American Type Founders
Encyclopedia
American Type Founders was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries
, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States
. ATF was the dominant American
manufacturer of metal type from its creation in 1892 until at least the 1940s, and continued to be influential into the 1960s.
, which could cast whole lines of body type in-house, demand for hand-set type was down. Throughout the late 1880s prices were maintained by an informal cartel of foundries, but as both the number of foundries increased, and as manufacturing processes improved, prices inevitably began to slip. Additionally, type at this time was not standardized, either to body size or to base line, and printers resented the incompatibility of types from different foundries. Leaders in the industry, notably Joseph W. Phinney
of the Dickinson Type Foundry in Boston
, set up a committee to address these problems, eventually recommending consolidation.
of Henry Barth, which brought with it the patents to his Barth Typecaster, and Benton, Waldo Foundry of Milwaukee, which included Linn Boyd Benton
and his all important Benton Pantograph which engraved type matrices directly instead of using punches and allowed the optical scaling of type. With the inclusion of the Barth Caster and the Benton Pantograph, ATF immediately became not only the largest, but also the most technologically advanced foundry in the world.
Unfortunately, conditions for the first few years were chaötic, with member foundries continuing to operate as if they were independent firms. Real consolidation didn’t begin until 1894 when Robert W. Nelson, principle owner of the Throne Typesetting Machine Company and a new stockholder in ATF, became general manager. He immediately began to liquidate unprofitable ventures, eliminate duplications, and forced the various branches to do business under the ATF name instead of retaining their former ones. Linn Boyd Benton’s son, Morris Fuller Benton
, was given the job of purging obsolete and duplicated type faces from the catalogs, and standardizing the point size and base-line of the types made. Nelson, realizing that display and advertising type (rather than the body type that was set so efficiently by the new line-casters) would be the mainstay of the foundry type business, immediately began an extensive advertising campaign and commissioned the production of new type designs. Joseph W. Phinney was put in charge of the design department and he supervised the introduction of Cushing, Howland, Bradley, and the William Morris inspired Satanick and Jenson Oldstyle, the last of these being hugely successful. Young Benton was then commissioned to finish Lewis Buddy’s Elbert Hubbard inspired Roycroft, another successful introduction.
While Phinney often used free-lance designers, like Will Bradley, T.M. Cleland
, Walter Dorwin Teague
, Frederic Goudy
, and Oz Cooper
, the bulk of ATF’s catalog through the 1930s was the creation of Morris Fuller Benton. Though he never became well known, even within the printing industry, Benton enjoyed a record of successful type introductions unparalleled by anyone, much to the profit of ATF. Benton, though he did not invent either idea, was the most successful designer of revivals of historical type designs (such as his re-cutting of Bodoni
and Garamond
) and he perfected the creation of “type families” (such as Century or most successfully Cheltenham
) were a basic face would be offered in italic, light, bold, extended and condensed variations.
Another key player at ATF at this time was the advertising manager (and informal corporate historian) Henry Lewis Bullen who created a typographic library of historical examples for designers to draw upon. This impressive collection was turned over to Columbia University
in 1936. The books are integrated into the main Columbia collection, but there is an archive of ATF materials as well in Columbia's special collections.
In 1901 Nelson consolidated casting operations in a purpose build factory in Jersey City and the various branches remained only as distribution centers. By the 1920s, ATF had offices in twenty-seven American cities and Vancouver, B.C., where it sold not only type, but pressroom supplies and printing presses (both their own Kelly line and those of other manufacturers) as well. In 1926, at a cost of $300,000-, ATF produced its largest and most superlative type catalog. Sixty thousand of these were distributed and they are considered to be masterpieces of the art of letterpress printing to this day. By the time Nelson died in 1926, ATF seemed to be on the path to permanent profitability.
Nelson’s successor as president, Frank Belknap Berry (originally one of the founders of the Cleveland Type Foundry), was unpopular with the board and he was soon replaced by Joseph F. Gillick whose first move was to shut down ATF’s subsidiary Barnhard Brothers & Spindler in Chicago and bring their casting operations to Jersey City. Though the years immediately after Nelson’s passing were disappointing, 1929 was the most profitable in ATF history.
, Laureate, and Thomson National Company.
. Several models were developed and, by n 1949 more than 11,000 Kelly presses had been sold.
