You wonder what these curious-looking instruments are which lie, in dusty repose, on the shelves around the room? Those, Mr. Typograph, are hand-moulds, and at one time they provoked intense covetousness on the part of rival founders. One of our earliest predecessors, Mr. Archibald Binny (our foundry dates from 1796), added such valuable improvements to the ordinary mould, that no other foundry in the world could rival the expedition and accuracy with which types were cast in the establishment of which he was a co-proprietor. Their day has passed, however. They have been superseded by the machines which you will see in operation in another apartment. But they were capital things in their time, sir, and we regard them with somewhat of an antiquary’s reverence. Now we enter the casting-rooms. These tiny machines, small as they are, can throw out more type in one day than you would be likely to count in a month, even if you could call off one hundred a minute, and occupy ten hours a day. Snug little fellows, are they not? They were invented by a New-Yorker, Mr. David Bruce, Jr. A very ingenious man, you say? That is true. Look at one carefully. The metal is kept fluid by a little furnace underneath, and is projected into the mould by a pump, the spout of which, you see, is in front of the metal-pot. The mould is movable, and at every revolution of the crank it comes up to the spout, receives a charge of metal, and flies back with a fully-formed type in its bosom; the upper half of the mould lifts, and out jumps a type as lively as a tadpole. You don’t see how the letter is formed on the end of the type? True, we had forgotten: well, this spring in front holds in loving proximity to the mould a copper matrix, such as you saw just now in the fitting-room. The letter a, for instance, stamped in the matrix, sits directly opposite the aperture in the mould which meets the spout of the pump; and when a due proportion of a’s is cast, another matrix with b stamped in it takes its place; and so on throughout the alphabet. Slow work, you say, one at a time? Well, the world is peopled after that fashion; and it fills up fast enough. But just time this machine: it is making small, thin type. Count the type made in a minute. One hundred and seventy-five, you say. One hundred per minute will probably be the average of the ordinary sizes of printing type.