Tolbert Lanston (February 3, 1844 – February 18, 1913) was the American founder of

Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...

, inventing a mechanical typesetting system patented in 1887 and the first hot metal typesetter a few years later.

Life

Tolbert Lanston was born into a poor family in

Troy Troy (/; ; ) or Ilion (; ) was an ancient city located in present-day Hisarlik, Turkey. It is best known as the setting for the Greek mythology, Greek myth of the Trojan War. The archaeological site is open to the public as a tourist destina ...

, Ohio. He quit school at the age of 15, he was a volunteer in the Federal Army during the

Civil War A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...

. His last rank was sergeant. After 1865 he worked at the Pension-Department of the American Government. He worked with Seaton and

Herman Hollerith Herman Hollerith (February 29, 1860 – November 17, 1929) was a German-American statistician, inventor, and businessman who developed an electromechanical tabulating machine for punched cards to assist in summarizing information and, later, in ...

(founder of

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

) on tabulating devices and invented an adding machine which was the first money-maker for Hollerith's company. Lanston's brother was a printer and evidently that connection caused his interest in automating the laborious task of hand-setting every letter in any or all texts. He resigned his post at the Pension office and devoted the remainder of his life to perfection of his machine. He created the idea but others perfected it and made the Lanston Monotype Machine Company successful. That includes J. Maury Dove, a

coal merchant A coal merchant is the term used in the UK and other countries for a trader who sells coal and often delivers it to households. Coal merchants were once a major class of local business, but have declined in importance in many parts of the developed ...

who became president of the company and remained there until his death in 1923, and John Sellers Bancroft, who was the mechanical genius behind the Monotype machine. The story is thoroughly developed in ''Tolbert Lanston and the Monotype: The Origin of Digital Typesetting''. He married Betty G. Herdel in 1866, and they had one son. In 1896, he received the

Elliott Cresson Medal The Elliott Cresson Medal, also known as the Elliott Cresson Gold Medal, was the highest award given by the Franklin Institute. The award was established by Elliott Cresson, life member of the Franklin Institute, with $1,000 granted in 1848. Th ...

for his invention. He died in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, on February 18, 1913. He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C.

The inventor

Although Lanston was an inventor, he had no education at all as an engineer. He did start his inventions to create a type-setting machine, first with the financial help of Seaton, later from J. Maury Dove, coal-merchant in Washington. Letters sent to the Patent-bureau with specifications sent at: * September 30, 1885, July 3, 1886 * patent nr. 364.521 June 7, 1887 * patent nr. 364.525 June 7, 1887 The idea was to make lead type for printing, with two machines, the first to produce two paper-tapes, these two paper-tapes controlling the second machine to produce the type. Lanston made a series of prototypes.

Development of the machine

John Sellers Bancroft of Sellers & Co in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

was asked to help with the development of the machine. Bancroft made a series of important improvements. A wedge to govern the width of the character. This wedge makes the same movement as the diecase with the matrices, in one direction. The matrices are ordered in the diecase, each row has only matrices for characters of the same width. The wedge controls the opening in the mould. Compressed air was used to control the movements of the matrices above the mould of the machine. This machine was capable to produce filled lines, by controlling the width of the spaces, with two extra wedges. The accuracy of the machine was 2,000 parts in 1 inch. The first commercial machines were available around 1897. These machines had only room for 132 matrices. A few of these machines were sent to England. Later types had die-cases with 15*15 and 17*15 or even 16*17 matrices.Gerard A. Gelink, ''De Monotype, deel 1, uitvinding en constructie'', Algemene Nederlandsche Typografen Bond, 1941

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lanston, Tolbert 1844 births 1913 deaths 19th-century American inventors People from Troy, Ohio Burials at Oak Hill Cemetery (Washington, D.C.)