Early Machines

Terry Foster sent in these superb pictures of early Machines, taken from an old book. The captions are also taken from the book.

I have produced a set of eight postcards featuring some of these "Early Machines" - the cards are unique to this site and cannot be bought anywhere else. Price includes postage to anywhere in the world. Click here for further details.

The Kastenbein Typesetter
The Linotype Blower
The Square Base Linotype
The Linotype Model 1
The Reconstructed Linotype Model 1
The Linotype Model 2
The Linotype Model 3
The Linograph
The Linotype Model 4 (First Style)
The Linotype Model 4 (Second Style)
The Linotype Model 6

The Square Base Linotype

Before the machine described as The Blower had been on the market very long, a new model (now known as the Square Base) was presented, which showed so great an advance over the first machine that it was at once adopted, and the machines then in use were in course of time displaced.

This new machine did away with the air blast, the matrices being carried from a diagonally positioned magazine to the assembling point by gravity, and the distributing elevator was displaced by the now familiar arm which lifts the line of matrices, after the casting process, to the top of the machine.

Machines of this type were first installed in 1892 and a few of them may still be in use [as of c 1945].