Ottmar Mergenthaler

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Ottmar Mergenthaler

Ottmar Mergenthaler (born May 11, 1854 in Hachtel ; † October 28, 1899 in Baltimore ) was a German-American watchmaker and inventor of the Linotype typesetting machine .

Life

Youth in Germany

Ottmar Mergenthaler was born as the third of four children of Johann Georg Mergenthaler (1820-1893) and Rosine Ackermann (1828-1859) on May 11, 1854 in Hachtel (now a district of Bad Mergentheim ). His father was a village schoolmaster and came from Hohenacker near Waiblingen . As early as autumn 1854, his father was transferred to Neuhengstett near Calw , where he stayed for four years until he started school in Ensingen near Vaihingen an der Enz in the summer of 1858 . Ottmar experienced his youth there. In 1859 his mother died. In 1861 his father married Karoline Hahl, who was a loyal stepmother to the young Ottmar and his siblings.

Even as a child, Ottmar showed great technical interest. So he managed to repair the defective church tower clock in Ensingen. For financial reasons, however, his father was unable to fulfill his wish to study mechanical engineering . On the other hand, he didn't want to be a teacher like his father either. His two older brothers already attended secondary school, but the father could no longer pay the school fees for Ottmar, and he was initially needed to help with the household. Since technical professions required a higher education, Ottmar made a compromise: in May 1868, after attending elementary school, he began an apprenticeship as a watchmaker with his step-uncle, the master watchmaker Louis Hahl in Bietigheim an der Enz . Attending evening and Sunday school provided the basis for his technical knowledge. He decided to emigrate to America after completing his apprenticeship.

First steps in America

Ottmar Mergenthaler at the age of 25

Mergenthaler reached Baltimore on October 26, 1872 as a between deck passenger on the steamer "Berlin" . He drove on to Washington, DC , where his cousin August Hahl ran a workshop for electrical devices and measuring tools. He had advanced him the money for the trip, and in return Mergenthaler was supposed to work in his workshop.

The cousin's company also manufactured numerous inventor models for which, according to the law of the time, a model had to be submitted with every patent application in Washington. In this way, Ottmar Mergenthaler was often in contact with new developments. In 1875 August Hahl relocated the workshop to Baltimore. From 1878 Mergenthaler was a partner in the company.

Ottmar Mergenthaler received American citizenship on October 9, 1878. In 1881 he married Emma Lachenmaier, a daughter of German parents. The marriage resulted in five children. In 1883 the cousins ​​parted ways and Mergenthaler opened his own workshop.

First successes with printing machines

During this time, there was a great need for a useful setting machine. Hand typesetting , which has been in use since Gutenberg , was still used, in which the output of an experienced typesetter is around 1400 characters per hour. However, since the first high-performance printing machines had already appeared in the first third of the 19th century , there was no similar increase in performance in typesetting. Therefore, numerous inventors were concerned with automating and accelerating the setting process, but mostly failed due to mechanical problems.

Line typesetting machine from Ottmar Mergenthaler's company Linotype

Ottmar Mergenthaler also searched for a solution for a number of years. Before starting his own business, he improved several machines for the Hahl company. Charles T. Moore brought a lithographic typewriter into the workshop, which Mergenthaler made to work, but whose principle did not speed up typesetting. For the court clerk James Ogilvie Clephane , whom he met in 1876, he was supposed to perfect a die- stamping machine. The machine was completed two years later, but the principle of operation with paper mats had serious defects and the typeface produced was unacceptable. Clephane continued to assist Mergenthaler in his work with Lemon G. Hine , a Washington attorney, and they both gave him US $ 9,000 to purchase 4,500 dies for his new idea.

In 1884 Mergenthaler constructed a die stick setting machine and keyboard in his small workshop in Bank Lane, Baltimore. Recessed characters were embossed in the matrices, which were guided by wires. They were triggered by touching and collected into a line. The exclusion was still done manually. The line was cast with lead on this early model . The patent for the typesetting machine was officially confirmed on August 26, 1884 and shortly afterwards the own company "National Typographic Co of West-Virginia" was founded with Frank Hume, Kurtz Johnson, James O. Clephane, Abner Greenleaf with Mr. Hine as Presidents and Mergenthalers Plant Management with a facility at 201 Camden Street. It was registered with US $ 1 million ($ 22.5 million in 2010) divided into 40,000 shares. In the event of success, Mergenthaler promised "some fair share" in the invention. A contract was signed stating that all inventions, present and future, were the property of the company.

