolier Club). The film contains about three and a half minutes of footage of Barth casters, including animations of the internal workings of the Barth. {ATF Type Speaks 1948}

This film formerly was distributed by the late Carl Schlesinger. I have it on good authority that it will soon be available again, on the PrintingFilms.org site. In the interim, here is a local copy of an MP4 conversion of the film as Schlesinger distributed it: type-speaks.mp4

Here is an extract of just the segment on the Barth: type-speaks-barth-clip-with-sound.mp4

(Note: It is unlikely that either of the video files above will just play if you click on them. Download them to your own computer and play them offline.)

Below are a series of stills extracted from this film. I've included representative images from most of the Barth segment, omitting only the section where the drop of the plunger is described (because everything it says is incorrect - ATF didn't even know how their own machines operated by this point in time).

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14. ATF ATF Tour (1981)

[TO DO: Hopkins, Rich. "The Living Legend: American Type Founders Company." insert in the ATF Newsletter No. 6 (May 1981)]

15. ATF Auction (1993)

[TO DO: Hopkins, Rich. "American Type Founders Company: A Troubled Report On Its Demise." ATF Newsletter No. 18 (June 1984): 2-17.]

[TO DO: Note also the existence of a film (in preparation, 2014) of footage by Stephen Heaver of the 1993 ATF auction, along with material on the Dale Guild.)]