Understanding the goals of this project requires some background information on the history of typecasting machinery and its path to preservation from the demise of commercial typecasting in the late 20th century to its renaissance (or at least a near-renaissance) in the early 21st.
When reading all of this, please understand that there are three distinct audiences for this project (meaning "interested" audiences who might be involved in similar projects and who might either gain from or object to this project; the general public is of course always a fourth, important, audience). These audiences can be seen as a spectrum (or at least as two strongly opposed poles, with some hope of a middle ground). On the one side there is the professional historical/cultural artifact conservation community, who will view the historical notes below with horror and sadness. On the other hand, there are the surviving practical typefounders, who will view the professional conservation professionals as enemies who must be defeated. In the middle (where I am), I hope that there will emerge a third category aligned with the emerging field of "restorative conservation." What this means is better defined by some of the works cited in the References (in particular {Watson 2010) and {Simeone 2012}).
This Barth project is also a case study in my general attempts at the Reverse Engineering of Big Old Machines. For a more philosophical discussion of why, see the essay on Makers' History.
But beyond advocating "restorative conservation," I wish here to go further to propose several levels of additional study as necessary and integral parts of any project to conserve industrial machinery. These steps or layers have not been addressed in the literture of conservation, or indeed in any literature. The ultimate goal here is to use this project as one of several case studies which form a part of a path to the continuation of machine typecasting into a long future.
The importance of the invention of the mass production of cast metal type in Europe in the 15th century and rapid spread of printing consequent upon this has been established quite securely. This was a major topic of research in the 20th century. This invention was a technological change of the first order, as important as the development of the steam engine. We may take this importance as an axiom here.
Within at least the world of graphic design, and more generally the world of books and literature, the importance of type not just as a manufactured product but as something with an aesthetic aspect is now felt to be equally axiomatic. Printing may remain a trade, but Type has become one of the Fine Arts. Type is a carrier of cultural value. Certain types, especially those of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, are spoken of in the same reverential terms as are the roughly contemporary works of, say, Raphael. 1
What is less secure, and what must emerge through studies such as this project, is the idea that type isn't something abstract. It can't be captured on a computer screen. As the great type historian Harry Carter said (to an audience of bibliographers), type is something that you can hold in your hand. It follows, therefore, that the machines used to make type are as important as type itself. Pictures won't do.
From the point of view of business and economics, metal type reached a high point in the post-WWII period. It was then one of the half-dozen largest industries in the world. Metal type gave way to various kinds of photographic type during a long period from the 1950s through the early 1980s, along with the early introduction of largely tape-based computerized typesetting. (Phototypesetting, which was a better fit with the emerging technologies of offset lithographic printing, suffered from difficult issues particularly in the area of making changes - easy to do in metal type, but hard to do on photographic film.)
Then in 1984 the Postscript page definition computer language was introduced, and with it digital lettering which could approximate type. 2 Within a few years, it replaced both metal and photographic type completely.
This was a major disruptive event, not an evolutionary change. The companies involved with metal and photographic type (Mergenthaler, Lanston, ATF) did not survive (or survived only as ghosts of their former selves). New companies such as Adobe replaced them. The old infrastructure was swept away, surviving only in isolated pockets and in hobby shops run by retired printers not yet willing to give up. By the 1990s, the making of metal type as an industrial enterprise had ceased. 3 But because metal type was so culturally important, its production - and the knowledge of how to make it - was carried forward by amateurs. In particular, in the USA, these amateurs gathered together to form that most wonderful of non-organizations, the American Typecasting Fellowship. As lovers of real type, we owe nearly everything that we now have to them.
It is important to realize the vital contributions of this amateur community of enthusiasts, because the present project will argue that the practices of these amateurs (and I count myself a very recent addition to their number) are now no longer appropriate. This might be seen as critical of them (in a negative way), but I sincerly hope that it is NOT taken in this negative way. If it were not for the actions of these amateurs, and the American Typecasting Fellowship, next-to-nothing of the practice of typefounding would have survived.
Having in the previous section just offended the community of enthusiastic amateurs who saved typefounding, I'll proceed here to offend the community of conservation professionals (or at least their employers).
