Tolbert Lanston

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Tolbert Lanston 1844-1913
Lanston's first mechanical keyboard
The first monotype with type casting from Lanston
Lanston's Monotype at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair

Tolbert Lanston (born February 3, 1844 in Troy , Ohio , † February 18, 1913 in Washington, DC ) was an American inventor . His most important achievement was the invention and development of the “ Monotype ” typesetting machine , so called because it cast and put together individual letters .

Life

Lanston came from a poor family and left school when he was 15; then he was a volunteer in the American Civil War , most recently in the rank of sergeant . At the end of the war he was 21 years old and went to Washington, where he found a job in the American government's pension office. He became head of the four departments. Then studied law, was admitted to the bar and practiced this profession for some time. But his main interest was in inventions and he invented a lock for the mailbag, an adding machine and an adjustable horseshoe. From this early invention achieved some notoriety and also had a modest income.

He probably heard about the problems with the typesetting machines from Colonel Seaton, whose father owned the Seaton & Gales newspaper publisher and who were printers for the government for many years when print jobs were still being placed. After the Civil War, Colonel Seaton became the director of the Census Bureau. Lanston visited the census office and made the acquaintance of Herman Hollerith , who was developing his calculating machine with punched tape.

He was concerned with improving the traditional typographic typesetting process and it is said that Colonel Seaton was the first to give Lanston financial support. However, this was soon to be replaced as financier by J. Maury Dove, a wealthy coal trader and hotel owner in Washington.

The Monotype System

For manual typesetting, expensive specialists lined up metal types, which they picked up individually from the type case, in their angle hooks to form whole sentences one behind the other. In many ways, the key to the novelty of the Monotype system was not in the mechanical device, which was ingenious. In order to enable the casting of completely aligned lines, Lanston invented a unit system that assigned each letter a value from 5 to 18, which corresponded to its width. A lower case letter “i” or a period was 5 units, a capital letter “W” was 18 units. This enabled the development of the calculated mechanism in the keyboard, which is essential for the differentiation of the Monotype typesetting.

Now Lanston has developed his two-stage monotype setting process: Setting and casting are not done in the same machine. The first machine was made in the workshop of D. Ballauf, a machinist and model maker. The keyboard experiments were carried out in the factories of the Taft-Peirce Manufacturing Company.

First of all, the text to be printed was recorded with the button in paper punched strips , then these controlled a casting machine that cast each type individually and deposited it in the correct order. That is, they are strung together to form a line in the machine. After leaving the machine, these can also be combined to form printing blocks.

Lanston was the first to develop a typesetting process that separated the recording of information and the production of the metal printing form.

In 1885 he applied for his patent (US Patents 364521 to 364525 inclusive), which were granted in 1887.

Harold Malcolm Duncan, a journalist and editor, introduced him to J. Maury Dove as a potential sponsor for his "Monotype" machine, and they founded the Lanston Monotype Machine Company in Washington DC in 1887, with Dove as President. Duncan later became a seller for the United States.

Lanston's typesetting machine was fraught with serious operability and usability problems. John Sellers Bancroft , who worked for his uncles in the Sellers & Co machine shop in Philadelphia, was asked to help develop the Monotype. He took on the task of redesigning this “ailing, unreliable and difficult to construct machine”. Bancroft made a formidable, practical machine with a much larger scope and capacity than the original. From a partial failure, Bancroft developed it into a huge commercial and machine success. For this he was offered partnership in 1873 and when the company was registered in 1887, he was elected director and managing director.

In 1890, Benton, Waldo & Co. supplied the first stamp cutting machine to the Lanston Monotype Machine Company in Washington.

Lanston soon saw the limits of stamping out of cold metal. He changed his process, based on hot metal, for which he was granted a patent in 1896. (US Patent 557994.)

In 1893 the Lanston typesetting machine was exhibited at the Chicago World's Fair and was shown and described in the British & Colonial Printer & Stationer . But none of the first machines brought commercial success. The machine exhibited there ran "quite successfully", but "left a lot to be desired in the design, which was due to the fact that they had not yet found a skilled engineer" in order to simplify the mechanism. The first machine was sold to Gibson Brothers, Incorporated, of Washington.

In 1893 Lanston was awarded the Cresson Medal in Gold for his invention by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia.

In 1897 J. Maury Dove and Harold M. Duncan of the Lanston Monotype Machine Company traveled to London with four typesetting machines. During the crossing they met Lord Dunraven. He bought the patent rights of the Monotype System for Great Britain and its colonies (excluding Canada) for £ 220,000 (the equivalent of one million dollars). This money enabled John Sellers Bankcroft of William Sellers & Co. to make various improvements to the typesetting machine.

In 1898 Langston severed his ties to the engineering department and only worked as a consultant. A paralysis forced him to give up this soon too. He died in Washington on February 18, 1913. His second wife survived him. as was his son Aubrey, who was a writer.

In 1902, John Sellers Bancroft left the William Sellers machine factory and only worked for Lanston Monotype Machine Company as a machine engineer and manager of the factory. He later became Vice President and Treasurer.

In Great Britain

Lanston Monotype Corporation Ltd. were formed in December with a capital of £ 550,000 under the chairmanship of Lord Dunraven and with offices at 42 Drury Lane, London. As recently as June, they had offices on Leadenhall Street and called themselves Monotype Machine (British Patents) Syndicate Ltd. for the purpose of demonstrating and testing the system, and attracting investors. The syndicate was formed with a capital of £ 30,000.

The Lanston Monotype Corporation Ltd. began building an "green field" factory in Salfords , Surrey , near Redhill. Two buildings were erected and completed in 1900. Machines that came from the USA were checked, adjusted and repaired here. But they were also allowed to manufacture certain parts there.

literature

  • Richard L. Hopkins: Tolbert Lanston and the Monotype . The Origin of Digital Typesetting. The Tampa Press, 2012 ISBN 978-1-5973-2100-6

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Lanston, Tolbert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American inventor
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1844
PLACE OF BIRTH Troy , Ohio
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1913
Place of death Washington, DC