This is a collection of digital reprints of original source material for the Nuernberger-Rettig or Universal typecaster.
(Many (most) of the documents reprinted here are actually stored at The Internet Archive (www.archive.org). Clicking on a link to a document stored there will take you to the Internet Archive page for the document.)
Design, Construction, Operation, Matrices, Quotation Quads & Matrix
(Chicago: Universal Type-Making Machine Company, [no date]) This is a booklet of unknown title which contains a frontispeice illustrating the caster and two text sections. The first section is entitled "The Universal Type Caster[:] Its Design, Construction and Operation" (pp. vii through xii) The second is entitled "Universal Type Caster Matrices[:] Prices and Rates for Rental" (p. xiii). To this I have appended a single sheet from a different publication (numbered page 144) which illustrates quotation quads and the quotation quad matrix for the Universal Type Maker. (All of these items were stapled together in the photocopy that is my source.)
This is a PDF that I have assembled from scans I made of a second or third generation photocopy. The images in it have suffered from the photocopying and are not entirely legible, but I am grateful to have anything at all. My thanks to Sky Shipley of Skyline Type Foundry for kindly giving me this photocopy.
Directions for Operating the Universal Type-Maker
(Chicago: Universal Type-Making Machine Company, [no date].) Including an illustrated parts list.
This is a PDF that I have assembled from scans I made of a second or third generation photocopy. The images in this book are generally in better shape than those in the "Design" book above (except for the frontispiece). My thanks to Sky Shipley of Skyline Type Foundry for kindly giving me this photocopy.
Note: In each of these digital reprints I have done such annotations as were required in a sans serif typeface of provenance unknown to me which might most charitably be described as plain. It has, however, the considerable advantage of being easy to differentiate from the source text.
The Nuernberger-Rettig Typecasting Machine. (1907)
Cited with no further information in an entry at openlibrary.org
Specimen Book of Type, Borders, Characters, Etc. Cast on the Nuernberger-Rettig Type-Caster . [Chicago]: Universal Type-Making Machine Co., 1911.
Google Books has scanned this, from an as yet unidentified library. As of 2009-09-23 they had not released it full view. A copy is also at the Bibliothek Universiteit van Amsterdam.
Specimen Book of Universal Type Caster Faces Including Borders, Ornaments and Miscellaneous Characters . 321 North Sheldon Street, [Chicago]: Universal Type-Making Machine Co., 1915. 195 pages.
Google Books has scanned this, from an as yet unidentified library. As of 2009-09-23 they had not released it full view. Copies are also in the Columbia and Harvard libraries.
Specimen Book of Universal Type Caster Faces Including Borders, Ornaments and Miscellaneous Characters . Chicago: Universal Type-Making Machine Co., 191?. xvi + 193 pages, 8vo.
Copies in the Newberry Library, NYPL, and USC library.
Advertisements and Trade Notes
Chicago Printing Trades Blue Book (1911 edition). The Inland Printer (various).
Inland Printer (June 1907)
"The Neurnberger-Rettig Typecasting Machine." The Inland Printer, Vol. 39, No. 3 (June 1907): 419-420. It is likely that this was the introduction of the machine to the trade.
[click image to view larger]
ITU Typographical Journal (1907)
International Typographical Union of North America. The Typographical Journal. Vol. 31, No. 1 (July 1907), p. 16. This is just an extract of the cover and the single relevant page. Digitized by Google.
McCue. Inland Printer (1909)
McCue, Alfred. "Talks on Typecasting." The Inland Printer. Part 2 in Vol. 44, No. 3 (Dec. 1909): 381-382. This contains a side-by-side comparison of the Compositype, Nuernberger-Rettig, and Thompson. The icon at left is a link to its presentation in the General Literature on Making Printing Matrices and Types Notebook.
From Legros and Grant (1916)
Legros and Grant's 1916 book remains the most comprehensive technical survey of all aspects of type-making. It has been digitized and released for full view by Google (in the US; it may not be viewable elsewhere in the world), but I have independently scanned an original copy. The extract here is from my scans.
Anon. [article title unknown] Typesetting Machine Engineers' Journal [apparently only one issue, April 1916].
The text and illustrations of this article on the Universal Type-Caster and Philip G. Nuernberger was reprinted in the ATF Newsletter, No. 33 (October, 2009) (Terra Alta, WV: Hill and Dale Typefoundry and Press for the American Typecasting Fellowship, 2009): 6.
American Printer. (September, 1913).
Cited by Huss (see "Modern Studies," below). According to Google Books that would be Vol. 57. They've scanned it, but not yet released it for full view.
Note: Before developing their own typecasting machine, both Nuernberger and Rettig took out patents for typecasting machinery that were assigned to Barnhart Brothers and Spindler. (These included at least Nuernberger's US 667,790 of 1901-02-12 and GB 4,985 of 1901 and Rettig's US 354,935 of 1886-12-28 and US 370,819 of 1887-10-04.) I have not reproduced these here, but this may be a mistake. Rettig's patent 354,935, for example, indicates an early interest in methods of breaking off the jet and is therefore really a part of the technical history of the Nuernberger-Rettig machine.
US 830,358, Type-Casting Mold
Patented 1906-09-04. Application filed 1905-05-05. Application Serial Number 260,581. Copending with Application Serial Number 256,930, which was issued as patent 853,647. Issued to Philip G. Nuernberger and George Rettig, Jr. of Chicago. Not assigned.
'... a mold embracing means whereby the type are cast and the "jet" separated therefrom in such a manner as to be discharged from the mold a finished product ready for use.'
