CHAPTER II
The Establishment of Type Founding
So far our story has been one of failure. There is, however, plenty of evidence that the time was ripe for success. The new country was growing rapidly. The Americans, then as now, were insatiable readers, especially of newspapers. The demand for type was constantly increasing. America was becoming more and more independent, more and more desirous of supplying her own wants, and more and more impatient of the inconvenience, expense, and delay involved in ordering such merchandise as type from England. If the persistency and courage of the elder Bain had been shared by his family unquestionably fortune would have been easily within their grasp, but they paid the penalty of their lack of good business qualities.
We come now to the story of the first permanently successful type foundry in America, a foundry which continued in vigorous existence until the erection of the Jersey City foundry of the American Type Founders Company, with which it was merged. There met one day in an ale house in Philadelphia two men whose lives were thenceforth to run together. I suspect that they were drawn together in the first place by the fact that they were both Scotchmen, and that in their first contact they showed each other the qualities which bound them together. They were Archibald Binney and James Ronaldson. Binney had learned and practiced the trade of type founding in Edinburgh, Scotland. Ronaldson was a biscuit-maker, out of business because of the burning of his establishment, but with some ready money in hand. It seemed to Binney that here was a heaven-sent opportunity to combine his knowledge with Ronaldson’s capital and enter under the most favorable circumstances the business of type founding. At this date there was no active foundry in America. The successful Bain concern had been closed out. The Sauer business, if active at all at this time, was only an adjunct to a printing office, while Mappa was finding it impossible to get started. They accordingly agreed to enter the business as equal partners, Binney putting in his tools, which were appraised at $888.88, while Ronaldson put in the same amount in cash.
With this they started business, the first entry in their account book being November 1, 1796. We learn that they rented a frame house on “Cedar Street atwixt ninth and tenth streets” at $17.33 a month. In 1800 the frame house was valued at $40.00 and cost $82.09½ “to shove it to its present location.” It must be remembered that at this time a half-cent coin was in circulation and that accounts were kept down to a quarter of a cent. At the time of the moving of the house the firm bought the property and built a new house on the same lot. The new house cost $2,500 and they paid $72 a year ground rent, apparently for additional land not included in the purchase. Entries in their first account book show that one or both members of the firm lived in the house. They started with a small assortment of type, but of the most important faces. These faces appear to have included brevier (eight-point), bourgeois (nine-point), long primer (ten-point), small pica (eleven-point), pica (twelve-point), and some two-line letters. They probably employed as matrix cutter one Fürst, a die maker in the Philadelphia mint, who afterward cut a medal bearing Binney’s face on the obverse and an appropriate design on the reverse.
At an early period, as we have seen, they took over Mappa and his outfit, and in 1799 they bought the tools of the Bain concern, paying $300 for them. In 1806 the excellent Franklin outfit was in the hands of a man by the name of Duane. Duane became interested in Binney & Ronaldson and offered to lend them any of the Franklin tools and matrices which they desired to use. Ronaldson was so impressed with the superiority of a part at least of the Franklin equipment that, fearing that Duane might change his mind and not being willing to take any chances, he himself borrowed a wheelbarrow and moved the material over to Cedar Street in the middle of a very hot summer day.
Binney & Ronaldson were enterprising, thrifty, and obliging. They did good work, took good care of their customers, and were immediately and permanently successful. They prospered greatly from the beginning and both of them made fortunes, as fortunes went in those days, within twenty years.
A study of their account books is extremely interesting. Among other things they give the names of 114 customers who found their way onto their books in the first five years of the business. It would hardly be worth while here to give the names of these customers, but it is interesting to see where they were. They were located as follows:
| Philadelphia | 49 |
| Pennsylvania (outside of Philadelphia) | 6 |
| New York City | 22 |
| Albany, New York | 1 |
| Delaware | 4 |
| Virginia | 7 |
| New Jersey | 2 |
| Maryland | 4 |
| District of Columbia (Washington and Georgetown) | 2 |
| Connecticut | 1 |
| Massachusetts (Concord) | 1 |
| Georgia | 1 |
| Augusta (state not given; probably Georgia) | 1 |
| Tennessee (Knoxville) | 1 |
| Location not given | 12 |
In 1811 Binney invented an improved type mold which increased the output of the caster fifty per cent and saved labor. He experimented with a machine for rubbing type, but in this was not successful.
In 1812 Binney & Ronaldson published a specimen book which is interesting as showing the development of their business. This book shows eleven faces larger than pica, fifteen kinds of body type, the smallest being pearl (5 point), two sizes of Anglo-Saxon, four sizes of Greek, four sizes of Hebrew, two sizes of German text, six sizes of black letter, three sizes of German, four sizes of Oriental letter, one size of script and 120 kinds of “flowers” or borders, the greatest number of these being on English (14-point) body. It is not unlikely that some if not all of the foreign letters may have come from the Franklin and Mappa stocks. We know that Franklin had Greek and Hebrew and that Mappa had German. Mappa’s Orientals did not appear. Probably even if Binney & Ronaldson still had the matrices it would not have been worth while to include them in their specimen book. The preface says that they were obliged, contrary to their inclinations, to imitate European taste. Evidently America had not yet become independent except politically. They gave two examples of erroneously formed faces in long primer and small pica, which were really condensed faces as we should now call them. They appear to have invented the dollar mark $ in 1797 and the abbreviation l̶b̶ for weight pounds in 1798.