SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1889. 



THE THORNE TYPE-SETTING MACHINE. 



It is nearly ten years since Mr. Joseph Thorne invented the 

 type-setting machine bearing his name. This machine, as now 

 manufactured by the Thorne Machine Company of Hartford, Conn., 

 modified by the improvements suggested during several years' act- 



der. The types, before distribution, are arranged in vertical chan- 

 nels in the upper cylinder, where they rest upon their sides. The 

 distributing-cylinder revolves with an intermittent motion, thereby 

 causing its channels at each step to coincide with and rest directly 

 over similar channels in the setting-cylinder, which remains 

 stationary. 



Ordinary fonts of type are used, but each character has distinc- 

 tively arranged notches, with which correspond wards at the upper 



^IBUTING MACHINE. 



ual use in type setting and distributing, is shown in the accompany- 

 ing engraving. This machine is now doing good service in book 

 and newspaper offices in this country and Europe. Its working, as 

 seen by a representative of Science a few days ago in an office in 

 this city, where several of them have been in use some years, leaves 

 little to be desired in the way of rapid and accurate distribution and 

 composition. 



The machine consists of two iron cylinders, mounted vertically 

 one above the other upon the same a.xis. The upper one of these 

 two is the distributing-cylinder, and the lower one the setting-cylin- 



end of each channel in the setting-cylinder ; so that a type of a 

 given character can only fall into its own proper groove in the latter. 

 In these grooves the types rest on a bottom plate. The types in 

 the distributing-cylinder are in the order they come from the forms ; 

 but by the step-like motion of the cylinder, and the action of the 

 wards in the channels of the setting-cylinder, the types are auto- 

 matically sorted, so that each channel of the stationary cylinder 

 contains only types of the same kind. 



Composing is effected from a keyboard like that of a type-writer, 

 on a somevi'hat larger scale. By the depression of apy key, through 



