There are altogether about 1,500 of the little brass matrices. The machine is about five feet square, weighs 1,750 pounds, and costs $3,000 each. Notwithstanding this expense these Linotype machines have to-day made their way into nearly all the daily newspaper offices of the civilized world, even to Australia and the Hawaiian Islands. In the composing rooms of the daily newspapers and the larger book printing offices we find great rows of these Linotype machines, each doing the work of from four to five men. There are now in use in America something over 5,000 Linotype machines; and in other countries about 2,000, making 7,000 in all. Each machine may be adjusted in five minutes to produce any size or style of type, and it gives new, clean faces for each day’s issue, with none of the ordinary troubles of distributing type. The cheapness of composition, due to the machine, has led to an enormous increase in the size of papers, in the frequency of the editions, and has correspondingly increased the demand for labor in all the attendant lines, such as paper-making, press-making, the attendants on presses, stereotyping, etc. In the Boston Library, which keeps its catalogues printed up to within 24 hours of date, the Linotypes print in 23 languages. [Illustration: FIG. 133.--CASTING THE LINE.] [Illustration: FIG. 134.--A LINOTYPE.] When the Linotype machine was first patented it was not regarded by printers generally as a practical machine, but only one of the many complicated, theoretical, but impracticable organizations which the Patent Office has to deal with. Its history, however, has been unique. It is practically the product of the brain of a single man, Ottmar Mergenthaler, a most ingenious and indefatigable inventor living in Baltimore. It was exploited under the powerful patronage of a syndicate of newspaper men, and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent in perfecting it before any practical results were obtained. To-day it stands a triumph of human ingenuity, ranking in importance with the rotary web-perfecting press, and is probably the most ingenious piece of practical mechanism in existence.