THE DEVELOPMENT OF MECHANICAL COMPOSITION 
ENP ERIN TING 2 
By Prof. A. TURPAIN, 
University of Poitiers. 
Since the year 1776 efforts have been made to increase the efficiency 
of the compositor by adding to the ordinary types in the case certain 
combinations of letters which are frequently repeated. The use of 
these logotypes makes the type case much more complicated, and in- 
stead of increasing the rapidity of composition, diminishes it by 
causing more errors and consuming more time in finding the type. 
It was then sought to accomplish mechanically the several steps in 
composition. Let us recall these steps: When a line of type is once 
assembled in the stick, the compositor justifies it by so distributing 
between the words the free space at the end as to give to the line its 
proper length. After the type has been used, the workman must re- 
turn it again to the case. 
The first idea of a composing machine seems to have been made 
public by an Englishman, Church, in 1822. The first practical apph- 
cation of this idea, in accordance with a method devised by Ballanche 
in 1833, consisted in supplying the case with a keyboard, the manipula- 
tion of which freed the characters or type, and these assembled them- 
selves in the composing stick. It was only the operation of picking 
out the letters that was rendered mechanical; the justification and the 
distribution remained manual. 
By another process, invented a little later, the compositor was en- 
abled to use both hands in picking out the type. The type were thus 
more rapidly selected and were thrown into a funnel whence they 
were directed and assembled automatically in the composing stick. 
These two processes saved time in the selecting and assembling of 
the type in the composing stick, but there was no economy of time 
in the manual processes of justification and. distribution. 
The keyboard apparatus was imitated and perfected successively by 
Gobert (1839), by De Klieger (1840), by Youg and Delcambre, who 
“Translated and abridged, by permission, from the second part of “De la 
Presse 4 bras a la Linotype et A I’Electrotypographe ” in the Revue Générale des 
Sciences pures et appliquées, Paris, November 15, 1907. 
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