On November 13, 1884, the contract was amended so that the inventor retains full control over his development work, receives an annual salary of $ 3000 ($ 68,800 in 2010) and 10% of the revenue from any machine that generates profit. Another area of ​​the contract stipulated that all inventions, present and future, would become the property of the company if Mergenthaler should leave the company.

A year later, in February 1885, the line was automatically excluded with double wedges in an improved machine. The production of the matrices with 4500 embossed typefaces was (still) too expensive.

Stilson Hutchins , the owner of the Washington Post, organized the exhibition and advertising for the line typesetting machine in the Chamberlain Hotel in Washington, and many interested people from all over the world came to see it. President Arthur also found words of praise. A banquet was held to celebrate his invention. Mergenthaler gave a big speech in which he reviewed the path of his invention. Stilson intended to attract a group of newspaper publishers as funders.

Blower Linotype and Funder

Linotype from 1886 for the "Tribune"

The desired syndicate could be founded on March 14, 1885 and consisted of:

The new management took over the running of the National Typographic Company in the spring of 1885 with total capital of approximately $ 300,000 ($ 7,020,000 in 2010). It has been said that this was the largest sum invested in an American invention that has so far not made a profit. The syndicate also purchased all of the $ 7,000 ($ 164,000 in 2010) stock from the National Typographic Company at $ 32 per share, along with related fixed assets of $ 14,024.

Mergenthaler constructed a completely new machine and also convinced his skeptical financiers of it. On July 3, 1886, the first machine with now freely rotating brass matrices was completed and presented at the New York Tribune . The publisher Whitelaw Reid is said to have exclaimed during commissioning: "A line of types!" The name for this machine was found: " Linotype ". With their help, the performance of a typesetter (now: machine typesetter ) could be increased to around 6000 characters per hour. The first model was called "Blower Linotype" because compressed air was used to transport the dies. In order to be able to go into series production and to keep the price of the machine low, Mergenthaler needed a way to manufacture the dies cheaply. With the previous possibilities it was not possible to produce the 1200 dies economically, so that Mergenthaler built its own die factory and developed various special machines for it. He also used Linn Boyd Benton's punch cutting machine and eventually achieved inexpensive manufacture.

Because the National Typographic Company did not have the means to finance this production, a new company, the Mergenthaler Printing Company, was founded in 1885 with registered capital of $ 1,000,000 ($ 23,400,000 in 2010). Whitelaw Reid became the company's president and chief executive officer. The owners of the old National Typographic Company asked for warrants because the syndicate wanted a majority in the new company. Hine then asked for 25% of the capital for investors in the Washington group and Mergenthaler, who had put all his personal fortune into his company, accepted a loan from Reid so that he could buy shares himself. The terms of the loan were pretty tough: Reid kept the shares as collateral with an irrevocable power of attorney and charged 6% interest. When the company asked for a 20% share in the cost of setting up the company, Mergenthaler's debt was $ 5,000.

Before the last of the twelve machines was completed, Mergenthaler had introduced nine improvements, all of which were patented. The business was now run by a group of newspaper publishers who saw great profit in the typesetting machine and ordered the 100 more to be built as quickly as possible.

In four years the Tribune owned a dozen Linotype machines and had published a 500-page book called The Tribune Book of Open Air Sports.

In 1887 the New York Tribune owned 30 linotypes, the Washington Post 15, Rand of Rand in Chicago 20, and the Courier Journal in Louisville 18 of the typesetting machines.

The donors, led by Whitelaw Reid, showed dissatisfaction because the machines were not working satisfactorily and errors arose in the newspaper during continuous use. There was also no time to familiarize the operator with the machine. Mergenthaler asked for more time, but the directors decided that the Tribune machine would be sufficient, at least for the moment, and ordered another 100 units. The factory on Camden Street in Baltimore needed to be expanded and the number of workers increased from 40 to 160. He outsourced the manufacture of the frame and some of the larger parts to external companies and manufactured the dies and the sensitive parts in his company, and did the assembly. Mergenthaler now had to cover a wide and varied field. First, he had to make the tools he needed. Then he had to train the unskilled workers, all the while under pressure from shareholders who expected high dividends quickly. Mainly, he needed molds at low prices. An attempt to have this manufactured by another company had failed miserably. For his own company to manufacture the matrices, he needed no less than thirty special machines, all of which had to be operated by trained personnel. With these at hand, Mergenthaler was able to manufacture molds at prices that were within the budget of his superiors. Its original job was to prepare and keep the punches that pressed them into the dies. The pantograph invented by Linn Benton came a little too late for him because he had just built a similar machine.

