American Type Founders (ATF) Co. was a business trust created in 1892 by the merger of 23
type foundries
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monot ...
, representing about 85% of all type manufactured in the United States.De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Company, N.Y.C., 1922, p. 105. The new company, consisting of a consolidation of firms from throughout the United States, was incorporated in
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
.
The American Type Founders Co. should not be confused with the American Type Founders’ Association—also called 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 35 picas exactly equal to 35 cm. The ATF Co. was not formed until 1892. All but 6 of the 23 foundries in the company were members of the ATF Association.
The American Type Founders Co. 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
News Gothic is a sans-serif typeface in the grotesque or industrial style. It was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released in 1908 by his employer American Type Founders (ATF). News Gothic is similar in proportion and structure to Franklin ...
,
Century Schoolbook
Century is a family of serif type faces particularly intended for body text. The family originates from a first design, Century Roman, cut by American Type Founders designer Linn Boyd Benton in 1894 for master printer Theodore Low De Vinne, for us ...
,
Franklin Gothic
Franklin Gothic and its related faces are a large family of sans-serif typefaces in the industrial or grotesque style developed in the early years of the 20th century by the type foundry American Type Founders (ATF) and credited to its head desi ...
,
Hobo
A hobo is a migrant worker in the United States. Hoboes, tramps and bums are generally regarded as related, but distinct: a hobo travels and is willing to work; a tramp travels, but avoids work if possible; and a bum neither travels nor works.
E ...
By the beginning of the final decade of the nineteenth century, type founding 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 down. Throughout the late 1880s prices had been maintained by an informal cartel of foundries, but as the number of foundries increased, and then with the invention of
hot metal typesetting
In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mol ...
, prices dropped dramatically. 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
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, set up a committee to address these problems, eventually recommending consolidation.Cost, Patricia. ''The Bentons: How an American Father and Son Changed the Printing Industry''. Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2011. .
Consolidation and early years
By the late 1880s, there were some 34 foundries in the United States. In 1892, 23 foundries were brought together to form the American Type Founders Company.Consuegra, David, ''American Type Design & Designers,'' Allworth Press, New York City, p. 263. The Chicago Tribune (February 12, 1892) listed the 23 foundries as:
* MacKeller, Smiths, & Jordan, Co. (Philadelphia),
* Collins & M’Leester (Philadelphia),
* Pelouse & Co. (Philadelphia),
* James Conner’s Sons (New York City),
* P. A. Heinrich (New York City),
* A. W. Lindsay (New York City),
* Charles J. Carey & Co. (Baltimore),
* John Ryan Co. (Baltimore),
* J. G. Mengel & Co. (Baltimore),
* Hooper, Wilson & Co. (Baltimore),
* Boston Type Foundry (Boston),
* Phelps, Dalton & Co. (Boston),
* Lyman & Son (Buffalo),
* Allison & Smith (Cincinnati),
* Cincinnati Type Foundry (Cincinnati),
* Cleveland Type Foundry (Cleveland),
* Marder, Luse, & Co. (Chicago),
* Union Type Foundry (Chicago),
* Benton, Waldo & Co. (Milwaukee),
* Central Type Foundry (St. Louis),
* St. Louis Type Foundry (St. Louis),
* Kansas City Type Foundry (Kansas City), and
* Palmer & Rey (San Francisco).
Other foundries joined later. The key to the success of this merger was the inclusion of MacKellar, Smiths, & Jordan Co. of
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
, with assets of over $6 million, the
Cincinnati Type Foundry
The Cincinnati Type Foundry was a manufacturer of typefaces, matrices and other type-related equipment in Cincinnati, Ohio, established in 1826"O. & H. Wells bought the establishment ..." ("Cincinnati Type Foundry," Ohio State Journal And Columbus ...
of
Henry Barth
Johann Heinrich Barth (; ; 16 February 1821 – 25 November 1865) was a German explorer of Africa and scholar.
