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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 7

[section]

The American Bookmaker seems to be favored by the foundries outside the lately formed association. Only three large houses remain outside; but these—Bruce, Farmer, and Barnhart Bros. & Spindler—are all established firms of high standing, and together represent about one-third of the total type production of the United States. They have therefore just cause of complaint when they find that the company has « cornered » the two or three houses manufacturing blank strips for brass rule, and that until new machinery is set up and an independent rule-making house is established, they have either to import and pay duty, or buy from the « trust. » As the manufacture is a very special one, the founders have always paid high prices for the blanks. The ultimate result of the temporary monopoly promises to be a permanent fall in the price of brass rule.

Our eccentric contemporary La Sorte, for October, is to hand. The cartoon is a portrait of Auguste Keüfer, whose special mission, it would seem, is to mediate between masters and men in case of trade disputes. The feuilleton, without which no French newspaper is complete, contains a poem of half-a-dozen stanzas to the glories of the old-time compositor, jovial and convivial, and great at outs, doubles, and pie. The Revue des Artes Graphiques having collected and published the instructions given by various authors of printers' manuals on the correct method of picking up types, La Sorte comes out with an elaborate burlesque. The various authorities are consulted through a spirit medium. Fertel (1723) says: « The type should be raised with the eye first, and with the hands afterwards—by preference with the right hand. It is a good rule not to wait till the type places itself in the composing-stick. » Quinquet (year vii) says that « types must be picked up with the hand; but it is necessary to take care not to close the eyes while seizing them. » Brun (1826) says: « You should seize the letter by the hair of the head, and place it nick downward in the composing-stick, holding it there firmly with the great toe of the left foot. This movement should be executed without contortion. » The names of about a dozen other authorities are attached to similar nonsense. La Sorte and Nick are, so far as we know, the only comic publications connected with the Craft.

Our Japanese contemporary, Press and Paper for November, contains an engraving representing a comical group of English tourists, the work of a native artist. The figures are full of character, though the faces are scarcely of the European cast; and the sketch displays a keen sense of humor.

Mr J. Gibbs, in one of his « Gossips » in the Effective Advertiser, ventures a prediction which may ere long be an actual and familiar fact: « Electricity is all over us, and through us now. ؟Can we make that print quicker than steam machinery? We shall! We shall telephone epitomes of news to the various offices, and photography or electricity will print a whole stack of paper at one touch. » The italics are ours. Of newspapers, he says: « the large sheets we know now will go out, and smaller sheets of a different texture will take their place. »

The Journal für Buchdruckerkunst completed its 59th year with the issue for 15th December. This excellent weekly is, we believe, the oldest of typographical journals, as it is in many respects the best.

There has been a change in the staff of the Stationer, Printer, and Fancy Trades Register. Mr Theo. Birch is now the managing editor.

A most peculiar feat of brass-rule work is shown in the American Art Printer for December. It is a female profile, the outlines being cut out of a solid background, which but for the statement that it is also brass-rule, would be taken for a wooden block. The artist is Lewis Rudy, with the Griffith, Axtell, & Cady company, Holyoke, Mass.