Henry Lewis Bullen on the Linotype

Bullen on Benton in The Inland Printer (1922)

Bullen, Henry Lewis. "Linn Boyd Benton - The Man and His Work." The Inland Printer, Vol. 70, No. 1 (October, 1922): frontis, pp. 60-64.

This article is primarily a biographical sketch of Linn Boyd Benton. It also includes sections on the relationship between Benton and the Linotype and on Mergenthaler and the Linotype itself. Regrettably, though, these sections are inaccurate. The story that Bullen tells of the influence of the Linotype on Benton's pantograph engraving machine must be an outright fabrication, and his sketch of Mergenthaler amounts to character assassination, not history.

This volume of The Inland Printer has been digitized by Google from the University of Michigan copy and is available via The Hathi Trust (Hathi ID: mdp.39015086783449). The icon at left links to a local copy of an extract of just the Bullen article on Benton as presented in the CircuitousRoot Notebook on Linn Boyd Benton.

See the Notebook on Benton's Vertical Pantograph for Patrices and Punches for an analysis of the problems with Bullen's story of the influcence of the Linotype on it. The story Bullen tells has often been repeated, but it cannot be true.

Here is an analysis of the errors in Bullen's sketch in this article of Ottmar Mergenthaler.

See the presentation of this article in the Notebook on Linn Boyd Benton for links to analyses of other errors in this article.