Barth is thought to be one of the greatest of the European explorers of Africa, as his scholarly preparation, ability to speak and wri ...
, which brought with it the patents to his
Barth Typecaster Barth may refer to:
Places
* Barth, Germany, a town in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany
**Barth (Amt), administrative subdivision
* Barth Island, Nunavut, Canada
Other uses
* Barth (name), a surname (and list of people with that name)
* Bar ...
, and Benton, Waldo Foundry of
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...
, which included
Linn Boyd Benton
Linn Boyd Benton (1844 in Little Falls, New York – 1932 in Plainfield, New Jersey) was an American typeface designer and inventor of technology for producing metal type.
The son of Congressman Charles S. Benton, he was named for his fathe ...
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 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
The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
, principal 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 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
Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937.
Many of Benton's ...
, was given the job of purging obsolete and duplicated type faces from the catalogs, and standardizing 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 the introduction of Cushing, Howland,
Bradley
Bradley is an English surname derived from a place name meaning "broad wood" or "broad meadow" in Old English.
Like many English surnames Bradley can also be used as a given name and as such has become popular.
It is also an Anglicisation of t ...
, 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
Roycroft was a reformist community of craft workers and artists which formed part of the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States. Elbert Hubbard founded the community in 1895, in the village of East Aurora, New York, near Buffalo. Parti ...
, another successful introduction.
While Phinney often used freelance designers, like
Will Bradley
Wilbur Schwichtenberg (July 12, 1912 – July 15, 1989), known professionally as Will Bradley, was an American trombonist and bandleader during the 1930s and 1940s. He performed swing, dance music, and boogie-woogie songs, many of them written b ...
Walter Dorwin Teague
Walter Dorwin Teague (December 18, 1883 – December 5, 1960) was an American industrial designer, architect, illustrator, graphic designer, writer, and entrepreneur. Often referred to as the "Dean of Industrial Design", Teague pioneered in the ...
,
Frederic Goudy
Frederic William Goudy (, March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and ...
, and Oz Cooper, 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
Bodoni is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone or modern. Bodoni followed the ideas o ...
and
Garamond
Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and b ...
, as well as the development of new typefaces such as
Century
A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c.
A centennial or ...
and (most successfully)
Cheltenham
Cheltenham (), also known as Cheltenham Spa, is a spa town and borough on the edge of the Cotswolds in the county of Gloucestershire, England. Cheltenham became known as a health and holiday spa town resort, following the discovery of mineral s ...
, which for the first time were organized systematically into “type families” with 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
Henry Lewis Bullen (1857 – April 27, 1938) was an American printer and typographic archivist.
Early life
Henry Lewis Bullen was born in 1857 in Ballarat, Australia to American-Scotch parentage. He left school at 14 to become a printers appr ...
, 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
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
's Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 1936, and acquired by 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
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Vancouver
Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...
,
British Columbia
British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...
, 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 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 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 ''
ong list follows Ong or ONG may refer to:
Arts and media
* Ong's Hat, a collaborative work of fiction
* “Ong Ong”, a song by Blur from the album The Magic Whip
Places
* Ong, Nebraska, US, city
* Ong's Hat, New Jersey, US, ghost town
* Ong River, Odisha, India ...
' and others? Are there anywhere any other type families? Would not your typography be barren in appearance and much less profitable to 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 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.Pankow, David, "The Rise and Fall of ATF," Journal of the American Printing History Association, Vol. 22, #1/2
Letterpress manufacturing
From 1914 to 1959 ATF manufactured letterpresses. During the 1920s and 1930s they also sold presses made by ''
Chandler & Price
Chandler & 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 press ...
'', ''Laureate'', and ''
Thomson National Company Thomson may refer to:
Names
* Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin
* Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson
Businesses and organizations
* SGS-Thomson Mic ...
''.
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 Jersey
Elizabeth is a city and the county seat of Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.New J ...
