John Baine, a type-founder of Edinburgh, sent a relative to this country with tools for a foundry at the close of the Revolutionary War, and soon after came over himself. They carried on the business till 1790, when Mr. Baine died, and his kinsman returned to Scotland.
A Dutch founder, Adam G. Mappa, settled at New York about 1787, and cast Dutch and German faces, as well as Roman styles and several Oriental alphabets. Want of capital prevented his success, and many of his matrices passed into the possession of Binny & Ronaldson.[7]
In 1796, type-founding was commenced in Philadelphia by Archibald Binny and James Ronaldson, natives of the city of Edinburgh, where Binny had carried on the same business. Their assortment was not extensive, but it embraced the essential founts,—Brevier, Bourgeois, Long Primer, Small Pica, Pica, and two-line letters. They were obliging and attentive, and in twenty years made a fortune. They improved their foundry according to the increase of printing and the consequent demands of the trade, extending their assortment from Pearl, of 180 lines in a foot, to 12-line Pica, having 6 lines. Binny made an important improvement in the type-mould, by which a caster could cast 6000 letters in a day with as much ease as he before could cast 4000.[8]
According to Holmes’s American Annals, about 200 newspapers were printed in the United States in the year 1801, of which 17 were issued daily, 7 three times a week, 30 twice a week, and 146 weekly. There must also have been at the same time as many as 60 offices engaged in miscellaneous printing. The whole business had increased threefold in eleven years. Another type-foundry was put in successful operation in Baltimore, about 1805, by Samuel Sower & Co. It had in it some moulds and matrices which had been used by Christopher Sower, who had printed in Germantown, near Philadelphia, and cast his own types. He printed with German characters; but now the foundry was revived with excellent Roman and Italic letters, and among other extraordinary things it had the size called Diamond, with a smaller face than had ever been cast before. It was the smallest type in the world.
The demand for type was very brisk till the war of 1812 commenced, and the foundries were generally three or four months in arrears in their execution of orders.
The names of the newspapers published in the United States in April, 1810, are given in Thomas’s History of Printing, and amount to 359, of which 27 were daily papers, 38 were printed twice, 15 three times, and 279 once in a week. Add those required for general printing, and the whole number of offices could not be less than 500,—being an increase of 240 in nine years, and some of them using several thousand pounds of type for book-printing.
In 1811, Elihu White established a type-foundry in New York. He had been long engaged, in connection with Mr. Wing, in the manufacture of printing types at Hartford, Connecticut, upon a plan of their own invention, by which twenty or thirty letters were cast at once; but, abandoning that invention, he adopted the old plan of casting, and, having a good assortment of faces and bodies, his removal to New York was a great convenience to its printers, and they gave him a very satisfactory support. But the principal business in type-founding still continued, as formerly, to be carried on in Philadelphia.
In 1813, another type-foundry was begun in the city of New York, by D. & G. Bruce, principally to cast types for their own use. They had carried on book-printing for seven years, and had now become acquainted with the stereotype art,—Mr. David Bruce having visited England in 1812 and acquired it by purchase and actual labour. For ordinary printing, it was customary to bevel off the body of the type at the face end, or shoulder, as it is usually called, which unfitted it for making a strong stereotype plate in the most approved way: hence the necessity for casting type expressly for stereotype. Their first fount was Bourgeois, with which they cast two sets of plates of the New Testament, (the Common School Testament,) and sold one of these to Mathew Carey, of Philadelphia, retaining the other for their own business. But these were not completed till 1814. In 1815, they cast the plates of the 12mo School Bible, on Nonpareil type, prepared, like the Bourgeois, at their own foundry expressly for stereotyping. They thus gave the first stereotype School Testament and School Bible to America; but not the first stereotype book. John Watts, of England, also commenced stereotyping in New York in 1813, and completed the Westminster Catechism that year, a volume of 120 pages 12mo. David Bruce invented the planing-machine for equalizing the thickness of stereotype plates, which is now used in every stereotype foundry in the United States. The process of stereotyping is, however, entirely different from that of ordinary type-founding, and it is, therefore, generally carried on as a separate business, or connected with the composing department of a printing-office. Twenty compositors and two proof-readers will furnish full employment for one moulder, one caster, and three finishers, who will, among them, complete, on an average, 50 pages of octavo per day.
In 1818, or soon after, a type and stereotype foundry was established in Boston, and another in Cincinnati, principally through the enterprise of the late Elihu White, who, having the means of multiplying matrices with facility, took this method for the extension of his business. Others followed his example, and type-foundries were established in Albany, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Louisville, and St. Louis, with several additional in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The business, in fact, was overdone, and failures and suppressions took place, as competition reduced the prices of types.
The mode of type-founding has within forty years undergone important changes, which must no doubt be considered improvements. First among them is the introduction of machine-casting, in which a pump forces the fluid metal into the mould and matrix, and gives a sharper outline to the letter than was formerly given by the most violent throw of the caster. The old practice of casting a single type only at a time remains. The first idea of this machine originated with William M. Johnson, who obtained a patent for it in 1828. Elihu White put it into use in his type-foundry, and persevered in using and trying to improve it as long as he lived; but he did not succeed in removing the greatest fault, which was a hollowness in the body of the types cast by it, that inclined them to sink under the pressure of the printing-press. The first successful type-casting machine was invented by David Bruce, Jr., of New York, and was patented March 17, 1838. The patent was sold to George Bruce, and the machines were used by him until 1845. David Bruce meanwhile patented another machine in 1843, which, with new improvements, patented two years later, gave entire satisfaction, and is now in general use in American foundries. By Bruce’s machine, three times the quantity of type that was cast by Binny & Ronaldson’s improved mould is now cast in a given time, and nearly five times the quantity that was cast by the common hand-mould eighty years ago. This improvement has passed into Europe, and been adopted by most of the German type-founders; but in Great Britain for some time it found little favour. A so-called “automatic machine,” for casting and finishing type, invented by Johnson & Atkinson, is in operation in London; but its rate of production seems to be less than that of the American machine, while, from its multiform operations, the proportion of imperfect type turned out must of necessity be considerably more.