Monster Machine

[Dave Hughes]

Here's a sneak preview of a set of photographs that will be put on the main site very soon.

This Linotype's a real monster.

I would say changing the magazine would be a 2-man job.

Mastering that keyboard looks like it could be tricky!

Would anyone like to guess the model number?

[Mechanic]

It is certainly a monster machine, Dave,,
I wonder if the machine was an attempt to set Chinese characters. It would appear that in 1922 Mergenthaler Linotype created fonts of phonetic symbols. Maybe this giant of a Linotype with it's 120 character magazine and keyboard, is the machine designed to set these symbols.

http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/DeFr1950.html

[Dave Hughes]

There rest of the pictures have new been posted on the site, some unusual machines among them: German Linotypes.

[John Nixon]

Hi All:

Model 4b

Found the answer deep in a German language document.

It appears to be a double sized magazine with a double size keyboard so that you can have 2 fonts side by side.

This allows, for example, the setting of Helvetica Light, bold, black and inserat all in the one line from the same magazine with the use of the rail in the assembly box.

Wouldn't want to pie one of those - make for a very mad foreman.

Cheers

John

[Dave Hughes]

Absolutely spot on John 

Thanks for the additional info which wasn't available from the brochure I saw.

Obviously quite a specialised machine, probably used for educational or technical book work. I would imagine not too many were made. Would be nice to see one, if there are any still left.

[tjtrower]

When Doug Wilson visited the German Linotype museum as part of the filming of Linotype: The Film, he shot photos of all of the machines on display (this fellow's stated intention was to have one of each model); if I can find a CD he burned for me of all of his still photos taken on that trip, I'll post images -- especially if I can find that monster machine.

But, I have a question:  I thought that the number of matrices that could be used on a machine were limited to the number of combinations of teeth?  That is why the side magazines of, say, the 30, 32, 34, and 36 were limited to 34 mats.

[Dave Hughes]

Hi Tim, I would certainly be very interested in getting some of those German photographs up on the site, if you can locate the disk.

Good point on the distributor bar / teeth, etc.

180 channels?

[John Nixon]

RE: Matrix Teeth Combinations

The Matrix combinations for this machine would have been unique.

It is possible to carry a pi mat right across the distributor bar so surely you could use the top combination to carry the mats halfway and then have them repeat a unique pattern to drop the balance of the width.

Or have I been inhaling too much of my home-made graphite-powder wine?

Cheers

John

[Mechanic]

The following information is from Linotype.org. I believe the reference is to the same machine.
I counted the keys on the model 4b and I believed there were 120 keys. The information below states 124 keys, which is still within the range of the possible 127 teeth combination of the standard matrix.

Model 13 Linotype-German

This was the old Ideal model arranged with two magazines instead of one, with a larger number of channels in the magazine, unit carrying only 15 characters per channel

A translation of the German description appearing in the advertising folder was as follows:

Multi-magazine Linotype "Ideal" with enlarged keyboard (124 key buttons) and wide magazine. The old Multi-magazine Linotype "Ideal" had been reconstructed and improved in this model. The keyboard was made wider, i.e., 34 buttons have been added, the magazine being widened and the distributor lengthened. The magazines hold from Nonpareil to middle size characters, accents, Sorts, etc., could also be used within certain limits making this machine especially useful in its new form.

All Linotypes now have safety devices for protecting the fingers, a water cooling system and an improved spaceband.

http://www.linotype.org/Misc/models.html

[Alan Nankivell]

Making extra channels available for composition on lino/inter machines.

I never saw a Model 9 Linotype, I understand that this is a good thing for me. There were other similar machines by Linotype which allowed mixing from 4 magazines, each of 90 (91) channels. I am not sure if the characteristics of the Model 9 were extended to auxiliary-magazine machines.

Visualise how the Model 9 sorted out the matrices, could this have been adopted as a system which could sort matrices for a 180 channel magazine? (Actually, up to 4 x 127 = 508.) But I would not have like to adjust/maintain the distributor; and perhaps a gantry crane would have been needed to lift a magazine.

The Intertype Photosetter had 120 channels, but that was for a different reason, I was told it was provided with a supplementary alphabet (plus some punctuation, or some other useful sorts?) of narrower capitals, to ease problems with correction lines.

Alan.