The Notebooks in this first section are "galleries" (by which I simply mean collections of images) of the materials of type-making. I should also add one or more galleries of tools and machines. There is no gallery here of drawings (working or finished). Some drawings survive, but I do not have permission to reprint them. (For links to and in some cases images of drawings by Goudy and Rimmer, see Making Matrices .) I am unaware of the survival of any patrices from the era of industrial typemaking.
A Gallery of Punches (Cut by Hand and Machine)
Ludlow. Ludlow Reference-Surface Punches. Mergenthaler Linotype. [Monotype UK; only references to unpublished photographs] Stan Nelson.
Some of these are from my own collection. Some are from photographs I've taken of punches from other sources.
A Gallery of Working Patterns for Pantographic Engraving
ATF. Goudy. Ludlow. Monotype (English).
Some of these are from my own collection. Some are from photographs by others. Some are from published photographs.
Beyond (and Before) Benton
[Note: this section is in need of some revision as even more information comes to light] While Benton's pantograph engravers were without question the most influential punch and matrix engraving machines, they were not the only ones, and were not even the first. This brief note identifies some of the patrix, punch, and matrix engraving machines developed and used both before and after Benton developed his.
From the Optical Scale to Optical Scaling
When Harry Carter introduced the concept of "the optical scale in typefounding" in 1937, what he meant by it was the antithesis of what "optical scaling" means today. This Notebook attempts to trace how we came to misunderstand him.
See also the Notebook Clubs and Cults within the "book" Making Matrices . At some point I should probably combine these two Notebooks into one.
Patrix Cutting and Matrix Electroforming
[I've moved these Notebooks one level up and renamed them "The Issue of Patrix Cutting in Soft Metal" because they form a necessary introduction to the topic of the actual methods and tools used in patrix cutting.]
The cutting of patrices by hand or machine and the electroforming of matrices from them is one of the three major methods for making matrices. Yet the knowledge of it has been almost entirely suppressed. Most 20th and 21st century American histories of type never even mention it. Yet it produced the matrices from which most of the display type of the 20th century was cast (pound for pound), and I believe that it was one of two technological innovations which enabled the ornamented types of the 19th century to flourish. I would like to restore it to its proper place in the historical record.
The Myth of the Benton Pantograph
Again, I mean "myth" here not in the sense that this machine never existed (of course it did) or that it wasn't extremely important (of course it was). Rather, our current perception of this machine (more properly, these machines) deserves proper analysis as a myth because as a myth it distorts our understanding of L. B. Benton's greater accomplishments. For now, though, see the Notebook on pantographs in typemaking "Beyond (and Before) Benton" (above).
Benton's most interesting pantograph was not even one of his vertical ones; it was the "opto-mechanical" pantograph of 1899. Benton's greatest work was not any particular machine, but his long program of re-lining and re-fitting the vast inventory of matrices received by ATF from its predecessors. Almost all of this work has been lost, and today it is scarcely remembered.
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