Typefounders' Equipment Suppliers' Literature

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There isn't much in the way of literature for suppliers of typefounders' equipment because there weren't many such suppliers. For the entire history of typefounding, most typefounders made their own equipment. This was as true in the machine era as in the handcasting era; ATF, for example, made their famous Barth typecasters for their internal use only.

I know of only one type foundry which advertised its casters for sale, Stempel (see the Notebook on Stempel typecasters).

Both the English and American Monotype companies, of course, made and/or sold tools and supplies to accompany their casters. Generally these were listed, if at all, in the "plate books" produced by the two companies to document their machines. For these, see the Notebooks on the individual machines:

One would presume that each of the other makers of type casters for sale (such as Küstermann) would have also made and/or sold supplies for them, but as yet I know of no specific literature concerning this.

Over the century and a half of machine typecasting, there must have been innumerable small machine shops and general engineering firms which to one degree or another addressed the type casting trade (although many type foundries maintained their own machine shops and engineering departments). Most evidence of this has simply vanished, however. There were only a few such companies which specialized more or less exclusively in this type of work, and of their literature little has survived.

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1905 Catalogue

In addition to manufacturing type casting machinery (the Foucher caster of 1878 was the model for both later Küstermanns and the Barth), the Foucher company (Paris) made and sold a wide range of supplies for typefounders and printers.

The icon here links up and over to the presentation of their 1905 general catalogue Notebook on Foucher type casters. This 1905 catalog includes, in particular, tools for punch/patrix cutting and matrix justifying (see p. 37).

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Hartzell

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Schokmiller

From 1904 to 1906, Charles Schokmiller manufactured type founders' equipment. He is know to have made and sold at least one pantograph matrix engraving machine. I know of no literature from this business.

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Williams Engineering (ca. 1919)

Although Williams Engineering produced one of the few catalogs of type founders' equipment to have survived, they were also themselves typefounders and also manufacturers of at least one typecasting machine (the Nodis) and they acquired Legros & Grant, who were makers of the Davis pivotal type caster.

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