Production of Kelly presses ceased at ATF in 1954, though Vickers
continued to produce two models in England
until 1959.
, a typefoundry that also manufactured the Pearl line of letterpress, was acquired by ATF. These presses continued to be made and sold by the Golding Press Division of ATF until 1927, when the division was sold off to Thomson National Company.
, ATF also produced the Klymax Feeder which turned C&P's hand-fed Gordon jobber press
into an automatically feed press. As such presses were ubiquitous, sales of this feeder were robust throughout the 1920s.
Thomas Roy Jones, a businessman with no experience in type founding, replaced Gillick. By 1933 the situation was desperate. Sales of type were less than 30% of 1926 levels while purchases of Kelly presses had plummeted to a mere 6.8% of what they had been. In October 1933 Jones filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy. ATF was placed under the control of its creditors (chiefly consisting of several banks) and drastic measures were taken. Operations were consolidated, the Jersey City plant was closed and the typecasting operations moved to the Kelly plant in Elizabeth. Salesmen were put on a commission basis. Inventories were cut, faces discontinued, and production of several models of Kelly press as well as the Klymax Feeder was shut-down. ATF was released from court supervision in 1936 and in 1938 a sales study was made making the following observations: the Kelly press was obsolete, body type was now the exclusive province of line-casters and display type would have to be the mainstay of type production, almost half of what ATF was selling was other manufacturers products that could easily be made in their own facilities, the acquisition of or merger with another firm in the letterpress industry would be desirable, as offset was a rising technology ATF needed to invest in that business.
After the war, ill-conceived efforts were made to diversity. A furniture manufacturer, Dystrom Corporation, was acquired. A competitor, Lanston Monotype, was purchased in 1969, but nothing came of this, the assets being sold off later to M&H Typefounders.
The decline of foundry type in this period might well be illustrated by the size of ATF specimen books. While the magnificent 1923 catalog was typical of its day at 1148 pages, subsequent editions were ever smaller. The 1934 catalog was only 207 pages, while the 1941 catalog was only slightly smaller at 191 pages. By 1956 the “descriptive index of types” was down to only 24 pages, but this recovered a little by 1966’s catalog of 30 pages. The last ATF catalog, published in 1976 and distributed right to the end, was down to only 14 pages and, by the 1980s, came with an insert listing the faces that were no longer available.
Some innovations did take place during this period however. The brilliant lettering artist Charles H. Hughes was engaged to produce a new version of the popular Century Type that would reproduce the same in offset and letterpress and the result was the lovely Century Nova (1965). ATF also produced the first optically scanning typeface, OCR-A font
, in 1969 and this remains the standard on printed bank checks to this day.
with the ATF Typesetter. Introduced in 1958, the first model was the "A". Not many were produced because the character fit left much to be desired. The most common model was the "B". Character fit was improved by employing the Friden Flexowriter
"Justowriter" escape mechanism to six units. The last and most advanced model was the "B-8", where an eighth unit was added to the escape mechanism by means of a series of electro-mechanical relays that could add the eighth unit to some wider characters, like capital "M", without changing the basic mechanical escape mechanism of the model "B".
ATF produced type disks with all their popular type faces. These disks were concentric rings of fonts on a transparent plastic material in negative form. Usually these disks contained roman, italic and bold versions of the same face. There was even a disk with the only Canadian type design at the time, called "Cartier
". The ATF Phototypesetter was sold world wide—in Canada, Germany, Italy, Denmark, France, Belgium, England, etc. In Denmark, several newspapers were produced on ATF Phototypesetters by a company named "Reprodan". As technology improved, ATF failed to keep pace and eventually the line was discontinued.
Multi-1250 almost without competition. A study undertaken by Whitin Machine Works, a manufacturer of textile making machinery looking to expand out of an industry depressed by the introduction of synthetic fabrics, suggested that “quick printing” done with duplicators was a growing market. Whitin thus acquired ATF in 1957, began to manufacture a small (10 x 15” sheet size) duplicator at their Whitinsville, Massachusetts
facility, and to market this under the name ATF Chief 15. The basic design was by Louis Mestre, and it incorporated many large press features as he had free use of Webendorfer patents. As it gave large press performance, it was an immediate success with commercial printers (who were disdainful of duplicators), and the Chief line remained the best of the small presses until the introduction of Heidelberg
’s T-Offset in the late 1980’s. A larger Chief 17 was introduced in the 1960’s and the 1970’s saw “common blanket” two color models of both the 15 and 17. Both Chief models were made and sold in Europe by Gestetner Cyclograph Company
, and were also marketed in the United States by the Itek
and Ditto corporations.