Except for a few aspects of the public relations materials of major typefoundries such as ATF, typefounding machinery was always part of a back-room industrial operation. Compared to other major machines of the industrial era, such as the steam locomotive, it was invisible. This invisibility continues today. People often ask me what it is that I collect. At first I tried to answer them, but soon I realized that my answers, however, accurate, were meaningless to them because they lacked even the basic context for understanding that such machines might have existed. (Now I just say "I collect old printing equipment," which people think they understand - even when they do not.)
Moreover, the actual machinery involved presents significant issues. While it is perfectly possible to operate this machinery safely (generations of machine typefounders managed quite well), it is also quite easy to hurt yourself very badly very quickly. They require detailed technical knowledge, and significant supporting services (including, in their original operating settings, a full machine shop). They do not lend themselves well to simple public display by any but the most serious and dedicated. But as cold cast iron, they don't necessarily look interesting; it would be hard to figure out what they did if you didn't know. Finally, they tend to be heavy (sometimes very heavy), and frequently dirty. In short, they aren't easy things for a museum to display.
These properties have combine destructively with the direction that museums are going today in the area of industrial machinery. (This is the part where I'll begin to offend.) The state of museums of the history of technology today is largely the result of two external developments, one clearly negative and one which should have been positive but has not been. The clearly negative development is simply the decline in funding. There's always more to do, but always less money to do it with. The ambiguous development is that museums now have a mandate to "interpret" their collections for the public. This is in itself a good thing - strange old cast iron machines do need interpretation. The problem is that to "interpret" the past you don't actually need physical artifacts.
So while on the one hand the ability of conservation professionals to handle industrial artifacts appropriately has been consistently improving, on the other hand museum administrators have consistently found it easiest and cheapest simply to get rid of the difficult items. Big heavy dirty dangerous old machines are the most difficult of items.
So great has this problem become that every single collector of typecasting equipment I know of considers donation to a museum to be equivalent to sending the equipment straight to a scrap dealer. (There are, as possible exceptions, perhaps two specialist museums which are trying to do the right thing - but both of them have experienced financial difficulties.) I know of no serious enthusiast willing to consider such an option. Too many items have been donated in good faith and then have disappeared when nobody was looking.
Conservation professionals are not at fault here. Indeed, no conservator could participate in this and still be compliant with the AIC Guidelines. But conservation professionals do not have the final say. Boards and Trustees and their Administrators do. In the area of typefounding, they have failed us all, completely.
The upshot of this is that it is now necessary for amateur enthusiasts to take upon themselves another burden: that of the role of the conservation professional. Generally speaking, we are not qualified to do this. But it must be done, and nobody else will.
This project has eleven explicit goals. All of them are hard. Some of them are impossible, but still necessary.
Goal 1 is a basic statement of the need for conservation.
Goal 1. To conserve this machine so that at any future point:
It is possible that a few typecasting machines which have been placed in museums in recent years have been considered in terms of contemporary conservation practices (e.g., at the NSTM in Taiwan). It is likely that most machines placed in museums in the USA were placed there before the emergence of modern ideas in conservation. In one extreme case, a unique and historically valuable machine was "restored" to the point of being remanufactured by an important American cultural institution (the 1880s "Blower" Linotype at the Smithsonian). Most typecasting machinery in American and European museums, at least, is "conserved" only insofar as it is the subject of benign neglect. This neglect is good, because when these machines are noticed they becomes candidates for deaccessioning. One very important European museum (the Plantin-Moretus) recently did just that, and materials of great cultural value have been scattered without any means even of tracking them.
The concept of conservation is entirely alien to the world of private typecasting, and is likely to face serious resistance there.
Goals 2 and 3 are basic statements of the desire for restorative conservation. While this is a "desire," it is also a need because without a return to operating condition it is unlikely that in the future this machine will be preserved at all, much less conserved.
Goal 2. To return the machine to a state where it might once again cast type.
Goal 3. To accomplish goal 2 in such a way that the machine is no more dangerous to operate than it was at the time of its last major reworking by the engineering department of ATF (but before the unprofessional and dangerous repairs which characterized its last decades of operation at ATF).
