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60-636: American Type Founders ( ATF ) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries , representing about 85 percent of all type manufactured in the United States at the time. The new company, consisting of a consolidation of firms from throughout the United States, was incorporated in New Jersey . The American Type Founders Co. should not be confused with the American Type Founders' Association, also called

120-411: 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 designs ) were ever issued before Kingsley/ATF sought bankruptcy protection in 1993. An auction was held on August 23, 1993, and all the assets of the foundry were sold off, most of the priceless matrices going to scrap dealers. ATF designs remain

180-506: 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,

240-412: A market, which is how the narrower sense of the term grew out of the broader sense. In the United States, the use of corporate trusts died out in the early 20th century as U.S. states passed laws making it easier to create new corporations . The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) dates use of the word trust in a business organization sense from 1825. The business or "corporate" trust came into use in

300-553: 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 Inc., while it is unclear if Printer's Parts remains interested in reviving

360-484: A result of the historical public aversion to trusts, while other countries use the term competition laws instead. Monopoly pricing had also become a contentious issue, with several states passing Granger Laws to regulate railroad and grain elevator prices to protect farmers. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 created the Interstate Commerce Commission for similar purposes, federalizing

420-463: A schedule of styles such as weight or width. Another key player at the ATF Co. at this time was the advertising manager (and informal company historian) Henry Lewis Bullen , who in 1908 began assembling a library of historical typography and type specimen books for designers to draw upon. This collection was turned over to Columbia University 's Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1936, and acquired by

480-426: A second party, called a trustee. The trustee holds the property, while any benefit from the property accrues to another person, the beneficiary. Trusts are commonly used to hold inheritances for the benefit of children and other family members, for example. In business, such trusts, with corporate entities as the trustees, have sometimes been used to combine several large businesses in order to exert complete control over

540-764: A single unit was called an "increment", while a group of three units was called a "unit" because those were the units dealt with in the Justowriter mechanism which previous models of the ATF Typesetter used exclusively. ATF also was the authorized sales agent in the United States and several other countries for another film setting machine, the Hadego, which was a headliner, manufactured in the Netherlands from 1951, under license from its inventor, Hans de Goeij. The last phototypesetter designed and produced by ATF

600-419: 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

660-695: A type foundry 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 . In addition to selling presses made by Chandler & Price , ATF produced the Klymax Feeder, which turned C&P's hand-fed Gordon jobber press into an automatically fed press. As such presses were ubiquitous, sales of this feeder were robust throughout

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720-682: The Bruce Type Foundry : These foundry types were originally cast by the Central Type Foundry of Saint Louis : These foundry types were originally cast by Dickenson Type Foundry : These foundry types were originally cast by Inland Type Foundry and sometimes later modified: These foundry types were originally cast by Keystone Type Foundry : These foundry types were originally cast by Marder, Luse, & Co. : These foundry types were originally cast by H.C. Hansen Type Foundry : These foundry types were cast before

780-923: The Motion Picture Patents Company or Edison Trust which controlled the movie patents. Patents were also important to the Bell Telephone Company , as indicated by the massive litigation that came to be known as The Telephone Cases . Cushing (typeface) American Type Founders was the largest producer of foundry type in the world, not only of in-house designs, but also from designs that came from merged firms. Many of its designs were created or adapted by Morris Fuller Benton , his father Linn , Joseph W. Phinney or Frederic Goudy . These foundry types were designed and produced by American Type Founders: These foundry types were originally cast by Barnhart Brothers & Spindler : These foundry types were originally cast by

840-636: The 1920s. 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. 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

900-483: 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

960-520: The 19th-century United States, during the Gilded Age , as a legal device to consolidate industrial activity across state lines. In 1882 John D. Rockefeller and other owners of Standard Oil faced several obstacles to managing and profiting from their large oil refining business. The existing approach of separately owning and dealing with several companies in each state was unwieldy, often resulting in turf battles and non-uniform practices. Furthermore,

1020-743: The American Type Founders Company. The Chicago Tribune (February 12, 1892) listed the 23 foundries as: Other foundries joined later. The key to the success of this merger was the inclusion of MacKellar, Smiths, & Jordan Co. of Philadelphia , with assets of over $ 6 million, the Cincinnati Type Foundry 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

1080-647: The Chief name were made with other manufacturers, first with MAN Roland and then with Solna. 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 diversify. A furniture manufacturer, Dystrom Corporation,

1140-401: 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. 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,