Though the Chief could produce superlative work, unlike the highly popular A.B. Dick 350
, it required a skilled operator. Unfortunately for ATF, the quick printing industry had less use for such quality work and more need of a “fast and dirty” duplicator like the 350 and so its market penetration was limited.
ATF later purchased the competing Davidson line of duplicators and changed their name to ATF-Davidson. Breaking their pattern of low investment in upgrading technology, ATF actually developed improved models of the Davidson and this line remained competitive right to the end. The Davidson however, was an unusual design (with two, rather than the usual three cylinders) and its popularity remained limited.
) were ever issued before Kingsley/ATF sought bankruptcy protection in 1993. An auction was held on 23 August 1993 and all the assets of the foundry were sold off, most of the priceless matrices going to scrap dealers. ATF designs remain the property of Kingsley Holding Corporation and are now licensed through Adobe and Bitstream.
Though ATF is now defunct, some of their original type casting machines are still in use at The Dale Guild Type Foundry in Howell, New Jersey. This equipment was saved through efforts coordinated by Theo Rehak
, the last person trained to run the type casting machines at ATF's Elizabeth, New Jersey facility.
Type foundry
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers...
, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. ATF was the dominant American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
manufacturer of metal type from its creation in 1892 until at least the 1940s, and continued to be influential into the 1960s.
Type Founding Before ATF
By the beginning of the last decade of the nineteenth century typefouding was in a state of crisis. With the introduction of the LinotypeLinotype machine
The Linotype typesetting machine is a "line casting" machine used in printing. The name of the machine comes from the fact that it produces an entire line of metal type at once, hence a line-o'-type, a significant improvement over manual typesetting....
, which could cast whole lines of body type in-house, demand for hand-set type was down. Throughout the late 1880s prices were maintained by an informal cartel of foundries, but as both the number of foundries increased, and as manufacturing processes improved, prices inevitably began to slip. Additionally, type at this time was not standardized, either to body size or to base line, and printers resented the incompatibility of types from different foundries. Leaders in the industry, notably Joseph W. Phinney
Joseph W. Phinney
Joseph Warren Phinney was an American printer, type designer, and business executive. Phinney began his career at the Dickinson Type Foundry in Boston where he designed type and worked in management, eventually becoming owner...
of the Dickinson Type Foundry in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, set up a committee to address these problems, eventually recommending consolidation.
Consolidation and Early Years
Twenty-three foundries were brought together to form the American Type Founders Company . Key to the success of this merger was the inclusion of MacKellar, Smiths, & Jordan Co. of Philadelphia, with assets of over six million dollars, the Cincinnati Type FoundryCincinnati Type Foundry
The Cincinnati Type Foundry was the first manufacturer of typefaces, matrices and other type-related equipment in Cincinnati, Ohio, established in 1826 by John P. Foote and Oliver Wells. In 1892 it was merged into American Type Founders....
of Henry Barth, which brought with it the patents to his Barth Typecaster, and Benton, Waldo Foundry of Milwaukee, which included Linn Boyd Benton
Linn Boyd Benton
Linn Boyd Benton was an American typeface designer and inventor who invented the Benton Pantograph, an engraving machine which was capable not only of scaling a single font design pattern to a variety of sizes, but could also condense, extend, and slant the design...
and his all important Benton Pantograph which engraved type matrices directly instead of using punches and allowed the optical scaling of type. With the inclusion of the Barth Caster and the Benton Pantograph, ATF immediately became not only the largest, but also the most technologically advanced foundry in the world.
Unfortunately, conditions for the first few years were chaötic, with member foundries continuing to operate as if they were independent firms. Real consolidation didn’t begin until 1894 when Robert W. Nelson, principle owner of the Throne Typesetting Machine Company and a new stockholder in ATF, became general manager. He immediately began to liquidate unprofitable ventures, eliminate duplications, and forced the various branches to do business under the ATF name instead of retaining their former ones. Linn Boyd Benton’s son, Morris Fuller Benton
Morris Fuller Benton
Morris Fuller Benton was an influential American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders , for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937...