The machine itself will always be dangerous to operate and can never be made to conform to modern safety standards. But there were aspects of its maintenance during its last half-century of use at ATF which compromised its safeness to the point that it should not have been in service at all when ATF shut down in 1993.
No attempt should be made to bring it up to current levels of operator safety standards; that would be a level of anachronism inconsistent with any conservation. But if it is to be operated at all, it must at least be brought up to the level of commonsense safety standards as practiced in the middle of the 20th century when it was in industrial operation (particularly as regards electrical wiring).
However, insofar as it is possible to implement modern safety precautions independently of the machine, this should be done. For example, if new motor or pot controls are wired to existing machine components, they should themselves be constructed to modern standards. (And at very least a standard modern safety ground wire to the machine must be added; this can be done without affecting its integrity.)
Goal 4. To accomplish goals 1, 2, and 3 in a manner which is entirely consistent with AIC Guidelines.
Goal 5. To develop a for the interested user of type an explanation of the Barth caster, its place in history, its technology, and the scope and nature of its operation and products, which is comprehensive, detailed, and correct.
The Barth has become an object of myth in the history of type. It can never be understood for its genuine merits until it is demythologized.
Goal 6. To document from existing oral tradition, and to rediscover by practice, the operational procedures for this machine and to record them so that in the future this and similar machines may be operated without having to rediscover their procedures.
In other words, write the Barth Operator's Manual that never existed. Doing so is probably within the purview of existing conservation practices.
Fewer than half a dozen people alive today know how to operate this machine. Knowledge of its operation has always been an oral tradition, and we are very close to losing that.
Goal 7. To train new operators on this machine.
This is obviously important to preserve the knowledge of the operation of the machine as a living oral tradition. It is also important because it may provide a pool of operators capable of running the two dozen other surviving Barths.
Most of those trained will never own a Barth, and indeed may never have the chance again to operate one. But the knowledge gained with this machine is relevant to other typecasting machines, and indeed to the general practice of letterpress printing. You cannot really know something until you have made it with your own hands. Some of the most important traditions of the American Typecasting Fellowship have been educational: the "Monotype University" of Rich Hopkins and "Thompson Tech" of Sky Shipley.
By way of analogy, it is of value for rail historical organizations to teach people how to become steam locomotive engineers, even though very few people will ever own a steam locomotive.
Yes, in my actions upon the Barth I'm making it up as I go along. But carefully.
Goal 8. Through the experiences of this project, to develop a set of guidelines, both theoretical and hands-on practical, for the restorative conservation of complex industrial-era machinery.
It's all very well to have "guidelines" which allow you to judge whether or not to do something, but you also need workshop texts which describe the things which can be done (and which should not be done). This detailed technical literature of conservation practices is well established in other areas (paintings, furniture, books, etc.) but it is presently unknown in the field of typecasting machinery. Indeed, it is rare in most mechanical/industrial heritage activities, and is only now being developed in some of them. The field of horological conservation leads the way here, with significant work also in automobile conservation and possibly steam preservation; see also the Dynamic Objects Network within the Institute of Conservation (UK). My work on this Barth must draw upon this small literature, and if possible it should also give back to these other fields.
Creating an Operator's Manual (Goal 6, above) is a part of Conservation as it is now understood. But this project has the further goal of creating for this machine the complete and relatively standard suite of technical documentation through which all complex machines are now created. This has not before been a part of conservation, but in my opinion must become so.
Goal 9. To create a full suite of planning, installation, and maintenance documentation, including:
The following goal is ambitious and will take longer, but the project is not complete until it has been accomplished.
Goal 10. To create a complete modern engineering description of the machine at a level which does not merely duplicate the machine but which reverse-engineers the original engineering intentions and principles which guided its creation.
If you consider these two goals in reverse order (#10 and #9), and add Goal #6 (the Operator's Manual) to them, they become a statement of the rediscovery of the entire engineering and engineering documentation program of the original machine: its engineering definition, its descriptive and maintenance documentation, and its operator training and its documentation.
[The following comments are excessively detailed for this Notebook and should be moved elsewhere once a place for them exits.]