1200-607: The Davidson line of presses. 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: Trust (monopoly) In the broader sense of the term, relating to trust law , a trust is a legal arrangement based on principles developed and recognised over centuries in English law, specifically in equity , by which one party conveys legal possession and title of certain property to

1260-510: The Friden mechanism was the "B-8", where an 18-increment system, was achieved by means of a series of electro-mechanical relays that could add one or two increments which were one-third of a unit to selected characters, without changing the basic mechanical escape mechanism of the model "B", except that it was scaled back to six units. This achieved an 18-unit system like that of the Monotype, but

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1320-548: The Pennsylvania legislature proposed to tax out-of-state corporations on their entire business activity. Concerned that other states could follow, Standard Oil had its attorney Samuel C. T. Dodd adapt the common law instrument of a trust to avoid cross-state taxation and to impose a single management hierarchy. The Standard Oil Trust was formed pursuant to a trust agreement in which the individual shareholders of many separate corporations agreed to convey their shares to

1380-518: The Throne Typesetting Machine Company and a new stockholder in ATF, became general manager. He immediately began to liquidate unprofitable ventures, eliminate duplications, and force 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

1440-608: The Type Founders' Association of the United States. Both institutions are identified by the same acronym, ATF. The ATF Association was formed in 1864 and was responsible for establishing the American point system in 1886 based on 83 picas exactly equal to 35 cm. The ATF Co. was not formed until 1892. All but six of the 23 foundries in the company were members of the ATF Association. The American Type Founders Co.

1500-510: 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. 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

1560-482: The advertisers if these great type designs had not been developed? There can be but one answer. By the time Nelson died in 1926, the ATF Co. 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

1620-643: The advertising market. In 1923, at a cost of $ 300,000, ATF produced its largest and most superlative type catalog. Sixty thousand of these opulent books, printed extensively in color, were distributed, and to this day they are considered to be masterpieces of the art of letterpress printing. The first paragraph of its preface boasted: The printing of 1923 is greatly superior to that of 1900. It has better style, more attractiveness and greater power and dignity...This great improvement has not come to pass without direction. There has been, in fact, very deliberate direction. There has been constant and forward thinking on behalf of

1680-546: The best of the small presses until the introduction of Heidelberg 's T-Offset in the late 1980s. A larger Chief 17 was introduced in the 1960s and the 1970s 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

1740-441: The bulk of ATF's catalog through the 1930s was developed in-house, under the direction of Morris Fuller Benton. Under Benton's direction, the company embarked on a program of developing historical revivals, including ATF's versions of Bodoni and Garamond , as well as the development of new typefaces such as Century and (most successfully) Cheltenham , which for the first time were organized systematically into "type families" with

1800-416: The 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

1860-534: 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

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1920-471: 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 expanding the Friden Flexowriter "Justowriter" escape mechanism to seven units. The first seven-unit typeface designed for the ATF Typesetter was a version of Baskerville by Tommy Thompson . The last and most advanced model based on

1980-645: 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. In 1966 White Consolidated Industries acquired the Whitin Machine Works and with it control of ATF. 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

2040-572: 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 freelance designers, like Will Bradley , T.M. Cleland , Walter Dorwin Teague , Frederic Goudy , and Oz Cooper ,

2100-417: 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

2160-565: The legal instruments used to create the corporate trusts, received a hostile reception in state courts during the 1880s and were quickly phased out in the 1890s in favor of other devices like holding companies for maintaining centralized corporate control. For example, the Standard Oil Trust terminated its own trust agreement in March 1892. Regardless, the name stuck, and American competition laws are known today as antitrust laws as

2220-506: The mid-1950s the small offset ( duplicator ) market was dominated by Addressograph-Multilith's 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

2280-484: The movement against anti-competitive business practices. In 1898, President William McKinley launched the trust-busting era (one aspect of the Progressive Era ) when he appointed the U.S. Industrial Commission . Theodore Roosevelt seized upon the commission's report and based much of his presidency (1901–1909) on trust-busting . Prominent trusts included: Other companies also formed trusts, such as

2340-594: The optical scaling of type. With the inclusion of the Barth Caster and the Benton Pantograph, ATF immediately became the largest and the most technologically advanced foundry in the world. Conditions for the first few years were chaotic: while 12 foundries ceased separate operations immediately member foundries continued to operate as if they were independent firms. Real consolidation did not begin until 1894, when Robert Wickham Nelson , principal owner of

