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
In 1811, Elihu White established a type-foundry in New York. He had been
long engaged, in connection with Mr. Wing, in the manufacture of printing
types at Hartford, Connecticut, upon a plan of their own invention,
by which twenty or thirty letters were cast at once; but, abandoning
that invention, he adopted the old plan of casting, and, having a good
assortment of faces and bodies, his removal to New York was a great
convenience to its printers, and they gave him a very satisfactory
support. But the principal business in type-founding still continued, as
formerly, to be carried on in Philadelphia.
In 1813, another type-foundry was begun in the city of New York, by D. &
G. Bruce, principally to cast types for their own use. They had carried
on book-printing for seven years, and had now become acquainted with
the stereotype art,—Mr. David Bruce having visited England in 1812 and
acquired it by purchase and actual labour. For ordinary printing, it was
customary to bevel off the body of the type at the face end, or shoulder,
as it is usually called, which unfitted it for making a strong stereotype
plate in the most approved way: hence the necessity for casting type
expressly for stereotype. Their first fount was Bourgeois, with which
they cast two sets of plates of the New Testament, (the Common School
Testament,) and sold one of these to Mathew Carey, of Philadelphia,
retaining the other for their own business. But these were not completed
till 1814. In 1815, they cast the plates of the 12mo School Bible, on
Nonpareil type, prepared, like the Bourgeois, at their own foundry
expressly for stereotyping. They thus gave the first stereotype School
Testament and School Bible to America; but not the first stereotype
book. John Watts, of England, also commenced stereotyping in New York in
1813, and completed the Westminster Catechism that year, a volume of 120
pages 12mo. David Bruce invented the planing-machine for equalizing the
thickness of stereotype plates, which is now used in every stereotype
foundry in the United States. The process of stereotyping is, however,
entirely different from that of ordinary type-founding, and it is,
therefore, generally carried on as a separate business, or connected with
the composing department of a printing-office. Twenty compositors and two
proof-readers will furnish full employment for one moulder, one caster,
and three finishers, who will, among them, complete, on an average, 50
pages of octavo per day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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