Now trouble was brewing from all sides: the subcontractors did not deliver on schedule and the material was often of inferior quality. Faulty matrices were returned from the Tribune's office, demonstrating that the production was careless. Mergenthaler did everything humanly possible to train the staff. He printed out detailed instructions as published today by efficiency experts. He stayed with his men from morning to evening - and longer. If he saw a mistake, he corrected it personally. But the work was still slow, especially in assembling the machine. To encourage them to work faster, he set out a reward of $ 10 for each machine that was assembled at a reasonable and affordable cost. Then Mergenthaler extended his bonus system to the production and was cheered by the workers.

In the Tribune's office, he received valuable advice from two trustworthy people: Ferdinand J. Wich and Ernest Girod. For example, that the cast iron cams that the slugs threw out wore out too quickly. Here they suggested hardened steel instead. The eject lever loosened from the frame after prolonged use and minor suggestions for improving the lifting and distribution mechanism were also made and implemented by Mergenthaler immediately. In February 1888, fifty machines were delivered to the newspapers.

The rift

Catalog of the company Ottmar Mergenthaler & Co. in Baltimore
The Linotype line typesetting machine from 1899

Mergenthaler and his directors had grown further and further apart. After a few bitter letters, Mergenthaler resigned as plant manager on March 15, 1888. After the falling out with the company, only this company was able to produce complete machines because it owned the patent rights. With his own factory in Baltimore, "Ottmar Mergenthaler & Co.", he manufactured machine parts, as can be seen in his catalog.

Ottmar Mergenthaler continued to improve his machine in the following years. Since he wanted to stop the construction of the old model during its development, he fell out with his co-partners and left the company.

He presented his drawings, made with the usual clarity, to his friends, with the information that he did not have the means to carry out this work. James Ogilvie Clephane stepped into the breach again and collected ten checks, each for $ 200, and transferred the $ 2000 to Mergenthaler, enabling him to build his last and most successful machine. In the course of 1889 there was a test run. Not only did it work faster than its predecessor, it also got better results. The construction had gained strength and reliability. But its weight was still too high, a mistake at the expense of its designer, whose frames tended to be overly massive. It was decided to deliberately make the parts lighter and they built a second machine that would then serve as a prototype for production. The patent for this was filed on February 28, 1888.

The machine was completed in February 1890 and on display in the Judge Building, New York, by James Clephane and Abner Greenleaf, friends of Mergenthaler. The Judge Building at 110 Fifth Avenue (Manhattan) and 16th Street was so named because "Judge Magazine" was produced here by the Sackett, Wilhelms & Company printing company, which in 1891 owned a printing machine.

In 1890 Mergenthaler first heard of the typographer from John Raphael Rogers in Cleveland. Attorney Philip T. Dodge went to Cleveland to see Roger's machine. Dodge announced legal action against Roger's company because their machine infringed Mergenthaler's patents.

The Mergenthaler Linotype Company

Mergenthaler Linotype Company stock from 1896

After Mergenthaler's success with the “Simplex” machine model, an agreement was reached again with the previous shareholders. The increased demand for the Linotype machines led to the merger of the Mergenthaler Printing Company with the National Typographic Company in 1891 , resulting in the establishment of the new Mergenthaler Linotype Company with headquarters at 44-60 Ryerson Street Brooklyn , New York City . It was the first time that the name "Linotype" appeared in the company name.

In 1889 Mergenthalter received the John Scott Medal from the City of Philadelphia and in January 1890 from the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia the Elliott Cresson Medal in gold "for the speed and excellence with which the Linotype machine works and for its economy". A few years before his death, he received the Cooper Medal from the Cooper Union , New York, for his invention .

In December 1891, Mr. Hine resigned as president of the new company. He was succeeded by Mr. Philip T. Dodge, who had rendered valuable services to the group as patent attorney and legal advisor.

Bitter feelings lingered, especially when Mergenthaler received a letter from Dodge in 1895 asking him to allow the company to remove his name from the company name on the grounds that it was too long and too time-consuming to spell it out and besides, he is subject to typographical errors. Mergenthaler refused and ended his reply letter as follows: “Hoping to be spared the intended humiliation, I am, Yours Truly, Ott. Mergenthaler. " (In the hope that I will be spared the intended humiliation, I remain ...) His name remained part of the company name for the next 88 years - without harming the sale.