, was given the job of purging obsolete and duplicated type faces from the catalogs, and standardizing the point size and base-line of the types made. Nelson, realizing that display and advertising type (rather than the body type that was set so efficiently by the new line-casters) would be the mainstay of the foundry type business, immediately began an extensive advertising campaign and commissioned the production of new type designs. Joseph W. Phinney was put in charge of the design department and he supervised the introduction of Cushing, Howland, Bradley, and the William Morris inspired Satanick and Jenson Oldstyle, the last of these being hugely successful. Young Benton was then commissioned to finish Lewis Buddy’s Elbert Hubbard inspired Roycroft, another successful introduction.
While Phinney often used free-lance designers, like Will Bradley, T.M. Cleland
Thomas Maitland Cleland
Thomas Maitland Cleland was an American book designer, painter, illustrator, and type designer.-Education and career:...
, Walter Dorwin Teague
Walter Dorwin Teague
Walter Dorwin Teague was an American architect, designer and one of the most prolific American industrial designers in terms of volume of completed work. Teague's name and vision lives on through the legacy of his company....
, Frederic Goudy
Frederic Goudy
Frederic W. Goudy was a prolific American type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Kennerley, and Goudy Old Style. He also designed, in 1938, University of California Oldstyle, for the sole proprietary use of the University of California Press...
, and Oz Cooper
Oswald Bruce Cooper
Oswald Bruce Cooper was an American type designer, lettering artist, graphic designer, and teacher of these trades.-Early life and education:...
, the bulk of ATF’s catalog through the 1930s was the creation of Morris Fuller Benton. Though he never became well known, even within the printing industry, Benton enjoyed a record of successful type introductions unparalleled by anyone, much to the profit of ATF. Benton, though he did not invent either idea, was the most successful designer of revivals of historical type designs (such as his re-cutting of Bodoni
Bodoni
-Cold Type versions:As it had been a standard type for many years, Bodoni was widely available in cold type. Alphatype, Autologic, Berthold, Compugraphic, Dymo, Harris, Mergenthaler, MGD Graphic Systems, and Varityper, Hell AG, Monotype, all sold the face under the name ‘’Bodoni, while Graphic...
and Garamond
Garamond
Garamond is the name given to a group of old-style serif typefaces named after the punch-cutter Claude Garamond . Most of the Garamond faces are more closely related to the work of a later punch-cutter, Jean Jannon...
) and he perfected the creation of “type families” (such as Century or most successfully Cheltenham
Cheltenham (typeface)
Cheltenham is a display typeface, designed in 1896 by architect Bertram Goodhue and Ingalls Kimball, director of the Cheltenham Press. The original drawings were known as Boston Old Style and were made about 14" high. These drawings were then turned over to Morris Fuller Benton at American Type...
) were a basic face would be offered in italic, light, bold, extended and condensed variations.
Another key player at ATF at this time was the advertising manager (and informal corporate historian) Henry Lewis Bullen who created a typographic library of historical examples for designers to draw upon. This impressive collection was turned over to Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1936. The books are integrated into the main Columbia collection, but there is an archive of ATF materials as well in Columbia's special collections.
In 1901 Nelson consolidated casting operations in a purpose build factory in Jersey City and the various branches remained only as distribution centers. By the 1920s, ATF had offices in twenty-seven American cities and Vancouver, B.C., where it sold not only type, but pressroom supplies and printing presses (both their own Kelly line and those of other manufacturers) as well. In 1926, at a cost of $300,000-, ATF produced its largest and most superlative type catalog. Sixty thousand of these were distributed and they are considered to be masterpieces of the art of letterpress printing to this day. By the time Nelson died in 1926, ATF seemed to be on the path to permanent profitability.
Nelson’s successor as president, Frank Belknap Berry (originally one of the founders of the Cleveland Type Foundry), was unpopular with the board and he was soon replaced by Joseph F. Gillick whose first move was to shut down ATF’s subsidiary Barnhard Brothers & Spindler in Chicago and bring their casting operations to Jersey City. Though the years immediately after Nelson’s passing were disappointing, 1929 was the most profitable in ATF history.
