The Compositype Sorts Caster

1. The Compositype Sorts Caster

Thompson, in { History of Composing Machines (1904) } has this to say about this machine:

"COMPOSITYPE SORTS CASTER

"A typecasting machine adapted to supply a printing-office with fonts or sorts as needed was conceived in 1899 by a trio of Baltimore inventors, Frank H. Brown, George A. Boyden and John E. Hanrahan, who after years of experiment have produced a machine which has been put into practical operation in a number of printing-offices. The machine is compact, being 52 inches high and requiring a floor space of but 27 by 45 inches. It weighs about eight hundred pounds, and a quarter horse-power motor is used to drive it. Any size type from 6 to 36 point can be cast, and quads and spaces from one point up, at a speed of about twelve types per minute. The change from one size to another occupies two or three minutes. The matrices are supplied at $20 per set and the machine leased for $500 per year. The matrices are produced by electrotyping foundry type and mounting the shell in a small brass plate, which is so accurately fitted as to permit the matrix to be quickly clamped in place in the machine without other adjustment. The mold can be quickly changed by removing or inserting different thicknesses of liners for changes in set or width, and inserting different molds for changes in body, these changes being "self-adjusting." THe matrix is clamped into place in a reciprocating ram which carries the matrix to and from the modl, the casting, ejecting and trimming movements proceeding automatically, the type being delivered on a slide ready for the case. The machine is called the Compositype Sorts Caster." (79-80)

See Annenberg, Type Foundries of America and their Catalogs, p. 222. John E. Hanrahan was "principal type designer" for the John Ryan Type Foundry, Baltimore. That firm was noted as a firm of progressive machinery builders, providing not only type but the equipment for an entire small printing establishment as a complete package. It merged into ATF at the amalgamation of ATF in 1892. Hanrahan stayed their until 1899, "when he resigned to promote his invention, the Compositype type caster." (Annenberg, 222). It is interesting that Hanrahan was a type designer, and that Compositype seemed to spend a great deal of effort on type design (providing matrices later to Nuernberger-Rettig/Universal and Thompson, and promoting "The Compositype Line" (lining system) in literature printed (reprinted?) by Thompson.

The following illustration of a "Sorts Caster" appeared, without further identification, in the article "Type-Casting Machines" (by Charles H. Cochrane) in the 1920 { Encyclopedia Americana }. (This work is available online through Google Books.) It is pretty clearly the Compositype; indeed, this engraving is almost certainly drawn from the same illustration reproduced in halftone in Thompson.