The great American printing houses of today are more and more the masters of their own craft, not the imitators of others. This condition is also true of the type founders and manufacturers of machines and materials used in the industry. The sentiment of independence is bound to become more marked, and the originality of American printing more pronounced, with the development of a generation of better printers. CHAPTER I THE PIONEER TYPE FOUNDERS During all the early years of American printing, as has already been said, all type used was imported. The first type cast in this country appears to have been made by Christopher Sauer, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, about 1735. Sauer (the family afterward anglicized the spelling of the name into Sower) was one of those Germans, colloquially known as Pennsylvania Dutch, who were an important element in the population of the colony of Pennsylvania and are still numerous in the State. Sauer printed books, and in 1739 we find him beginning a newspaper, all or nearly all in German. As an auxiliary to his printing business he seems to have cast his own German type or at least a part of it. His work had no particular commercial importance, but deserves record as the beginning of type founding in America. In 1768 a Scotchman named Mitchelson came to Boston bringing the tools for type founding with him. We have no record that he ever cast any type. Probably he lacked capital to go into business and there was no one to employ him. In 1769 Abel Buel submitted to the Legislature of Connecticut a document printed from the first English type known to have been made in the United States. This sheet, which is still in the archives of Connecticut, is printed in a very well-cut long primer (ten-point) roman of Buel’s own casting. We have no evidence that Buel ever cast a great deal of type, but his personality is so interesting, and his character so typical of the proverbial “Connecticut Yankee” that it is worth while to recall the story of his life. Buel appears to have been born in Connecticut, not far from 1750, and apparently early learned the printing trade. With more than his share of youthful irresponsibility, though he appears not to have been a really bad man at heart, he proceeded to counterfeit the State currency of Connecticut. This was not a difficult operation, as the early colonial currency was printed from ordinary type with stock ornaments upon ordinary paper by means of the ordinary printing press. The first definite record that we find of him is that he was pardoned in 1766 from a life sentence for counterfeiting these bills. The lesson that he got on this occasion seems to have cured him not only of counterfeiting, but of printing, as he apparently never again did either, although it was by no means the last time that he found himself at odds with the authorities.