Letterpress Manufacturing
From 1914 to 1959 ATF manufactured letterpresses. During the 1920s and 30's they also sold presses made by Chandler & PriceChandler & Price
Chandler and Price was founded in 1881 in Cleveland, Ohio, by Harrison T. Chandler and William H. Price. They manufactured machinery for printers including a series of hand-fed platen jobbing presses, as well as an automatic feeder for these presses , paper cutters, book presses, and assorted...
, Laureate, and Thomson National Company.
Kelly Presses
When William M. Kelly (1869–1949), an employee in the sales department, proposed a design of automatic cylinder press, Nelson immediately authorized the project. The Kelly Style B Press, a three-roller, two-revolution, flat-bed cylinder press with automatic feeder and jogger was introduced in 1914 to great success. By 1923 more than 2,500 Kelly Presses had been sold and the next year production was shifted from Jersey City to a large new factory in Elizabeth, New JerseyElizabeth, New Jersey
Elizabeth is a city in Union County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 124,969, retaining its ranking as New Jersey's fourth largest city with an increase of 4,401 residents from its 2000 Census population of 120,568...
. Several models were developed and, by n 1949 more than 11,000 Kelly presses had been sold.
- Kelly Series B, 17 x 22" press sheet, produced 1914-1937
- Kelly Model #2, 22 x 34" press sheet, introduced in 1921
- Kelly Automatic Jobber, 13 x 19.5" press sheet, introduced in 1923
- Kelly Series A ("Baby Kelly"), 13.5 x 22" press sheet, introduced in 1925
- Kelly Model #1, 22 x 28" press sheet, introduced in 1929
- Kelly Series C, 17 x 22" press sheet, produced 1937-1954 (1959 UK)
- Kelly Clipper ("the Pressman's Press"), 14 x 22.5" press sheet, produced 1938-1941
- Kelly Model #3, 25 x 38" press sheet, produced 1949-1954 (1959 UK)
Production of Kelly presses ceased at ATF in 1954, though Vickers
Vickers
Vickers was a famous name in British engineering that existed through many companies from 1828 until 1999.-Early history:Vickers was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by the miller Edward Vickers and his father-in-law George Naylor in 1828. Naylor was a partner in the foundry Naylor &...
continued to produce two models in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
until 1959.
Golding Press Division
In 1918 Golding & CompanyGolding & Company
Golding & Company is a defunct American type foundry established in 1869 by William Hughson Golding in the Fort Hill area of Boston, Massachusetts.-History:...
, a typefoundry that also manufactured the Pearl line of letterpress, was acquired by ATF. These presses continued to be made and sold by the Golding Press Division of ATF until 1927, when the division was sold off to Thomson National Company.
Klymax Feeder
In addition to selling presses made by Chandler & PriceChandler & Price
Chandler and Price was founded in 1881 in Cleveland, Ohio, by Harrison T. Chandler and William H. Price. They manufactured machinery for printers including a series of hand-fed platen jobbing presses, as well as an automatic feeder for these presses , paper cutters, book presses, and assorted...
, ATF also produced the Klymax Feeder which turned C&P's hand-fed Gordon jobber press
Jobbing presses
A Jobbing Press is a printing press common in the 19th and 20th centuries. The press is meant to be operated by a pressman working on small jobs, as opposed to long print runs or newspaper work. A printer with a jobber would most commonly print personal stationery, handbills, or other small...
into an automatically feed press. As such presses were ubiquitous, sales of this feeder were robust throughout the 1920s.
