Brochure and Specimen, 16 Page

A 16 page brochure for the Material Making Machine. It consists primarily of showings of the various types of strip and decorative material it could cast; it contains little technical detail. It is undated. (Hopkins dates the introduction of the Material Making Machine to 1923. The underlying patent for fusion casting was issued to Amos L. Knight in 1917, but was filed in 1914.)

Note: This is a beautiful brochure to hold, but a difficult one to scan due to its folding. It opens first to a two-page spread ("Strip Material: A Big Factor in Composing Room Economy"). Then it opens "up" to a four-page spread showing "Single-Column Want-Ad Rules, Dashes, Braces, Decorative End Rules, Etc." Then it opens again to its full extent, one side of which is an eight-page poster showing "Straight-Line Rules" and "Ornamental Borders" (you have to rotate the orientation of the brochure to hold this "poster" as intended). If you then fold it back up, the back page is "Hands Do Best When Supplied With Monotype Products." The order in which the page scans are presented is the natural order in which one would unfold the brochure.

The image here links to a presentation of this brochure at The Internet Archive, where it may be read online. For convenience, here is a local copy of the PDF (128 Megabytes): lanston-monotype-material-making-machine-16pg-brochure-0600rgbjpg.pdf

Specimen (Strip Rule and Cornerpieces)

"Monotype Strip Rule Designs and Cornerpieces to Match." (Philadelphia, PA: Lanston Monotype Machine Company, n.d.). This is a specimen of non-ornamental rule and corresponding corner-pieces with matrices to be used in the Type-&-Rule Caster, the Material Making Machine / Junior Material Making Machine, or both. Since it refers to the Junior Material Making Machine, it must date from no earlier than the introduction of that machine in 1931. As this is the case, it is curious that this specimen makes no mention of the Giant Caster (introduced 1925).

The Lanston company was often very inconsistent in the naming of its machines (in part due to the remarkable flexibility of the basic Composition Caster). This document is particularly confusing. I believe that only two (and a half) machines are being referred to: (1) the machine best known as the Type-&-Rule Caster, (2a) the Material Making Machine, and (2b) the now very rare Junior Material Making Machine. The Monotype Type-&-Rule Caster is a variation on the basic Monotype Composition Caster; it consists of the basic caster, less the equipment for casting composed matter (such as the Paper Tower), plus equipment for casting individual types (including gearing to slow the machine, special molds, and special matrix holders), plus equipment for the fusion-casting of rule. Given a suitable set of parts, one can convert a Composition Caster into a Type-&-Rule Caster, and vice versa. I believe that the "Lead, Slug-&-Rule Caster" referred to here is also just a variation of the basic caster, although I am not entirely certain what complement of equipment it would include. The Material Making Machine is a distinct machine, engineered much later, which casts no type but only strip material. The Junior Material Making Machine is a poorly-documented and now rare derivative of the Material Making Machine.

Just to complicate things further, the non-Material-Making-Machine matrices in this specimen include both display matrices and composition (cellular) matrices (although the latter are not used for machine composition here).

Thanks are due to Sky Shipley of Skyline Type Foundry for preserving this document and making it available.

The icon here links to a presentation of this document at The Internet Archive, where it may be read online. Here is a local copy of the PDF (120 Megabytes): monotype-strip-rule-designs-and-cornerpieces-stf-0600rgbjpg.pdf