With the great expansion of printing in the early part of the nineteenth century, and with the invention of greatly improved presses, there appeared a natural impatience with the slow process of hand composition. It seemed a strange comment on human inventiveness that while new machines had been found for doing so many kinds of man’s work, while the simple screw press of Gutenberg had developed into the steam-driven platen and cylinder, and while so many improvements had been made in the manufacture of type, the setting of type was exactly where it was in 1450. More than 350 years had introduced practically no changes in the primary process of arranging type into words and sentences. What could be done to apply human ingenuity to this process? This question was asked by inventors all over the world. Naturally the first line of approach to the answer was from the direction of a machine which should mechanically take up the types and place them in the stick, in other words, a mechanical composer or typesetting machine. Unsuccessful attempts in this line were made as early as 1820 or 1822. The experimenters were not deterred by failures and commercially successful typesetting machines were finally invented, among which may be named the Rogers, the Thorne, and the Simplex. The mechanical typesetter was successful for certain kinds of work and went a long way toward meeting the general need. It would probably have been developed to the point of meeting it far more fully had it not been for the epoch-making invention of the type caster. The first successful type composing and casting machine to be put on the market was invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. Mr. Mergenthaler was born in Germany in 1854, and there learned the trade of an electrical instrument maker. In 1872, when he was eighteen years old, he came in sight of the period when the law would call him into military service. The war of 1870 with France was a very fresh memory. The political stability of Europe seemed then much less assured than it did at a later date. Young Mergenthaler had no desire to expose himself to the danger of being called upon to participate in another great war. Therefore, like many other young Europeans, he came to America to avoid military service.