Little Giant
In the post-war years, ATF produced the Little Giant Automatic Cylinder Press, a smaller (12 x 18" sheet size), more compact press of much more modern design than the Kelly presses. Production of this press ceased in 1959.Depression and Bankruptcy
Unfortunately for ATF, unlike printing consumables (like paper and ink), which must be purchased anew for each job, type wears slowly and its purchase can be postponed in hard times, while capital investment in new presses simply dries up, and so ATF was especially hard hit by the Depression. Also, the company had been over-extended in the boom years, too much credit had been extended to the trade, inventories were bloated, and the corps of executives (many left over from pre-consolidation days) were older and without vision. With the financial downturn after 1929 ATF began to see serious distress. In 1931 hours were cut at the factories. The following year, sales were down another 25% and salaries were cut. When major accounting errors showed that company to be even less profitable than was thought, Gillick was forced to resign.Thomas Roy Jones, a businessman with no experience in type founding, replaced Gillick. By 1933 the situation was desperate. Sales of type were less than 30% of 1926 levels while purchases of Kelly presses had plummeted to a mere 6.8% of what they had been. In October 1933 Jones filed a voluntary petition for bankruptcy. ATF was placed under the control of its creditors (chiefly consisting of several banks) and drastic measures were taken. Operations were consolidated, the Jersey City plant was closed and the typecasting operations moved to the Kelly plant in Elizabeth. Salesmen were put on a commission basis. Inventories were cut, faces discontinued, and production of several models of Kelly press as well as the Klymax Feeder was shut-down. ATF was released from court supervision in 1936 and in 1938 a sales study was made making the following observations: the Kelly press was obsolete, body type was now the exclusive province of line-casters and display type would have to be the mainstay of type production, almost half of what ATF was selling was other manufacturers products that could easily be made in their own facilities, the acquisition of or merger with another firm in the letterpress industry would be desirable, as offset was a rising technology ATF needed to invest in that business.
Offset Presses
In 1938, ATF purchased the Webendorfer-Wills Company and began producing their models of offset press. ATF sold these presses under the Chief name, marketing a Little Chief, Chief, and Big Chief. Large press (as opposed to duplicator) production continued until the late 1970s when the 25” Profiteer was discontinued as the basic Webendorfer design became obsolete. Once again, ATF had made the mistake they had with the Kelly press of complacently taking profits from a successful product, not investing in improvements, and eventually seeing this product become irretrievably overtaken by the competition. Beginning in the 1970s, arrangements to sell large offset presses under the Chief name were made with other manufacturers, first with MAN Roland and then with Solna.War Work and Postwar Direction
During the Second World War, the ATF plant in Elizabeth was converted almost entirely over to military production. Barth Casters were used to make firing pins and ATF operated two plants in Newark making ordnance.After the war, ill-conceived efforts were made to diversity. A furniture manufacturer, Dystrom Corporation, was acquired. A competitor, Lanston Monotype, was purchased in 1969, but nothing came of this, the assets being sold off later to M&H Typefounders.
The decline of foundry type in this period might well be illustrated by the size of ATF specimen books. While the magnificent 1923 catalog was typical of its day at 1148 pages, subsequent editions were ever smaller. The 1934 catalog was only 207 pages, while the 1941 catalog was only slightly smaller at 191 pages. By 1956 the “descriptive index of types” was down to only 24 pages, but this recovered a little by 1966’s catalog of 30 pages. The last ATF catalog, published in 1976 and distributed right to the end, was down to only 14 pages and, by the 1980s, came with an insert listing the faces that were no longer available.
Some innovations did take place during this period however. The brilliant lettering artist Charles H. Hughes was engaged to produce a new version of the popular Century Type that would reproduce the same in offset and letterpress and the result was the lovely Century Nova (1965). ATF also produced the first optically scanning typeface, OCR-A font
OCR-A font
In the early days of computer optical character recognition, there was a need for a font thatcould be recognized by the computers of that day, and byhumans...
, in 1969 and this remains the standard on printed bank checks to this day.
Photocomposition
A venture was made into photocompositionPhototypesetting
Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper...
with the ATF Typesetter. Introduced in 1958, the first model was the "A". Not many were produced because the character fit left much to be desired. The most common model was the "B". Character fit was improved by employing the Friden Flexowriter
Friden Flexowriter
The Friden Flexowriter was a teleprinter, a heavy duty electric typewriter capable of being driven not only by a human typing, but also automatically by several methods including direct attachment to a computer and by use of paper tape....
"Justowriter" escape mechanism to six units. The last and most advanced model was the "B-8", where an eighth unit was added to the escape mechanism by means of a series of electro-mechanical relays that could add the eighth unit to some wider characters, like capital "M", without changing the basic mechanical escape mechanism of the model "B".
ATF produced type disks with all their popular type faces. These disks were concentric rings of fonts on a transparent plastic material in negative form. Usually these disks contained roman, italic and bold versions of the same face. There was even a disk with the only Canadian type design at the time, called "Cartier
Cartier (typeface)
Cartier is a family of serif old style typefaces designed by Carl Dair in 1967, who was commissioned by the Governor General of Canada-in-Council to create a new and distinctively Canadian typeface...