Because the machines were relatively expensive to purchase - $ 3,000 ($ 74,200 in 2010) - many print shops and smaller newspapers made it unaffordable. Therefore, the company also concentrated on renting out the machines, which meant that the company was officially a leasing company . According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, the annual rental fee during the 1895–96 fiscal year for the new Simplex machine was $ 500 with an option to purchase at the end of the contract period of $ 2,500. In that year, the company had approx. 1600 machines rented.

In 1894 the company paid a dividend for the first time.

At the Paris World's Fair in 1889 , Mergenthaler's line typesetting machine caused a sensation. Edison is said to have even called it the eighth wonder of the world .

In 1892 the thousandth Linotype typesetting machine was manufactured in America .

In 1893 it gained international recognition when the Linotype was exhibited and celebrated at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.

Mergenthaler invented three commercially successful typesetting machines:

  • The first became known as the 'Blower Linotype' because of the compressed air
  • The second was the 'Square Base' (square foot)
  • In 1891 Mergenthaler introduced his third improved model, the Simplex, or Model 1 as it became known. This eliminated all "teething problems" that the previous machines still had.

The Model 1 was the last machine that Mergenthaler built during his lifetime.

In 1895, 2,608 Linotype Model I machines were installed in 385 locations in the United States. In that year, the Linotype machines were also recognized by the printers.

Sickness and death

In the autumn of 1888, Ottmar Mergenthaler fell ill with severe pleurisy , which soon healed thanks to the good care of his wife. Hardly recovered, he turned back to his Linotype.

In 1892 he visited his father again in Germany. Two years later, tuberculosis had attacked his lungs. Mergenthaler immediately moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Maryland, and afterwards he lived on Saranac Lake , New York, in the "Baker cottage", which was inhabited seven years earlier by Robert Louis Stevenson . In 1896 he moved to Prescott , Arizona, which has a more favorable climate, for six months and later moved to Deming (New Mexico). In November of the following year, his house burned to the ground. He had previously spent several months writing his autobiography, which was based on many personal records, legal records, and hundreds of letters. All of this fell victim to the flames. In April 1898 he returned from Deming to Baltimore, where he wrote a much shorter autobiography than the tape that burned in New Mexico. On October 28, 1899, Ottmar Mergenthaler died at the age of 45 due to tuberculosis in his house at 159 West Lanvale Street in Baltimore. He was buried three days later in Laudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore.

Family and will

In 1881 he married Emma Lachenmaier. The marriage had five children:

  • Fritz Lilian (1883–1910) studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University . He died on August 9, 1910 with his wife Doris Feldner and their parents when their car was hit by an express train near Cape May
  • Julius Ottmar (1884–1888), who died at the age of four
  • Eugene George (1885–1919), who studied at Johns Hopkins University , became an electrical engineer and opened his own company in Baltimore. He remained unmarried and died of the Spanish flu in 1919 . He left the university with a donation for the construction of the Mergenthaler Hall, which was completed as a four-story laboratory in 1943
  • Hermann Charles (1887–1972) studied at the Technical University in Karlsruhe and lived in the USA until his death
  • Pauline Rosalie (1894–1986) married Rody Perkins in 1917.

The will was opened one month after Mergenthaler's death. He left the Baltimore German Orphan Asylum $ 2,000 (in 2010 that was $ 54,200). His wife received a third of his fortune, valued at $ 500,000 (2010 value of $ 13.6 million), including stocks and bonds. The rest of his fortune was divided among the children who were allowed to use them at the age of 21. Under his contract with his company, the family received $ 50 for every Linotype machine they made.

Linotype branches abroad

The first Linotype typesetting machine on the continent was bought in 1894 by a publishing group in the Netherlands called De Neederlandsche Financier for their office in Amsterdam.

According to a notice in the Washington Post in 1889, the patent rights were sold to the UK and Ireland for $ 2.5 million ($ 61.1 million in 2010) that same year. Although the report did not name the "British company", it was certain that the British Linotype Company Ltd. , headquartered in Manchester, had acquired the patent rights.

In 1896 there were over 3000 Linotype typesetting machines worldwide. A subsidiary was also founded in Germany, in October 1896 the “Mergenthaler-Setzmaschinen-Fabrik GmbH” in Berlin. Berliner Maschinenbau AG, formerly L. Schwartzkopff, took over the production of the typesetting machine for the German-speaking region . The Frankfurter type foundry D. Stempel manufactured the Linotype matrices .

