ATF would have liked you to believe that all of their type was cast on Barths. This was never so. Throughout their history a significant portion of their type was cast on pivotal type casters of various kinds. It would appear that their space and quad casting machines were of an entirely different origin.
Finally, it should be noted that ATF acquired and (probably immediately) scrapped both pivotal and "automatic" type casting machines from several of the foundries that they acquired.
The machines to cast spaces and quads at ATF were not Barths. But ATF didn't really talk about them. The most recent instance of which I am aware when ATF put them before the public eye was in 1893 (within a year of ATF's amalgamation), when they were displayed alongside the Barths at the World's Columbian Exhibition (and won an award).
These space & quad casters have never been positively identified (to the best of my current knowledge). However, based on a comparison of photographic evidence and the patent record, I am reasonably certain that they were in fact Ziegler patent casters inherited from MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan (q.v.).
These machines were identified in separate lots at the 1993 ATF auction and went to scrap.
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