184 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



the speed of the operator at the key-board. It can work as fast 

 as he can. 



When a line of matrices has been utilized, the matrices must 

 be returned to their channels ready for use again. This is accom- 

 plished by ingenious contrivances as soon as the cast has been 

 made. The matrices being thus promptly returned, there is only 

 need for a few of each letter. Thus a few dozen of the little brass 

 molds do the work which in type-setting by hand needs a stock 

 of from forty to fifty pounds of type. 



The Rival Patents.— There are two type-casting machines 

 on the market. These are the Mergenthaler or Linotype, and the 

 Rogers or Typograph. The Linotype weighs a ton, covers floor 

 space about six feet by six, stands seven feet high, and is sold for 

 $3,000, or rented for $500 a year. I have seen an expert operator 

 set at the rate of nearly eight thousand ems per hour on it from 

 a phonograph communicating with his ear. The proprietors claim 

 a regular practical speed of over four thousand ems an hour, which 

 is four times the speed a good compositor averages by hand, if 

 we include the time he must take for distributing. On the Lino- 

 type, the first time I ever touched a key-board, I set one hundred 

 and fourteen ems of strange copy in six minutes, or at the rate of 

 eleven hundred and forty ems an hour. 



The Typograph weighs four hundred and fifty pounds, covers 

 floor space four feet by four, is four feet six inches high, sells for 

 $2,500, and rents for $365 a year. The proprietors claim a regular 

 practical speed of three thousand to thirty-five hundred ems per 

 hour. I have set one hundred and fourteen ems by the Typograph 

 in nine minutes. At the end of each line the operator at the 

 Typograph must stop to throw back the cap of the machine, a 

 movement which restores the matrices to their magazines. The 

 proprietors of the Typograph claim that it can work as fast as 

 will ever be practically possible on any machine. In other words, 

 they think that human beings will not be physically capable 

 throughout a whole working day of requiring as great a steady 

 speed as the Typograph can give. 



The Typograph was submitted to a severe practical test in 

 September, 1890, by the New York World. An eight-page section 

 of the Sunday World, September 28th, was set by one machine 

 working continuously day and night for one hundred and nine- 

 teen hours and thirty-five minutes, or nearly a week. The object 

 of the test was to ascertain how the machine would bear a con- 

 tinuous steady strain. Three operators took eight-hour shifts at 

 the work. The machine— I was informed both by the business 

 manager of The World, Mr. Turner, and by one of the operators, 

 the foreman of The World composing-room— stood the test almost 

 perfectly. I measured the amount of setting done. It came to 



