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Browse All : oil paintings and Mergenthaler, Ottmar, 1854-1899 by Kimberly-Clark Corporation
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Title
Ottmar Mergenthaler and the Linotype
Creator
Thom, Robert A., 1915-1979
Summary
On July 3, 1886 Ottmar Mergenthaler, an immigrant watchmaker from Wurttemberg, Germany demonstrated to the New York Tribune a machine which was regarded as one of the 10 greatest inventions of all time: the Linotype. Type for nearly every newspaper in the world and most books in the United States was composed by Mergenthaler's machine. His basic innovation was that of circulating matrices, pieces of brass punched with letters, figures and punctuation marks. When an operator tapped the Linotype's keys, the pieces were brought together into a line, automatically spaced, for faces which made a cast impression in type. The matrices were then automatically returned to the machine for future use.
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