An arm carrying a ribbed bar descends. The dies are pushed up, leaving the “spaces” behind to be restored to their proper compartment, till on a level with the ribbed bar, on to which they are slid by a lateral movement, the notches of the V-shaped opening in the top side of each die engaging with the ribs on the bar. The bar then ascends till it is in line with a longer bar of like section passing over the open top of the entire magazine. A set of horizontal screw-bars, rotating at high speed, transfer the dies from the short to the long bar, along which they move till, as a die comes above its proper division of the magazine, the arrangement of the teeth allows it to drop. While all this has been going on, the operator has composed another line of moulds, which will in turn be transferred to the casting wheel, and then back to the magazine. So that the three operations of composing, casting, and sorting moulds are in progress simultaneously in different parts of the machine; with the result that as many as 20,000 letters can be formed by an expert in the space of an hour, against the 1500 letters of a skilled hand compositor. How about corrections? Even a comma too few or too many needs the whole line cast over again. It is a convincing proof of the difference in speed between the two methods that a column of type can be corrected much faster by the machine, handicapped as it is by its solid “slugs,” than by hand. No wonder then that more than 1000 linotypes are to be found in the printing offices of Great Britain. The Monotype, like the Linotype, aims at speed in composition, but in its mechanism it differs essentially from the linotype. In the first place, the apparatus is constructed in two quite separate parts. There is a keyboard, which may be on the third floor of the printing offices, and the casting machine, which ceaselessly casts and sets type in the basement. Yet they are but one whole. The connecting link is the long strip of paper punched by the keyboard mechanism, and then transferred to the casting machine to bring about the formation of type. The keyboard is the servant of man; the casting machine is the slave of the keyboard. Secondly, the Monotype casts type, not in blocks or a whole line, but in separate letters. It is thus a complete type-foundry. Order it to cast G’s and it will turn them out by the thousand till another letter is required. Thirdly, by means of the punched paper roll, the same type can be set up time after time without a second recourse to the keyboard, just as a tune is ground repeatedly out of a barrel organ.