This is the primary distribution location for the "Machine Dossier" which is a compilation of information on the Benton Engraving Machine, Type 2a, No. 53 (CircuitousRoot Identification Code: BEM2a-53). This is a single-arm vertical pantographic typographical engraving machine designed by Linn Boyd Benton, which is owned by me and which is in the CircuitousRoot workshops.
The notion of a "Machine Dossier" is my attempt to bring some structure to the project of collecting everything that can be known about some particular machine (here this Benton pantograph). For more on the subject, see the monograph ../../../../ The Past and the Future -> "Machine Dossiers".
Please note that this dossier is incomplete in several ways. Theoretically, of course, a document such as this can never be complete. In a more practical sense, it really is unfinished; significant portions of it have not been done. Further, it is not a document which is intended ever to be "finished" (in the sense of "polished") to a point where it is ready for formal publication. These are informal workshop notes. They should be accurate, but they don't have to look good. If you inform me of an error of fact, I will probably try to fix it. If you inform me of an error of style, grammar, spelling, or punctuation, I'll probably ignore your kind advice.
Note also that while this present web page, considered as a single HTML file, is licensed as stated in the fine print at the end (CC-BY), the Machine Dossier itself is a composite document which involves several different licenses (and also material in the public domain which does not require licensing). If you reproduce all or part of this content, please inform yourself of the copyright and licensing status of each portion of this composite work and abide by those licenses. I have tried in each case to make this as permissive as ethics, the law, and the requirements of third-party sources allow.
Logically this is one document, but in practice it is divided unevenly into different parts and different kinds of parts. Sometimes a single major part or section contains many subsections in one PDF document (as does Part I, Identification, for example). At other times, a single logical part is divided into several PDF format documents or other kinds of sections (this is especially true of part IV, Re-Engineering, which already contains several PDF documents and will contain CAD models, illustrations, and manufacturing documents). A familiarity with the ideas in the "Machine Dossiers" monograph will help you to navigate this collection.
Items marked with an [X] have not yet been started.
If you are standing in front of a Benton Engraving Machine and are about to mess with it, read III.4 "When can/can't the machine safely be cycled" first.
This is an open-source document, so of course you need the source. The source for the parts of this dossier which are text documents is marked up in LaTeX and is intended to be processed with xelatex. The source for CAD and image components will require other tools. Everything is being developed in an open source environment (Arch Linux) with an open source software toolchain.
The source is available in the following directories:
There is also a private archive of source materials which contains those materials that for any of several reasons I cannot reprint. This may be disappointing, but to put this in context one must realize that traditionally scholarship is backed up by nothing but private archives of unreprintable material.
Several of the components of this dossier are licensed under open source licenses. Here are links to them (with local copies of the license texts, as appropriate):
All portions of this document not noted otherwise are Copyright © 2023 by David M. MacMillan.
Circuitous Root is a Registered Trademark of David M. MacMillan.
This present file, but not necessarily the Machine Dossier it presents, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.Presented originally by Circuitous Root®