". The ATF Phototypesetter was sold world wide—in Canada, Germany, Italy, Denmark, France, Belgium, England, etc. In Denmark, several newspapers were produced on ATF Phototypesetters by a company named "Reprodan". As technology improved, ATF failed to keep pace and eventually the line was discontinued.
Duplicators
In the mid-1950s, the small offset (duplicator) market was dominated by Addressograph-Multilith’sAddressograph
An addressograph is an address labeler and labeling system.In 1896, the first U.S. patent for an addressing machine, the Addressograph was issued to Joseph Smith Duncan of Sioux City, Iowa. It was a development of the invention he had made in 1892. His earlier model consisted of a hexagonal wood...
Multi-1250 almost without competition. A study undertaken by Whitin Machine Works, a manufacturer of textile making machinery looking to expand out of an industry depressed by the introduction of synthetic fabrics, suggested that “quick printing” done with duplicators was a growing market. Whitin thus acquired ATF in 1957, began to manufacture a small (10 x 15” sheet size) duplicator at their Whitinsville, Massachusetts
Whitinsville, Massachusetts
Whitinsville is an unincorporated village and census-designated place on the Mumford River, a tributary of the Blackstone River, in the town of Northbridge in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 6,704 at the 2010 census. Whitinsville is pronounced as if it were...
facility, and to market this under the name ATF Chief 15. The basic design was by Louis Mestre, and it incorporated many large press features as he had free use of Webendorfer patents. As it gave large press performance, it was an immediate success with commercial printers (who were disdainful of duplicators), and the Chief line remained the best of the small presses until the introduction of Heidelberg
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG is a German precision mechanical engineering company with head offices in Heidelberg . It is a manufacturer of offset printing presses sold globally. The company has a worldwide market share of more than 47% in this area and is the largest global manufacturer of...
’s T-Offset in the late 1980’s. A larger Chief 17 was introduced in the 1960’s and the 1970’s saw “common blanket” two color models of both the 15 and 17. Both Chief models were made and sold in Europe by Gestetner Cyclograph Company
Gestetner
The Gestetner, named after its inventor David Gestetner, is a duplicating machine brand and company.David Gestetner, born in Csorna, Hungary, moved to London, England, and in 1881 established the Gestetner Cyclograph Company to produce stencils, styli, ink rollers, etc. He guarded his invention...
, and were also marketed in the United States by the Itek
Itek
Itek Corporation was a US defense contractor that initially specialized in the field of camera systems for spy satellites. In the early 1960s they built a conglomerate in a fashion similar to LTV or Litton, during which time they developed the first CAD system and explored optical disk technology...
and Ditto corporations.
Though the Chief could produce superlative work, unlike the highly popular A.B. Dick 350
A.B. Dick Company
The A. B. Dick Company was a major American manufacturer of copy machines and office supplies in the late 19th Century and the 20th Century.The company was founded in 1883 in Chicago as a lumber company by Albert Blake Dick...
, it required a skilled operator. Unfortunately for ATF, the quick printing industry had less use for such quality work and more need of a “fast and dirty” duplicator like the 350 and so its market penetration was limited.
ATF later purchased the competing Davidson line of duplicators and changed their name to ATF-Davidson. Breaking their pattern of low investment in upgrading technology, ATF actually developed improved models of the Davidson and this line remained competitive right to the end. The Davidson however, was an unusual design (with two, rather than the usual three cylinders) and its popularity remained limited.
Divestiture of the Foundry
By the 1980s the foundry in Elizabeth, New Jersey was down to only six employees and duplicator manufacture was the principle business of ATF-Davidson. In 1986 foundry was sold off to Kingsley Machines, a maker of foil-stamping type, and the merged company was renamed Kingsley/ATF. Immediately a bid was made to enter the field of digital typography with a software subsidiary being set up in Tucson. With its enormous library of type, and its patents on the optical scaling of type, a digital library of ATF types seemed to be a good investment. As the original drawings of the faces were mostly lost, these fonts had to be scanned from brass matrices, a daunting prospect. The work was well done, but slow, and only four faces (Wedding Text, Thompson Quill Script, Bernhard Fashion, and T.M. Cleland’s border designsThomas Maitland Cleland
Thomas Maitland Cleland was an American book designer, painter, illustrator, and type designer.-Education and career:...