Note: In pre- and early- industrial machines, doing this would imply the acknowledgment of the need for some amount, possibly a great amount, of hand fitting. For late 19th and early 20th century machines such as Barth Type Casters, which were built in quantity, it implies a fully realized system of interchangeable parts.
Example: A 3-D scan can merely duplicate an existing part, which in a sufficiently detailed view is only one of infinitely many parts which would have been accepted as being within tolerance. This is not sufficient. What we require is a understanding of the systems of fits, and their representation in tolerances.
It is in principle impossible to do this with absolute certainty. As a lesser test, we can accept the "functional gauging" of components - if the component we define would work if substituted in the original machine, we can accept our definition of it.
Further note: There is some level of anachronism necessary here, as the full ability to express tolerances did not emerge until Parker in the 1940s. We are using a later, more detailed, information technology to capture the results of our studies of the intentions of earlier engineers and builders.
The conservation and restorative conservation of Barths and other type casting machines is important for two reasons: First, because the machines themselves deserve it as important parts of our cultural and technological history. Second, because the production, albeit on a limited scale, of cast metal type must continue in order for type to remain comprehensible to the visual designers of the future.
The second of these goals, however, raises a difficult problem. Restorative conservation has its limits. It may be possible to keep a pipe organ playing for hundreds of years, but it is unlikely that this can be done with an industrial machine. These casters were designed without any definite service life; the concept of "planned obsolescence" was unknown to their builders. All of them have been in service for at least decades; some for over a century. But, still, they wear out. Parts are scarce at best and, increasingly, simply not available. Even for machines produced in quantity, such as the Thompson, we are at the end of the supply of certain important spares. Bringing this 60 pt. Barth back in service will require the manufacture of three missing parts for which no spares exist.
Current practice within the typecasting community is to do whatever it takes to keep the machines running, without regard for the conservation of the history physically embodied in them. This can continue, but not forever. It is probably possible for another couple of decades. Beyond that, the machines will simply wear out to a point beyond practical repair. Moreover, the machines remaining at the end of this process will have been so highly altered that they will be of as little value to the historian as to the practical typecaster.
Restorative conservation can extend this timeframe and it can ensure that the machines which remain continue to be of historical value. But even so the process cannot go on forever.
The conclusion is both obvious and, at the present moment, unthinkable: we must build new type casting machines.
We don't need them yet, but we need to start thinking about them now. Serious basic questions need answers. Do we simply copy existing machines (with safety updates as necessary)? Do we copy only parts of existing machines (replicating, for example, their mold and matrix equipment but replacing cams with electromechanical controls)? Or do we engineer new type casters from scratch? Each of these (and other) options has its advantages and problems. 4 It may even be best to pursue multiple approaches simultaneously.
In an ideal future, we would begin constructing new type casting machines sooner rather than later. The sooner we have new machines, the sooner we can reduce the rate at which we wear out our old ones. The best of all worlds would be the use of restoratively conserved historic type casting machinery in controlled demonstrations for as long as possible, together with the unlimited use of newly constructed casters to produce the supply of type necessary for the future.
The following professional Guidelines are incorporated into this project by reference:
Various industrial codes and standards are also important, as required. (The conservation of an 18th century automaton has little to do with an "Electrical Standard for Industrial Machinery," for example, but the restorative conservation of a Barth type caster certainly does!) In each case the most current version should be consulted (but to understand an existing machine prior, now obsolete, versions may also be of use). These include:
1. Both of these views are of course historical constructions. In particular, it is worth bearing in mind something which is not yet a part of the curriculum of contemporary graphic design: that the view of type design as one of the pillars of civilization is a late 19th to mid-20th century construction which is largely due to the need to sell typecasting machinery. It did not exist before 1885, when Theodore Low DeVinne presented the first major paper on the subject. Indeed, it could not have existed much before that date because it depends upon the ability employ photoengraving techniques to reproduce early specimens. DeVinne's ideas fell on fertile ground. Soon after, William Morris promoted a return to idealized versions of 15th century types as morally superior. Morris, a committed socialist, gave business just what it needed. Typefounders of the late 19th century had pushed a particular avenue of type design, heavily ornamented display types, to its logical end. They needed new fashions in types so that they could sell more type, and the emerging manufacturers of composing typecasting machinery (Linotype, Monotype) soon needed the same thing. The return to classical models provided just that. This reached a high point with the extended work of Stanley Morison and Beatrice Warde, funded largely by The Monotype Corp., Ltd. so so as to enable them to create an environment where printers needed to buy more Monotype machines. The great irony in all of this is that our current view of the "eternal truth" of type as a bearer of cultural value was created out of whole cloth in a highly successful effort to sell more machinery.
