Church's 1822 British Patent No. 4664 for a Typecaster, Typesetter, and Press

by: Dr. William Church

Publication date: 1822-09-21

Usage: Public Domain

Topics: typecasting, typefounding, typesetting, type composing, printing

Publisher: digital reprint by www.CircuitousRoot.com

Collection: typecatalogs; catalogs; additional_collections

Contributor: Dr. David M. MacMillan

Language: English

Rights: These digitizations were done by CircuitousRoot from paper copies obtained from the UK Intellectual Property Office. Any UK Crown Copyright on them has long expired. The UK Intellectual Property Office imposed no new restrictions on these copies. No US copyright exists for documents published in 1857. CircuitousRoot asserts no additional rights on these digitizations. They are in the public domain.

Dr. William Church's 1822 British Patent No. 4664 for a Typecasting, Typesetting, and Printing System. Specification (12 pages) and Drawings (8 sheets). Patent granted 1822-03-21. Specification Inrolled 1822-09-21. This is the 1857 official printing of the patent by Eyre and Spottiswoode.

(See the "digitization cover note" file for further details.)

Notes

This patent is important for several reasons. It contains the first patented typesetting machine. It contains a very early typecasting machine. Most importantly, it establishes for the first time what later became known as "the principle of non-distribution." It is a complete typecasting and composing system (lacking only in automatic line justification) in which types are cast for single use, composed, used, and then not distributed but rather remelted to be cast anew each time. This is the basic principle behind the two composing technologies which later revolutionized printing: the Linotype and the Monotype.