In 1814 and 1815 Bruce produced the first two sets of stereotype plates made in America. They were a common school testament in bourgeois type and a 12mo Bible in nonpareil. Bruce invented a machine for planing the backs of the plates to make them of uniform height. This was a great improvement and was so successful that it is said that of the entire two sets of plates only a single plate needed a slight overlay.
The development of the stereotyping process, however, brought to light difficulties with type. Foundry type was sold with the shoulder beveled off for ordinary printing and this was not favorable for stereotyping. The type founders would not make the high spaces and quads which were needed. As the best way of meeting these difficulties, Bruce, in 1815, went into company with the Starr brothers for the manufacture of type. It soon appeared that type founding and stereotyping promised to be more profitable than printing and Bruce sold out his printing establishment to devote himself to the other branches. Bruce and the Starrs were unable to agree and the partnership was soon dissolved, Bruce deciding to carry on the business alone in spite of the difficulties of every sort which surrounded it. In addition to the business conditions of the time, neither of the Bruces had any practical knowledge of type founding and the matrices of their only complete font were stolen, presumably by someone who was interested to secure their failure. It needed more than that, however, to discourage this persistent Scotchman. George Bruce set himself at work to learn punch cutting and mould making. His first efforts were crude, but he had an artistic temperament, a critical spirit, and a practical knowledge of printers’ needs. By these qualities and his own persistence he soon became very proficient.
By 1820 the Bruce foundry was the best in the country, doing better work than even Binney & Ronaldson at that time. In 1822 Bruce undertook to remedy the confusion in sizes which was then and for a good many years a source of difficulty, annoyance and expense to printers. He devised a scientifically correct system by which the size doubled with every seven sizes of the system. This was uniform throughout, so that wherever you touched the system, you found any given type twice as large as the seventh below and half as large as the seventh above. In spite of the fact of the simplicity and scientific correctness of the system it did not prove suited to commercial work and was not adopted.
In 1828 William M. Johnson had invented a type-casting machine in which a pump forced the liquid metal into the mould, giving the type a sharper face than was possible with hand casting. The machine was a step in the right direction, but was crude and imperfect. White took it up and tried to improve it, but he did not succeed in removing its fundamental defects. The types were not cast solid. Being hollow they were light and too weak to withstand the pressure of the presses. The first successful type-casting machine was made by David Bruce, Jr., in 1838, in development of the Johnson idea. George Bruce bought David Bruce’s patents and used the machine until 1845, when David Bruce made further improvements and produced the type of machine which is now in general use not only in this country but in Europe, where the method was soon adopted.
James Conner, a printer of New York, began business as a stereotyper in that city in the year 1827. His was the first stereotype edition of the New Testament. He also earned a good reputation as the publisher in the United States of the Bible in folio form. To the business of stereotyping he soon after added that of type founding, in which he was remarkably successful. With the aid of Edwin Starr, then in his employ, he made the electrotype matrices which enabled him largely to increase the stock of his foundry. After the death of James Conner, in 1861, the foundry was managed by his sons and grandsons, who finally merged the business in that of the American Type Founders Company.
Meantime the business of type founding spread from its original centers and new fields were occupied. By 1818 the Boston Type Foundry had been founded by Beddington & Ewer, and undertook to cast types, set types, and make stereotype plates. Samuel N. Dickinson was taught the trade of a printer in the State of New York, but afterward was employed as a compositor in the Boston Type and Stereotype Foundry. In 1829 he began business as a master printer and in 1839 he began type founding after having designed for an Edinburgh foundry a series of Scotch-cut letters. The success of this face determined him to cast type for himself. In 1845 he had a full assortment of types and issued a specimen book. Dickinson was not a strong man, however, and died of consumption in 1848, at the age of forty-seven. The business was continued by Sewall Phelps and Michael Dalton. Both the Boston Type Foundry and the Dickinson Type Foundry had unusually successful careers and were later absorbed in the American Type Founders Company.
Type foundries were started in Albany, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Louisville, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and in New York, where there were at least seven foundries. This led to over-production, competition, and the failure of many weak concerns, a condition of things which was not entirely remedied until the organization of the American Type Founders Company in 1892.
In 1840 Augustus Ladew and George Charles opened at St. Louis the first foundry west of Cincinnati. This firm continued in successful operation until it was merged into the American Type Founders Company at its organization.
In 1806 Robert Lothian, of Scotland, tried and failed to establish a type foundry in New York. His son George B. Lothian, who had been taught the trade of stereotyping in the stereotype foundries of John Watts, of New York, and B. & J. Collins, of Philadelphia, had also received instruction from his father and from Elihu White in type founding, undertook to establish a type foundry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was an unsuccessful enterprise and Lothian returned to New York. In 1822 he undertook to make type for the old firm of Harper & Brothers. The face of Greek, which he cut for the Anthon Classical Series, was very much admired. He died in 1851, but the foundry continued in business under other hands until 1875.
The next year Louis Pelouze, the founder of a distinguished family of type founders, started a business in Philadelphia. This was another of the successes from both a commercial and artistic point of view, and was another of the constituents of the American Type Founders Company.