1. Introduction

[TO DO: Integrate meta-section from Making Printing Matrices and Types on Restorative Conservation and Type-Making Machinery: Our Responsibility to the Future. Finish The Conservation of Machinery and Minds (below).]

This set of Notebooks is a central point for coordinating various studies scattered throughout CircuitousRoot which deal with three general, interrelated areas:

1. The conservation and restorative conservation of historic machinery (both at theoretical and hands-on levels)

2. The reverse engineering of big old machines and reconstructing the minds of their creators (again, both theoretically and in practical detail)

3. The need for the continued production of historic products which are highly important for our culture when the making of those products is closely tied to specific production machinery which is of significant historic value in its own right - especially when that machinery is rare, difficult to conserve, difficult to operate, and past the end of its regular productive life.

The first of these subjects is well established within some fields (e.g. the fine arts and antique furniture) but only now becoming known in machine-based disciplines. The second and third, though (especially the third) are, if not new, at least extremely uncommon areas of work.

The emphasis here will be on typecasting machinery because that is the area where I have the most practical experience and personal committment. It should be applicable, however, to complex mechanical artifacts of all kinds.

2. Perspective

It is my expectation that the ideas I'm advocating, and attempting to practice, with regard to historic machinery (and especially with regard to historic typecasting machinery) will meet with strong objections from three groups on three separate grounds.

First the community of practical typecasters will object to it on the grounds that it is interfering with the use of surviving casting machines and the production of new type. Indeed, this has already happened, and I have been criticized (politely, privately, but strongly) for not simply continuting to run and rebuild these machines as they were used 50 and 100 years ago.

Further, I expect that I may well hurt and offend many people within this community because I will be condemning as no longer appropriate practices of machine "restoration" in which they take great pride but which now must be considered as vandalism. Conservation is a matter of ethics; nobody likes being called unethical, especially about things that are dearest to them. I regret this, and in the hope of forestalling it I wish to emphasize that I am criticizing practices which were once, in our lifetimes, entirely appropriate but which are so no longer.

Second, in the unlikely event that any actual conservation professionals should read this, they will in the first instance be saddened that the ideas and practices of the conservation of artifacts remain so alien to practical typecasting with historic machinery (and all typecasting, today, is done with historic machinery). If I am successful in conveying to them the fundamental importance of printing type to our culture, they should be outraged. They will also be troubled because I am attempting conservation without having undergone the appropriate (or indeed any) training. But in the end they may simply be offended because, sadly, one of the points I must make is that the professional/museum community, their community, has failed completely in this area.

Finally, everyone will object to my arguments which go beyond conservation and assert that:

• we must strive to reverse-engineer these machines by rediscovering the engineering practices of their times, and
• when production machinery is involved (e.g., typecasters) and when the products of this machinery have a continuing importance to our culture (as type does) we must find ways to continue this production on newly made machinery.

The objections will be raised that this is (1) crazy, and (2) very difficult. I agree with these objections. I just don't care about them. If crazy and difficult are issues for you, then you should probably be asking yourself why you're involved in typefounding in the first place. As the Cheshire Cat said, we're all mad here.

In the essay below I will explain and advocate these points. However, to conclude at least the latter part of this argument before it begins, I commend to you the 21st century "non-historic" artifact shown in the photograph below. It is the "LNER 'Peppercorn' A1 Class" steam locomotive no. 60163, "Tornado," completed in 2008. "LNER" is the old London and North Eastern Railway, which first built this locomotive design. Arthur Peppercorn was their Chief Mechanical Engineer. Forty-nine such locomotives had been constructed in 1948/49, the last one numbered 60162, but none survived. "Tornado" was constructed to the original design but modern safety and operational requirements as the 50th unit in the class. It is named after the Tornado jet aircraft. ¹

As stranded rail passengers discovered in 2009, when ice shut down the electrical supply to the rails and only a steam locomotive could operate, carrying forward old technology into the future is not only possible, but desirable. They did it with a 117 ton steam locomotive. Surely we can do it with a typecasting machine which is only a fraction of this size and complexity.

[click image to view larger]

3. Practices

4. Other Notebooks

Specific Machine Projects:

• A Barth Type Caster

Backing Information:

• A Census of Surviving Typecasting Machines

5. Topics

6. Notes

1. I have no connection with the amazing group which built Tornado, the The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust, a1steam.com, and my use of these images here does not in any way imply that they endorse, or even know of, my writings and opinions.