When the Linotype patents expired in 1911, the INTERTYPE, manufactured by the International Typesetting Machine Company, appeared on the market. It was roughly identical to the Linotype, but with a few changes and improvements. Both machines used the same dies.

meaning

A new era in printing technology began with the Linotype machine in 1884. Newspapers and books could be produced faster and cheaper. The circulation of American newspapers rose from 3.6 million to 33 million within a short period of time. Newspaper companies in particular, which had to produce large quantities of text in a very short time, soon had entire halls full of Linotype typesetting machines. The era of this ingeniously constructed machine lasted for about a century. Until the early 1980s, the Linotype typesetting machine, which was continuously developed and with punched tape control, achieved hourly outputs of up to 25,000 characters, remained common technology. Then new techniques such as photo typesetting and later desktop publishing (DTP) replaced the Linotype lead typesetting machines. Today it can only be found in a few print shops as a collector's item. In many well-known technical museums, however, the machine has been given its due place. The invention of Ottmar Mergenthaler ushered in an epoch-making development in typesetting and thus for all of printing technology.

Commemoration

Postage stamp (1954) for 100th birthday

Mergenthaler's name is still highly regarded in America. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame , which has a museum in Akron, Ohio. Alongside Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben and Carl Schurz , he is considered to be one of the most important men who, as immigrants from Germany, helped shape the history of the United States.

In Germany, on May 11, 1954 , a memorial for Ottmar Mergenthaler was set up in the town hall of Hachtel, today a district of Bad Mergentheim .

In the Kleinglattbach district of the city of Vaihingen an der Enz there is the Ottmar-Mergenthaler-Realschule .

Also on his 100th birthday on May 11, 1954, the Deutsche Bundespost Berlin issued a special postage stamp with his portrait and the Linotype in his memory.

Several streets were named after him, including in Frankfurt am Main .

gallery

  • Front view of the Ott. Mergenthal Factory in Baltimore

  • Linotype's birthplace

  • View into a workshop

  • Ottmar Mergenthaler at the drawing table

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Ottmar Mergenthaler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ottmar-Mergenthaler-Museum. Retrieved May 16, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Mergenthaler, Ottmar. In: Dictionary of American Biography, Volume 12 - page 549 ff Edited by Dumas Malone, Publisher: C. Scribner's Sons New York, 1943
  3. ^ Charles T. Moore and the Origins of the Linotype
  4. ↑ James O. Clephane Dead; Development of Linotype Machine Largely Due to His Efforts,  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: The New York Times, December 1, 1901.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / query.nytimes.comgstabstract.html  
  5. ↑ WN HALDEMAN'S WILL .; His Directions for the Management of His Two Louisville Papers . Special to The New York Times. May 20, 1902
  6. ^ WH Rand, publisher, dies. The New York Times, June 22, 1915
  7. ↑ History of the Washington Post ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ghco.com
  8. ^ The Tribune book of open-air sports. Prepared by the New York tribune with the aid of acknowledged experts. Edited by Henry Hall. Publisher: The Tribune Association, New York 1887
  9. ↑ Illustrated Catalog of Linotype Parts 1898
  10. ↑ Ottmar Mergenthaler, Machine for Producing Type Bars (Patent February 28, 1888)
  11. ^ Air conditioning by Willis Carrier
  12. ↑ The Rogers Typograph ( Memento of the original from February 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.metaltype.co.uk
  13. ↑ The Mergenthaler Linotype Company of Brooklyn, NY 44-60 Ryerson St.
  14. ↑ John Scott Medal
  15. ↑ Mechanical typesetting remarks by Mr. Philip T. Dodge at the annual meeting of the American Publishers' Association, New York, 1894.
  16. ↑ Typesetting Machine - Mergenthaler Linotype Model 1 Line Casting, 1896 ( Memento of the original from February 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at Museum Victoria, Melbourne @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / museumvictoria.com.au
  17. ^ Campus map with Mergenthaler Hall
  18. ^ The Linotype & Machinery Co. Ltd. - 'Machine That Sets Type Conquers The World' ( Memento of the original from December 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mosi.org.uk
  19. ^ Intertype manufactured by the International Typesetting Machine Company
  20. ^ National Inventors Hall of Fame
personal data
SURNAME Mergenthaler, Ottmar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American watchmaker and inventor of the Linotype typesetting machine
DATE OF BIRTH May 11, 1854
PLACE OF BIRTH Hachtel
DATE OF DEATH October 28, 1899
Place of death Baltimore