Linotype machine

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In printing, the Linotype machine (pronounced "LINEotype" [[[Template:IPA]]]) uses a 90-character keyboard to create an entire line of metal type at once. This allows much faster printing than with the Gutenberg-style system, in which operators place down one letter, punctuation mark or space at a time. The machine revolutionized newspaper publishing, making it possible for a relatively small number of operators to set type for many pages on a daily basis.

First produced by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1886, the Linotype was 2.1 m tall. Keystrokes retrieved letter molds from the magazines. Once an entire line of molds was assembled, the machine poured molten type metal, which is an alloy of lead usually also containing tin and antimony, into the stacked-up molds. This produced a complete line of type in reverse, so it would read properly when used to transfer ink onto paper. The lines of type were then assembled by hand into a page.

The complexity of a Linotype machine was necessary not just so that it would place letter molds in the proper place as the operator typed on the keyboard, but so it could return the molds to the proper place in preparation for their next usage. This was vital, because returning letters to the proper part of a case is the slowest and most difficult part of setting type by hand. The Linotype machine used a clever design of coded notches on each letter mold, rather like the indentations on a key which make it fit a lock, so they would slide back into the proper spot when replaced.

In addition, a Linotype machine could produce "justified" type (where the spaces on the lines are expanded so that the text fills the line to the right-hand margin). It did this by inserting "space bands" rather than simple fixed-width blank molds whenever the operator pressed the spacebar. These space bands were wedge-like devices that could expand side-to-side when their top and bottom edges were compressed together. They would first be inserted into the line set to their minimum width. When the line was completely composed, levers would press down uniformly on the set of molds that formed the line of type, forcing each of the space bands to expand from side-to-side. When the line had expanded to the point where it was pressing against the left and right margin stops, the line had been correctly justified and could now be cast. Except for the determination of which lines to justify and which lines to leave "ragged right", this process was entirely automated.

The machines are so noisy that Linotype operators are known for their bad hearing.

The "hot type" method of printing is virtually extinct today, replaced first by "cold type", in which lines of type were generated by computerized printers and pasted onto large paper "flats" by hand, and then by pagination and desktop publishing systems in which the entire page is created in the computer and produced in press-ready form.

The Linotype may be best remembered for the layout of its keyboard, which had letters arranged in decreasing order of frequency in everyday English. The first two vertical rows were usually ETAOIN SHRDLU, a phrase that occasionally appeared in print because Linotype operators who made mistakes would run their fingers down the keyboard to fill out the line with nonsense, and sometimes the slug of type would accidentally get used. This phrase is in the Oxford English Dictionary and has been used as a character name by a number of authors.

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