Mold Wheel.]

Matrices are also made bearing two characters, as the ordinary body
character and the corresponding italics, or a body character and a
small capital or a black face, and either of these is brought into use
as desired by the touching of a key, so that if, for instance, it is
required to print a word in italics or black face at any part of the
line being composed, it is effected in this way, and composition in
the body letter is resumed by releasing the key.

The latest pattern of machine is supplied with two magazines,
superimposed one above the other, each with its own distributing
apparatus. The operator can elect, by moving a lever, from which
magazine the letter wanted will fall--the same keyboard serving for
both. It is thus possible to set two sizes of type from one machine,
each matrix showing two characters as described above.

COMPOSITION BY THE MONOTYPE MACHINE

By Paul Nathan.

Though for more than half a century machines adapted for the setting
of type have been in use, it is only within a few years that the
average printer of books has been enabled to avail himself of the
services of a mechanical substitute for the hand compositor. The fact
seems to be that despite the ingenuity that was brought to bear upon
the problem, the pioneer inventors were satisfied to obtain speed,
with its resultant economy, at the expense of the quality of the
finished product. Thus, until comparatively recently, machine
composition was debarred from the establishments of the makers of fine
books, and found its chief field of activity in the office of
newspaper publishers and others to whom a technically perfect output
was not essential so long as a distinct saving of time and labor could
be assured. Thanks, however, to persistent effort on the part of those
inventors who would not be satisfied until a machine was evolved which
should equal in its output the work of the hand compositor, the
problem has been triumphantly solved, and to-day the very finest
examples of the printed book owe their being to the mechanical
type-setter.

The claim is made for one of these machines, the monotype, that, so
far from lowering the standard of composition, its introduction into
the offices of the leading book printers of the world has had the
contrary effect, and that it is only the work of the most skilful hand
compositor which can at every point be compared with that turned out
by the machine. The fact that the t