US 853,647, Type-Casting Mold
Patented 1907-05-14. Application filed 1905-04-22. Application Serial Number 256,930. Issued to Philip G. Nuernberger and George Rettig, Jr. of Chicago. Not assigned. This patent was filed one month before 830,358 (see above), but was not issued until nearly a year later than that patent.
'... whereby the "jet" may be automatically and perfectly separated from the type and the latter provided with a groove and a smooth finished base in the operation of casting, the type being thereby produced in condition for printers' use."
US 884,754, Type-Casting Mold
Patented 1908-04-14. Application filed 1905-12-30. Application Serial Number 294,016. Issued to Philip G. Nuernberger and George Rettig, Jr. of Chicago. Assigned to Universal Automatic Typecasting Machine Company, of Chicago.
"The objectis the same as that set forth in [853,647] and [830,358], but differentiates with reference to the location of the breaking-off junction of the type and jet in the operation of casting."
US 913,546, Type-Casting Machine
Patented 1909-02-23. Application filed 1905-12-04. Application Serial Number 291,756. This patent was filed just befere Nuernberger and Rettig's third (so far as I can discover) type-casting mold patent (US patent 884,754, filed 1905-12-30), and it references their earliest-filed (again, so far as I can discover) type-casting mold patent (then copending US patent application serial number 256,930 filed 1905-04-22 and issued as US patent 853,647 on 1907-05-14). Assigned to Universal Automatic Typecasting Machine Company, of Chicago. This present patent may perhaps be considered the basic patent for the Nuernberger-Rettig or "Universal" typecasting machine.
[a typecasting machine] "generally to provide mechanism that will produce castings or type having smooth finished surfaces ready for practical use when discharged from the mold and entirely dispensing with the usual after finishing process."
GB No. 11,914 of 1906, Type and Other Metal Casting Moulds
Date of Application 1906-05-22. Accepted 1906-11-08.
GB No. 11,915 of 1906, Type Casting Machine
Date of Application 1906-05-22. Accepted 1906-11-15.
US 1,016,433, Matrix-Holder
Patented 1912-02-06 Application filed 1909-09-13. Application Serial Number 517,451. Assigned to Universal Type Making Machine Company, of Chicago.
Matrix holders for Linotype and Monotype matrices.
The US patents here were downloaded as TIFF images from the USPTO and assembled by me (well, by a hacked version of the pat2pdf script) into PDF files. I haven't done any cleanup of these images (no rotation, no cropping, etc.); they are exactly as available at the USPTO. They are full resolution; I don't have higher-resolution scans of these. (I belive that the USPTO scanned their patent holdings at 300 dpi.)
The GB patents here were downloaded as PDF files from the GB portal to the European Patent Office's esa@cenet user interface I don't have any higher-resolution versions of these.
As it was basically a pivotal typecaster, the Nuernberger-Rettig produced a pin mark. There was a discussion of this on the LETPRESS mailing list in 2002. Paul Aken (2002-02-18) of the Platen Press Museum described the pin mark as "a capital N and capital R. The last stroke of the N overlaps the first stroke of the R." Steve Saxe (2002-02-18) recommended:
Lasko, David J. "Pin Marks, Nicks, and Grooves: Some Notes on the History of American Typefounding." Festina Lente: The Journal of the Melbert B. Cary, Jr. Graphic Arts Collection. Vol. 1, No. 1 (February, 1980): 3-20. Rochester, NY: Cary Graphic Arts Collection of the Rochester Institute of Technology, 1980.
However, an examination of this work reveals that while it has an extensive and valuable coverage of pin marks, it does not, in fact, document the Nuernberger-Rettig or Universal pin mark.
Carr, Dan. [article with title as yet unknown to me] Matrix: A Review for Printers and Bibliophiles. No. 27 (2007) (Andoversford, Gloucestershire, UK: Whittington Press, 2007).
I have not yet had the chance to get down to the university library to check this. Dan Carr and Julia Ferrari run the Golgonooza Letter Foundry and Press in New Hampshire.
Huss, Richard. The Development of Printer's Mechanical Typesetting Methods: 1822-1925. Charlottesville, VA: The University Press of Virginia for the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1973. p. 239 .
The Directions for Operating the Universal Type-Maker (Chicago: Universal Type-Making Machine Co., [no date, but well before 1923]) is in the public domain. Scanned by DMM from a second or third generation photocopy. The digital versions here are in the public domain.
The The Universal Type Caster: Its Design, Construction and Operation (Chicago: Universal Type-Making Machine Co., [no date, but well before 1923]) is in the public domain. Scanned by DMM from a second or third generation photocopy. The digital versions here are in the public domain.
The Typographical Journal Vol. 31 (1907) is in the public domain. Digitized by Google. I believe that Google does not assert additioanl copyright on its digitizations of public domain material, so their digital version is in the public domain. The digital versions presented here, adapted from the Google Books versions, are in the public domain.
Legros and Grant's Typographical Printing Surfaces (London: Longmans, Green an Co., 1916). is in the public domain. Scanned by DMM from the original. The digital versions here are in the public domain.
US patent documents are in the public domain. The digital versions presented here, prepared from the scans at the USPTO, remain in the public domain.
British patents issued before Aug. 1, 1989 were subject to Crown Copyright for a period of 50 years. The original versions of the patents reproduced here are therefore in the public domain. The source documents used here are the PDFs presented by the UK Intellectual Property Office via ESP@CENET. I can find no indication at all in their presentation that any additional copyright has been asserted for these digital versions. I believe, therefore, that they are in the public domain.
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2009-2010 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
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