So @Octav1usKitten went to the Prague Technology Museum and they've got this beauty there and my god, it's amazing. This is a Monotype machine! Look how many keys it has! Who needs a shift key (or other modifiers) when you can just have FOUR SEPARATE ALPHABETICAL KEYBOARDS?

Before I forget, they posted it here: So this machine is a hot metal typesetting machine, the sort you'd use for making books or newspapers or such. They competed with Linotype machines, and replaced manual cast metal typesetting.

So before hot metal typesetting, you'd have two drawers (called cases) which each had a bunch of little compartments holding these "sorts", which are little pieces of metal for a letter. You'd load them onto a composing stick, backwards.

fun random trivia fact: Traditionally you'd have two cases, one for capital letters (majuscule), and one for small letters (minuscule). The top case contained capitals, the small letters were in the bottom case. This is where the terms "uppercase" and "lowercase" comes from!

So once you'd composed those lines they'd go into a galley, which then goes into a forme. A forme looks like this: It's the whole page, from which you can print.

So the problem with this sort of manual typesetting is that it's very slow. It's a lot of manual work. So hot metal typesetting was invented around the end of the 1800s to make a lot of this automated.

The Linotype machine is more well known for hot metal typesetting as it was more popular for newspapers and magazines. They work by casting a whole line at once as a single slug of metal, rather than character by character.

But the Monotype machine is also interesting and survived a long while in some niche industries. So, how it works: You have a keyboard, which has one key per mold.

You can have duplicate keys for the same letters, this lets a monotype switch between different typefaces. So you could have A-Z regular, A-Z Bold, A-Z Italics, and to switch you'd just type on the other keyboard. Same for upper vs lower.

Pressing these keys doesn't directly cause sorts to be formed, instead, the keyboard is controlling a paper tape punch. It's set up so that all your keypresses do is record the relative position on the keyboard that was pressed

so instead of encoding somehow that you pressed "A", it just records that you pressed COLUMN 1, ROW 6. This was because you could switch out what each key did, by changing the matrix case used by the casting machine. These contained molds for each letter.

So you'd type out your lines onto the paper tape, resulting in a bunch of punched holes, then feed that into the automatic casting machine. This machine would use the molds to create sorts for each letter in the lines on the tape (from lironlavi.com/reading/a-piec…)

and after a print run was done, you'd take all the little sorts and toss them into a bucket, then melt them back down for the next run. This type metal is mainly made of lead, but to make it tougher tin and antimony are added.

but when you melt the type metal, the some of the tin and antimony oxidise and form a grey powder on the surface that has to be skimmed off, and you have to periodically add more to keep your type metal alloy in the right proportions.

So the fact that the Monotype creates individual letter sorts instead of full lines like the Linotype would seem like a downside, as you might have to still arrange them as they come out of the casting machine. But it's actually a benefit, for one simple reason: Typos!

One problem with typesetting systems this complex is that it's hard to make corrections, especially since it's not like you have a piece of paper or a screen in front of you showing you what you just typed. Try typing blind and see how well you do.

But Monotype had the benefit that the sorts are individual pieces, so if you have made a mistake or need to change something later, it's much easier to just fix it up at that later stage.

I'm not gonna go into Linotype (that's a huge topic) but one more neat thing about Monotype, the company: So along with making the machines, they also made the fonts for them, in the form of molds.

and while obviously in 2019 they're not making any hot metal casting machines, the typeface creating part of Monotype never really went away. There's been mergers and buyouts and bankruptcies but they're still around. And you've seen their fonts TODAY, I guarantee it.

They developed a lot of classic well-known fonts, including a bunch specifically for Microsoft: * Arial * Felix Tilting * Gill Sans * Times New Roman

The Linotype does have a "screen," kind of. The characters are engraved on the opposite side of the matrices, so the operator can make changes if a typo occurs before casting. (Loving this thread by the way.)

Antimony-aliasing

Foone, do you know Glenn? You should chat: twitter.com/glennf/status/…

I grew up feeding lead bars into the melt pot on a lino in my stepdad's garage printshop, scraping the dross. Loved that thing. Different unit than here, still neat.

So are numbers uppercase or lowercase? And which numbers are vowels??

tbh at this point I'd take this over the MacBook Pro keyboard any day

After trying the new one, I agree. Let’s have zero travel to make things EVEN THINNAR!!!

I meed more fingers.

And here I've been typesetting with LaTeX like some sort of sucker.