) were ever issued before Kingsley/ATF sought bankruptcy protection in 1993. An auction was held on 23 August 1993 and all the assets of the foundry were sold off, most of the priceless matrices going to scrap dealers. ATF designs remain the property of Kingsley Holding Corporation and are now licensed through Adobe and Bitstream.
Though ATF is now defunct, some of their original type casting machines are still in use at The Dale Guild Type Foundry in Howell, New Jersey. This equipment was saved through efforts coordinated by Theo Rehak
Theo Rehak
Theo Rehak is a typefounder and the author of Practical Typecasting , The Fall of ATF; a Serio-Comedic Tragedy and co-author of The Music and Life of Theodore "Fats" Navarro" . He is one of the few remaining craftsmen in the field of metal typefounding...
, the last person trained to run the type casting machines at ATF's Elizabeth, New Jersey facility.
ATF-Davidson and Successor Corporations
By the early 1980s, the Chief line needed updating and a crash program was undertaken to produce a press that could compete with the A.B.Dick 9800 series. The SuperChief was thus introduced in 1986 with many flaws. Most of these were worked out, and the basic design was re-launched in 1988 as the X-Press line. Unfortunately, this was too late to save the reputation of the Chief line and the company shut down in July 1990. After a period of confusion, Jim Hughes of Printer’s Parts Store purchased the assets of the company and operated under the name of ATF-Graphic Products, selling presses that were on hand and supplying spare parts. Wishing to revive the Davidson line of presses, the Chief line was sold off to Jim Wheet who now supplies parts for existing presses under the name ATF Services.Original Consolidation
The original group of foundries that came together in 1892:Branches After Consolidation
From the merger in 1892 until 1903, when all typecasting was centralized in Jersey City, these foundries were consolidated into the following branches and codes:Later Mergers and Acquisitions
- Farmer, Little & Co., (1892, N.Y.C.)
- Central Type Foundry, (1893, St. Louis)
- Boston Type Foundry, BostonBostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, a subsidiary of Central of Saint Louis.
- Boston Type Foundry, Boston
- Bruce Type Foundry, (1901, N.Y.C.)
- H. L. Pelouze & Son Type Founders, (1901, BostonBostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
) - Barnhart Brothers & SpindlerBarnhart Brothers & SpindlerBarnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Foundry was founded as the Great Western Type Foundry in 1873. It became Barnhart Brothers & Spindler ten years later. It was a successful foundry known for innovative type design and well designed type catalogs. Oz Cooper, Will Ransom, Robert Wiebking, and...
, (1911, ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
), operated as an independent entity until 1929.- Western Type FoundryWestern Type FoundryWestern Type Foundry was founded in 1901 to compete with the conglomerate and near-monopoly, American Type Founders. In 1914 Western purchased the Advance Type Foundry in Chicago from Wiebking, Hardinge & Company, though even before this Robert Wiebking did most of the punch-cutting and matrix...
(St. Louis), bought by B.B.&S in 1918.- Advance Type Foundry (AKA Wiebking, Hardinge & Company), (ChicagoChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
), bought out by Western Type Foundry in 1914.
- Advance Type Foundry (AKA Wiebking, Hardinge & Company), (Chicago
- Western Type Foundry
- Inland Type FoundryInland Type FoundryThe Inland Type Foundry was an American type foundry established in 1894 in Saint Louis, Missouri and later with branch offices in Chicago and New York City...
(1912, St. Louis) - Golding & CompanyGolding & CompanyGolding & Company is a defunct American type foundry established in 1869 by William Hughson Golding in the Fort Hill area of Boston, Massachusetts.-History:...
(1918, BostonBostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
), bought by Thomson National Company in 1927 - Keystone Type Foundry (1919, Philadelphia)
- H.C. Hansen Type Foundry (1922, BostonBostonBoston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
) - Webendorfer-Wills Company (1938, Mount Vernon, New YorkMount Vernon, New YorkMount Vernon is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States. It lies on the border of the New York City borough of The Bronx.-Overview:...
), a manufacturer of offset pressesOffset printingOffset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
. - Dystrom Corporation, a furniture manufacturer
- Davidson Corporation, a manufacturer of offset pressesOffset printingOffset printing is a commonly used printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to the printing surface...
- Lanston Monotype, (1969, Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
), assets later sold off to M&H Typefounders.