US patent 547,860, issued 1895-10-15 to James William Paige. "Machine for Distributing, Setting, and Justifying Type." Application filed 1887-08-19 as application serial number 247,325.
This patent is famous, or perhaps infamous, in its own right. It is huge, with 55 pages of text, 146 claims, and 163 sheets of drawings. It was issued in 1895 on the same day as two other patents pertinent to this machine, 547,859 (Paige) and 547,861 (Paige & North).
Although the Paige was not a commercial success, this patent has an interesting link to later, very successful, typographical machinery. Normally when reading a patent one ignores the signatures of the witnesses to the drawings; typically they're just the patent attorney's clerks. However, in this case one of the clerks was a certain Frank Hinman Pierpont. He went on first to promote the Rogers Typograph in Germany (where it remained in production until the 1960s) and then, most importantly, to become the works manager for the Monotype Corporation, Limited, in England. In this position he became one of the most influential figures in hot metal typography in the first third of the 20th century.
The digital reprint of this patent presented here was scanned by me from an original printed copy. This scan is of significance because the US Patent Office has deliberately destroyed the originals of all historic patents.
Thanks are due to to Mark Knudsen for making this material available.
Presenting a document of this size and at this scanning resolution is (at present) difficult. Here are some options:
1. [oddly, Google Patents does not seem to have this patent (2011-11-28)]
2. If you just want to read some version of it, a PDF assembled from PNG conversion of the TIFF images from the USPTO is only 18 Megabytes. Regrettably, the image quality is very bad, as this is the bi-level (not greyscale) 300 dpi scan done by the USPTO. But in any case, here it is: us-0547860-1895-10-15-paige-distributing-setting-and-justifying-type.pdf
3. I have uploaded the PDF of a 600dpi greyscale version of my scan of the specification (that is, the text without the drawings) to The Internet Archive. It may be viewed at http://www.archive.org/details/PaigeCompositorUS547860Text600grey. The advantage of viewing it at The Internet Archive is that they should automatically generate handy derivative versions, including a "read online" option [note: I've found that sometimes for large files such as this their derivation process gets stuck; I have no way to fix this, as it's their software, not mine.] The "big PDF" in the "HTTP" files section of this presentation is the same PDF available locally below.
4. Similarly, I've uploaded the PDF of a 600dpi greyscale version of my scan of the drawings ("sheets") to The Internet Archive. at http://www.archive.org/details/PaigeCompositorUS547860Sheets600grey. The "big PDF" in the "HTTP" files section of this presentation is the same PDF available locally below.
5. [NOT DONE YET] I've uploaded all of the original 1200 dpi color scans to The Internet Archive. at http://www.archive.org/details/PaigeCompositorUS547860Scans1200RGB. This consists of 218 individual page images each of which is about 200 Megabytes in size (about 45 Gigabytes, total). This is a huge, unwieldy presentation (non-presentation, really) which will not be easy to use. Still, it archives the original data in a durable (one hopes) public location.
6. In the next section will be found PDFs of 600dpi greyscale JPEG conversions of the text and the drawings.
7. In the last section below will be found all 218 individual page scans (163 sheets, 55 text) both as 600dpi color JPEG reductions and as the original, large, 1200dpi color PNG scans.
US Patent 547,860, Drawings, 600dpi Greyscale PDF
The 163 sheets of drawings. 600dpi greyscale JPEG (that is, lossy) conversions of the original 1200dpi RGB PNG page scans, assembled into a single PDF file. 1.5 Gigabytes.
US Patent 547,860, Text, 600dpi Greyscale PDF
The 55 pages of specification text. 600dpi greyscale JPEG (that is, lossy) conversions of the original 1200 dpi RGB page scans, assembled into a single PDF file. 563 Megabytes.
Here are the 163 sheets of drawings and 55 pages of specification text, presented as individual page scans, in color. In each case the small image links to a 600dpi reduction of the original scan, converted to the smaller (but "lossy") JPEG image format. Each of these is about 10 or 12 Megabytes in size. Below each there is a small button you can click on to get the original, raw, scan done at 1200 dpi, RGB, and saved losslessly as a PNG image. Each full-size image is about 200 Megabytes in size. (Note: if your browser/computer has difficulties handling such a large file, you may wish to save it offline rather than view it directly; for example, in Firefox under Linux, right-click on the button and select the "Save Link As" option.)
[NOTE: at present not all of the full-resolution image are online. They total about 50 Gigabytes, which takes many days to upload over a small rural Internet connection.]
US patent specifications and drawings are in the public domain. The scans and reprints of this patent done here remain in the public domain.
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2011 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
Circuitous Root is a Registered Trademark of David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution - ShareAlike" license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ for its terms.
Presented originally by Circuitous Root®
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