[Note: I am in an extended process of rebuilding this website. The newer material should appear with a very light brown/tan/yellowish background. The older material has a blue-green background. Not all of the links work.]
Preliminaries
News and Updates. Organization of this site. A Selected Index destined never to be up-to-date.
Discovering Real Type
What you do on a computer, while perfectly valid, is computer-assisted lettering, not typography. Type has three dimensions.
Preface. High-level surveys of typefounding and letterpress printing. Reprints of general literature on the topics.
Type Machinery In Detail
Detailed technical studies - mostly maintenance, but also principles and construction. Reprints of literature specific to individual machines.
Linecasters (Linotype/Intertype, Ludlow). [not much on Monotype.] Making Matrices and Types; Typecasters. Strip-Casters (Elrod). Stereotype Plate Making. Common Equipment (Metal Feeders, Remelt, etc.) Composing Room Equipment (Saws, Type Mortisers, etc.) Presses.
Composing Type and Printing from It
[Setting Type by Hand and Printing from It.] [Composing and Linecasting Type (How to Run a Linotype, Ludlow, or Elrod).] [Presswork.] [Binding and Finishing]
The Circuitous Root Typefoundry and Press is a strange sort of undertaking, I suppose. It is my hobby/nonprofit project to restore, research, understand, use, and (most importantly) to document a small collection of old typecasting and letterpress equipment and technical literature.
I think of it primarily as a typefoundry, because my interest is in all the ways of making and using relief printing type. At present I have linecasting machines, so I cast slugs (lines) of type. In the future I hope to expand this to machines for casting individual types and, someday, to all of the stages of the making of matrices and types. CircuitousRoot is a private typefoundry and press, in the tradition of the "private press" movement. By this I mean only that I will cast and print whatever I wish, for myself and for my friends, rather than take on commercial business. There are fine commercial typefounders, linecasters, and printers elsewhere.
Even so, the primary product of the foundry and press will not be the type I cast or the sheets I print, but rather the collection of "Notebooks" which I am writing and presenting here to document my experiences with and research into this equipment. It is a great irony that while this technology produced virtually all of the world's print for well over a century, much of the detailed technical knowledge of its operation was itself never committed to print and has remained an oral tradition of a now vanishing tribe. I'm just trying to learn and preserve this knowledge before it is lost forever.
A 2008 search of the USPTO records indicated that while "LINOTYPE" remains a trademark in category 9 for software and typefaces, the original trademark in category 7 for a "machine for producing type bars" / "typesetting machine" (registered 1909-06-29) had expired in both its original and later registrations.
A 2008 search of the USPTO records indicated that the trademark "INTERTYPE", originally registered 1913-06-03, was expired.
A 2008 search of the USPTO records indicated that the trademark "LUDLOW" in category 7 for printing machinery, registered 1949-11-01, was expired. A search for "ELROD" discovered no trademark registration at all.
A 2008 search of the USPTO records indicated that while "MONOTYPE" remains a trademark in category 9 for typefaces and their digital storage, the original trademarks in category 7 for a "type casting and composing machines" and in category 16 for "paper ribbons or controllers" for the same (both registered 1906-02-27) had expired
A 2009 search of the USPTO records indicated that the trademark "LUDLOW", originally registered 1949-11-01, was expired.
The ITU Lessons in Printing [Unit II] Display Composition, from which the linking illustration for "Preliminaries" is taken, was copyright 1957. This copyright was not renewed, as would then have been required. It therefore passed into the public domain upon the expiration of its original copyright in 1985.
The Mergenthaler Linotype Company Linotype Leadership, from which the linking illustration for "Discovering Real Type" is taken, was copyright 1930. This copyright was not renewed, as would then have been required. It therefore passed into the public domain upon the expiration of its original copyright in 1958.
The Intertype Corporation Streamlined Intertype Line Composing Machines, from which the linking illustration for "Type Machinery in Detail" is taken, published without copyright notice at a time when such notice was required to secure copyright. It therefore passed into the public domain upon its initial publication.
The Ludlow Company Ludlow Model M, from which the linking illustration for "Running the Machines, and Printing" is taken, published without copyright notice at a time when such notice was required to secure copyright. It therefore passed into the public domain upon its initial publication.
The photograph of pied mats is one that I took of mats that, indeed, I pied. As I'm using it as a linking image here, I'll put it in the public domain.
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2008 by David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
Circuitous Root is a Registered Trademark of David M. MacMillan and Rollande Krandall.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons "Attribution - ShareAlike" license. See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ for its terms.
Presented originally by Circuitous Root®
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