John Raphael Rogers

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Inventor of the typograph typesetting machine

John Raphael Rogers (born December 11, 1856 in Roseville , Illinois , † February 18, 1934 in Brooklyn , New York City ) is the inventor of the line typesetting and casting machine Typograph .

Life

His parents moved from Illinois to Kentucky in 1856, where they helped establish Berea College. Here, as a teenager, he made the acquaintance of a manual setting machine that he would never let go of in the future. Roger's courses at Berea College and Oberlin College (Ohio) prepared him for teaching Greek and physics, and also for mechanical engineering.

After completing his studies in Kentucky and Ohio, Rogers works as an engineer in railroad construction in Iowa and Wisconsin. He then worked for four years as a school inspector in Lorrain, Ohio. During this time he developed plans for a typesetting machine. His first system required three more machines: one to prepare the soft metal (blanks), one to set and press the letters into the soft metal, and a third to cast the lines with lead. Two years later he was able to apply for a patent for his Typograph line typesetting and casting machine, now a machine that cast print lines, similar to the Linotype.

Inspired by the use of dies in Linotype , he developed his own typesetting machine. In this case, the bar matrices are guided along wires and moved back to their starting position after the line has been cast. The inventor founded the Rogers Typograph Co company in 1888 . In the same year the first machine was built by Fred E. Bright in Cleveland (Ohio), who later joined Rogers' company. In 1890 the first copy came on the market. It is exhibited by Joseph Pulitzer , publisher of New York World newspaper , in his skyscraper, inaugurated December 10, 1890. Because of its simple operation and low weight, it was soon a popular setting and casting machine.

In 1886 Rogers was sued by the Mergenthaler Linotype Company . The point of contention is the system of excluding the set lines with wedges. Rogers bought the wedge system from Jacobs William Schuckers, who received a patent for it before Mergenthaler. As the owner of the earlier patent, Rogers wins the process in 1893.

The next year, however, marks the end of Rogers' company: the Mergenthaler Linotype Company buys all patents granted in America for a sum between 416,000 and 460,000 US dollars and the typographer disappears from the market. John Rogers itself is also an employee in the Mergenthaler Printing Co .

After Rogers had sold his patents to the Mergenthaler Printing Company, the typograph was no longer allowed to be manufactured in America after 1895. By 1900 the Canadian Typograph Company, Ltd. built and sold , of Windsor, Ontario, has a significant number of machines in Canada. However, the factory burned down and when certain Linotype patents expired, the company moved to Detroit , Michigan, where it became known as the American Typograph Company . She made typographers until 1912.

Rogers and Frederick E Bright had introduced the typographer in Germany in 1894 and the invention made a favorable impression, so that Ludwig Loewe & Co. in Berlin first built test models in 1895. The final form of the German model was then produced and sold by the Typograph typesetting machine factory in Berlin in 1897. In 1908, the Model B 2000 German Typograph machines were sold throughout Europe. During the Second World War , the factory in Germany is destroyed by bombs.

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personal data
SURNAME Rogers, John Raphael
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American inventor
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Roseville
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1934
Place of death Brooklyn , New York City