Despite the recent origin of both of these views, we may still accept them as a sound basis. We live in the world we live in, and these two ideas define the position of printing and type in our world.
2. While the early digital type system IKARUS did provide a full digital analog of metal type, neither Postscript nor any of our current "type" technologies derived from it do. There are simple things that may be done in metal type which express the designer's intent which are in principle impossible in Postscript. Digital type is certainly possible (witnes IKARUS), but if by "type" we mean (to take an example) "what Nicolas Jenson did," there is no digital type today. This is an important point which I will argue elsewhere. It is another reason that we need the restorative conservation of typecasting machinery so that it can be kept in operation not just for another few years, but for generations - otherwise they'll never know what real type is.
3. It never died completely. There has been no point, ever, since the 1450s, when it was not possible to have a matrix made commercially and type cast from it. But during the height of metal type in the mid-20th century, it was a vast enterprise. Companies such as Mergenthaler Linotype, Ludlow Typograph, and the two Monotypes stocked millions of matrices. The late 20th century survivals were smaller independent shops which happened to have acquired a pantograph, a few surviving foundries such as Stephenson Blake, at least one preseveration entity (now the Type Archive, which includes both the materials of The Monotype Corp. and Stephenson Blake), at least one now-privatized institution (l'Imprimerie Nationale in Paris), and a few sources in Japan and India. By the 1980s, the momentum clearly had passed from industry to the highly motivated and deeply knowledable amateur community.
4. My own intuitive preference is to favor two compatible principles:
First, prefer traditional styles of engineering. Cams may be old-fashioned, but cam systems can remain functional for a century. Electromechanical mechanisms only last a decade or two and must then be re-engineered for new components.
Second, look to the best of past practices. The pinnacle of development of machines for casting single types for the cases occurred in Japan in the 1960s with the Hakko. Start there. Then add from other good practices as appropriate (Foucher, KüCo, Barth, Super Caster, and, yes, even the resolutely practical Thompson).
{Simeone 2012} Simeone, Frederick A., ed. The Stewardship of Historically Important Automobiles. Philadelphia, PA: Simeone Automotive Foundation / Coachbuilt Press, 2012.
Simeone's book, containing articles by a wide range of experts in the field not only of automobiles but also of other historical artifacts (fine furniture, the auction trade, etc.), is a beautifully illustrated volume designed to make a point to the (often wealthy) collector of automobiles that the "over-restoration" typical of past decades is rapidly destroying what remains of our automotive/industrial heritage. The work and position of Simeone and his contributors is based soundly on the same research and principles as those expressed in more academic volumes such as {Watson 2010). But the real "punch" of Simeone comes when he reduces it to the bottom line. In mature areas of cultural artifacts, such as fine paintings and fine furniture, auction-house values of original-condition pieces can easily be 15 times higher than those of even moderately altered pieces (and heavily "restored" pieces are almost valueless). Not $30,000 ("restored"), but $475,000 (with its history intact). If you don't believe the lofty academics of someone like Watson, then just follow the money.
{Watson 2010} Watson, John R. Artifacts in Use: The Paradox of Restoration and the Conservation of Organs. Richmond, VA: OHS Press, 2010.
Available online as a Print-On-Demand book.
This is the most detailed analysis of all of the arguments concerning the spectrum which runs from conservation to remanufacturing, and the place of restorative conservation within this spectrum and its controversies. Watson is a professional organ conservator at Colonial Williamsburg. The pipe organ and the type caster, while obviously very different mechanically, share a common position because they are both artifacts which are valued primarily through their continued use and which for the most part will be scrapped if they are not used.
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