The American Printer: A Manual of Typography: Containing practical directions for managing all departments of a printing office, as well as complete instructions for apprentices; with several useful tables, numerous schemes for imposing forms in every variety, hints to authors, etc.MacKellar, Thomas
History
The American Printer: A Manual of Typography: Containing practical directions for managing all departments of a printing office, as well as complete instructions for apprentices; with several useful tables, numerous schemes for imposing forms in every variety, hints to authors, etc.
MacKellar, Thomas
Graphic design (Typography); Printing -- United States -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.; Printing industry -- United States
John Baine, a type-founder of Edinburgh, sent a relative to this country
with tools for a foundry at the close of the Revolutionary War, and soon
after came over himself. They carried on the business till 1790, when Mr.
Baine died, and his kinsman returned to Scotland.
A Dutch founder, Adam G. Mappa, settled at New York about 1787, and cast
Dutch and German faces, as well as Roman styles and several Oriental
alphabets. Want of capital prevented his success, and many of his
matrices passed into the possession of Binny & Ronaldson.[7]
In 1796, type-founding was commenced in Philadelphia by Archibald Binny
and James Ronaldson, natives of the city of Edinburgh, where Binny had
carried on the same business. Their assortment was not extensive, but it
embraced the essential founts,—Brevier, Bourgeois, Long Primer, Small
Pica, Pica, and two-line letters. They were obliging and attentive, and
in twenty years made a fortune. They improved their foundry according
to the increase of printing and the consequent demands of the trade,
extending their assortment from Pearl, of 180 lines in a foot, to
12-line Pica, having 6 lines. Binny made an important improvement in the
type-mould, by which a caster could cast 6000 letters in a day with as
much ease as he before could cast 4000.[8]
According to Holmes’s _American Annals_, about 200 newspapers were
printed in the United States in the year 1801, of which 17 were issued
daily, 7 three times a week, 30 twice a week, and 146 weekly. There
must also have been at the same time as many as 60 offices engaged in
miscellaneous printing. The whole business had increased threefold in
eleven years. Another type-foundry was put in successful operation in
Baltimore, about 1805, by Samuel Sower & Co. It had in it some moulds and
matrices which had been used by Christopher Sower, who had printed in
Germantown, near Philadelphia, and cast his own types. He printed with
German characters; but now the foundry was revived with excellent Roman
and Italic letters, and among other extraordinary things it had the size
called Diamond, with a smaller face than had ever been cast before. It
was the smallest type in the world.
The demand for type was very brisk till the war of 1812 commenced, and
the foundries were generally three or four months in arrears in their
execution of orders.
The names of the newspapers published in the United States in April,
1810, are given in Thomas’s _History of Printing_, and amount to 359,
of which 27 were daily papers, 38 were printed twice, 15 three times,
and 279 once in a week. Add those required for general printing, and the
whole number of offices could not be less than 500,—being an increase of
240 in nine years, and some of them using several thousand pounds of type
for book-printing.
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