A Heretic's Guide to Type

Or, Nearly Everything They Taught You Is Wrong

I try not to be a disagreeable person, yet if confronted with the many books which are being written today on the subject of type, I find that I disagree with important (and commonly accepted) points in most of them. I believe, moreover, that I can provide sound evidence for my objections in both the history and technological practices of making and using type. Here's an index to those places in the CircuitousRoot Notebooks where these issues come up.

Theoretical/Historical/Metahistorical:

• The "optical scale in typefounding," as introduced in 1937 by Harry Carter, was an argument in opposition to what we commonly think of today as "optical scaling." Every citation of Carter's article today (that I have found so far) misunderstands and misrepresents what he actually said.
• The concept of a "typeface" is a modern notion which cannot adequately describe type as it was made from the 15th century through about 1870. Also, size, not letterform design, is the most basic attribute of type. Both of these heretical notions are discussed in the section Clubs and Cults within the "book" Making Matrices .
• There's no such person as a "Type Designer" in the industrial making of metal type.
• Although digital type is certainly possible, with two minor exceptions which are never encountered in practice there is no digital type today, only computer-aided lettering . The failure to realize this steals from graphic designers the understanding of the historical roots of their profession and any ability to learn from its past.
• The current status of type and typography as sacred bearers of our civilization (along with the "type designer's" status as rock star) is an anomaly in the larger history of type. It is due to a series of deliberate commercial marketing moves by type-makers which were intended to sell type and composing machinery. See the second in the pair of essays on Digital Type and Computer-Aided Lettering.
• The current practice of using a single space after a period in typescripts is not a matter of objective truth but rather a change of fashion, like hemlines. It can be correlated strongly with the changes in the fashions for typographical spacing. See: The Fashionable Set.
• After all of this, it is only fair for me to explain the origins with my obsession with the alignment of type.

• Most one-off work involving letterforms, as well as basically all such 19th century lithographic work and much 20th century offset lithographic work, was done by lettering, not typography. The two are not the same, and it is nonsensical to ask "what font did they use" about a 19th century street sign or the finer class of 20th century department store showcards.

• See also the Notebooks "By Way of Explanation" in the section on Type & Type-Making History and Design
  • Why are there No "Type Designers" Here?
  • How Do We Know?
  • The History of the History of Type [NOT ONLINE YET]
  • Not So Bad After All [NOT ONLINE YET]
  • The Path Cut Short: Graphic Design 1900-1939 [NOT ONLINE YET]

Terminological:

• Nearly all of the terms used in what is today taught as "digital typography" are used incorrectly. If you try to employ them in using or making physical type you will fail, because they do not describe reality.
  • Leading is not inter-baseline spacing.
  • Kerning cannot be done by a user of type (it is an optional operation during the making of type). What you probably mean is "letterspacing" and (with physical type) "mortising."
  • Type has no baseline.
• A "type foundry" is an establishment in which type is actually cast. While this may seem obvious, most 20th century writers on type foundries have in fact excluded the majority of them for various reasons that may now be seen as simply the marketing positions of certain of the (once) more powerful firms recycled unconsciously. See On the Importance of All Typefoundries.
• The face size of type is not the same as the type body size. This isn't a "heresy," really. There can be no argument about this point; it is obvious to anyone who has ever used metal type. But the misunderstanding of this point is becoming a real problem. It isn't surprising that people who know only Computer Aided Lettering (which is what passes for "type" today) get this wrong, because type body information is not recorded in current digital formats (see above). What is disturbing, however, is when otherwise meticulous scholars writing about metal type do not understand what type body size is. Here's a short Notebook on this subject which illustrates the difference betwen face size and body size, notes the importance of body size, and identifies instances in the literature where type face size has been confused with type body size (this last point not to attack them but merely to show how this misunderstanding has damaged what is otherwise very serious and important scholarly work).

Technological:

• There are three (not two) major methods for making the matrices for metal type:
  • punchcutting (by hand or machine)
  • patrix engraving (by hand or machine)
  • direct matrix engraving (by machine)
  American and English histories (but not German ones) erase patrix engraving from the historical record, despite its having been the primary method of production for display types for hand setting from the middle of the 19th century to the end of commercial typefounding. See The Issue of Patrix Cutting in Soft Metal for a historical discussion and the evidence for this claim. See Patrix Cutting for pointers to the locations in CircuitousRoot where patrix cutting is discussed (sometimes in technical terms).

• The first pantographic matrix making in America was done in 1882, before Benton. See The Central Type Foundry Pantograph [Aside: I am not "bashing" Benton. He was a great man and an amazing intuitive engineer; his place in the history of type is secure. But the mythology which has been created around him has obscured his actual contributions. Benton was a precise man. Imprecision in history does him a disservice.]
• Linn Boyd Benton did not "invent the pantograph in 1885." He probably cut patrices pantographically around 1883. His firm advertised the machine cutting of punches in 1884 ( Henry Lewis Bullen's story about the involvement of P. T. Dodge of the Linotype company in this is a fabrication. ) Benton did not actually cut a matrix until about 1899.
• Not all typographical pantographs were "Benton" machines, nor is a Benton pantograph required. Benton developed at least five distinct pantographs, only two of which made patrices, punches, or matrices) These are fine machines, but they are not magical. They are one thread in a tremendous amount of activity in the application of pantographic methods to precision engineering in the 19th century . Before, contemporary with, and after Benton two dozen identified pantographs and a dozen more unidentified ones have been used for patrix, punch, and matrix engraving.
• By the time Benton directly engraved his first matrix around 1899, there were already several firms offering commercial matrix engraving services to the typefounding industry. These included
  • Schroeder & Werner (ca. 1889 - 1891)
  • Schroeder (independently from 1891)
  • Werner (independently from 1891)
  • Wiebking, Hardinge & Co. (pantographically from 1894)
  There were also matrix electroforming companies known to have been using pantographs for patrix engraving. These included:
  • Minneapolis Electro Matrix (ca. 1891)
  • Electro Matrix Company (NY) (ca. 1891)
• (For a general survey of the points made above, see also the Notebook on pantographic methods Beyond (and Before) Benton.)

• All type casting machines need to be considered together as a single group. Their division into "foundry" casters, "sorts" casters, "monotypes," and so forth was based on marketing efforts, not technical realities. See Why Not Categorize Them?.
• There have been many more different type casting machines used than the marketing department of ATF and the type historians it trained ever recorded. See the (necessarily incomplete) study of this at Who Cast with Which Casters?

• Neither Ottmar Mergenthaler nor nor the Mergenhaler company in America ever made a "Simplex" Linotype model. The term was an alternative name for the German derivative of the Model 1 Linotype made by Mergenthaler Setzmaschinen-Fabrik GmbH in Germany. It entered the English-language literature on the Linotype in a translation of a 1954 German book on the history of the Linotype which wrongly called Mergenthaler's experimental machine of 1889 the "Simplex" Linotype. Since then, its use has spread and it has caused considerable confusion. There are now sources which claim that Ottmar Mergenthaler built this machine, that the Mergenthaler Linotype Company built it, that it was the Model 1, that it was the "Square Base," that it was the Model 1 and the Square Base, and even that it was the "Blower" Linotype. None of these things are true. The name "Simplex Linotype" has no place in the description of any American, British, Canadian, or any other non-German Linotype model. (The quite different Dougall Linotype made very briefly by the Canadian Linotype company was, confusingly, sometimes call the "Simplex," but it stands outside of the main lines of Linotype evolution.)

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