2400-536: The organization of large businesses, they soon faced widespread accusations of abusing their market power to engage in anticompetitive business practices (in order to establish and maintain monopolies). Such accusations caused the term trust to become strongly associated with such practices among the American public and led to the enactment in 1890 of the Sherman Antitrust Act , the first U.S. federal competition statute. Meanwhile, trust agreements,

2460-418: The point size and baseline 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

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2520-477: The printing industry by the American Type Founders Company, which has a well defined policy with regard to the types it is making and has been making during the last quarter century. In what position, may we ask, would the printing industry be to-day without the great type families, known to fame as Cheltenham, Century [long list follows] and others? Are there anywhere any other type families? Would not your typography be barren in appearance and much less profitable to

2580-526: The property of Kingsley Holding Corporation and are now licensed through Adobe and Bitstream. ATF's factory is now an apartment block. Though ATF is now defunct, some of their original type casting machines and matrix engraving equipment 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 these machines at ATF's Elizabeth, New Jersey facility. By

2640-788: 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 Jersey . Several models were developed and, by 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. In 1918 Golding & Company ,

2700-462: The same face. There was even a disk with the only Canadian type design at the time, called " Cartier ". The ATF Phototypesetter was sold worldwide—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. In

2760-413: The term itself has become contaminated. This is unfortunate, for it is difficult to find a substitute for it. There may, of course, be illegal trusts; but a trust in and by itself is not illegal: when resorted to for a proper purpose, it has been for centuries enforced by courts of justice, and is, in fact, the creature of a court of equity . Although such corporate trusts were initially set up to improve

2820-401: The traditional sense and the new corporate trusts: A trust is ... simply the case of one person holding the title of property, whether land or chattels, for the benefit of another, termed a beneficiary. Nothing can be more common or more useful. But the word is now loosely applied to a certain class of commercial agreements and, by reason of a popular and unreasoning dread of their effect,

2880-431: The trust; it ended up entirely owning 14 corporations and also exercised majority control over 26 others. Nine individuals held trust certificates and acted as the trust's board of trustees. One of those trustees, Rockefeller himself, held 41% of the trust certificates; the next most powerful trustee held about 13%. This trust became a model for other industries. An 1888 article explained the difference between trusts in

2940-681: The university in 1941. The books form the core of the book arts collection at Columbia. There is also an archive of ATF materials in Columbia's special collections. In 1901, Nelson consolidated casting operations in a purpose-built factory in Jersey City and the branches remained only as distribution centers. By the 1920s, ATF had offices in 27 American cities and Vancouver , British Columbia , where it sold not only type, but pressroom supplies and printing presses (their own Kelly line and those of other manufacturers) as well. It printed large specimen books, with many examples of good layout as examples for

3000-416: 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

3060-598: Was based on Motorola DTL integrated circuits. Machine styling of the Photocomp 20 was by Richard Arbib . Only 17 machines were sold: one in Vienna Austria, and the remainder in North America. 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

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3120-405: 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 , in 1969 and this remains the standard on printed bank checks to this day. A venture was made into photocomposition with the ATF Typesetter. Introduced in 1958,

3180-561: 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

3240-472: Was in a state of crisis. With the introduction of the Linotype , which could cast whole lines of body type in house, demand for hand-set type was in decline. Throughout the late 1880s, prices had been maintained by an informal cartel of foundries, but as the number of foundries increased, prices dropped dramatically, a trend accelerated by the invention of hot metal typesetting . Additionally, type at this time

3300-568: 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. By the late 1880s, there were some 34 foundries in the United States. In 1892, 23 foundries were brought together to form

3360-469: 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

3420-408: 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,

3480-454: Was the Photocomp 20, so named because of its rated speed of twenty 11-pica newspaper lines per minute. It featured four stepper motors (1) to move the film across, (2) to move the type disk, (3) to advance the film to the next line, and (4) to set the size of one unit of escapement. Type disks contained four fonts, each including 17 pi characters. Its controller was the first ATF controller utilizing integrated circuits in place of relays. Circuitry

3540-464: Was the dominant American manufacturer of metal type from its creation in 1892 until at least the 1940s; it continued to be influential into the 1960s. Many fonts developed by the ATF Co. in its period of dominance, including News Gothic , Century Schoolbook , Franklin Gothic , Hobo and Bank Gothic , remain in everyday use. By the beginning of the final decade of the nineteenth century, type founding

3600-534: 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. From 1914 to 1959 ATF manufactured letterpresses. During the 1920s and 1930s they also sold presses made by Chandler & Price , Laureate , and Thomson National Company . When William M. Kelly (1869–1949), an employee in

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