. Several models were developed and, by 1949, more than 11,000 Kelly presses had been sold.
* ''Kelly Series B'', 17 × 22" press sheet, produced 1914–1937
* ''Kelly Model #2'', 22 × 34" press sheet, introduced in 1921
* ''Kelly Automatic Jobber'', 13 × 19.5" press sheet, introduced in 1923
* ''Kelly Series A'' ("Baby Kelly"), 13.5 × 22" press sheet, introduced in 1925
* ''Kelly Model #1'', 22 × 28" press sheet, introduced in 1929
* ''Kelly Series C'', 17 × 22" press sheet, produced 1937–1954 (1959 UK)
* ''Kelly Clipper'' ("the Pressman's Press"), 14 × 20" press sheet, produced 1938-1941
* ''Kelly Model #3'', 25 × 38" press sheet, produced 1949–1954 (1959 UK)
Production of Kelly presses ceased at ATF in 1954, though
Vickers
Vickers was a British engineering company that existed from 1828 until 1999. It was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by Edward Vickers and his father-in-law, and soon became famous for casting church bells. The company went public in 18 ...
continued to produce two models in England until 1959."The Rise & Fall of the Kelly Press" by Fred Williams '' Type & Press'', Spring 1985 (retrieved from Amalgamated Printers' Association on 3 November 2011)
Golding Press Division
In 1918 Golding & Company, 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 Thomson may refer to:
Names
* Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin
* Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson
Businesses and organizations
* SGS-Thomson Mic ...
Chandler & Price
Chandler & 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 press ...
, 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 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 the company to be even less profitable than was thought, Gillick was forced to resign.
Thomas Roy Jones
Thomas Roy Jones (April 26, 1890 - June 21, 1985"Thomas Roy Jones," obituary in: ''New York Times.'' June 27, 1985) was an American industrialist and management author, known as business school graduate, company president, and recipient of the Henr ...
, 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
Manroland AG manufactures newspaper web offset presses, commercial web offset presses, and sheetfed offset presses for commercial, publications and packaging printing.
The company has production facilities in Offenbach am Main and Augsburg. M ...
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 diversify. A furniture manufacturer, Dystrom Corporation, was acquired. A competitor,
Lanston Monotype
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...
, 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
Century is a family of serif type faces particularly intended for body text. The family originates from a first design, Century Roman, cut by American Type Founders designer Linn Boyd Benton in 1894 for master printer Theodore Low De Vinne, for us ...
(1965). ATF also produced the first optically scanning typeface,
OCR-A
OCR-A is a font created in 1968, in the early days of computer optical character recognition, when there was a need for a font that could be recognized not only by the computers of that day, but also by humans. OCR-A uses simple, thick strokes to ...
, in 1969 and this remains the standard on printed bank checks to this day.
Photocomposition
A venture was made into photocomposition 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 expanding the
Friden Flexowriter
The Friden Flexowriter produced by the Friden Calculating Machine Company, 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 atta ...
"Justowriter" escape mechanism to seven units. The first seven-unit typeface designed for the ATF Typesetter was a version of Baskerville by
Tommy Thompson
Tommy George Thompson (born November 19, 1941) is an American Republican politician who most recently served as interim president of the University of Wisconsin System from 2020 to 2022. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served ...
. The last and most advanced model based on 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 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 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 was based on Motorola DTL integrated circuits. Machine styling of the Photocomp 20 was by
Richard Arbib
Richard Henry Arbib (September 1, 1917 in Gloversville, New York – February 22, 1995 in Manhattan, New York City) was an American industrial designer.
He was a design consultant known for working on many products and services. His focus wa ...
. 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 the same face. There was even a disk with the only Canadian type design at the time, called "
Cartier Cartier may refer to:
People
* Cartier (surname), a surname (including a list of people with the name)
* Cartier Martin (born 1984), American basketball player
Places
* Cartier Island, an island north-west of Australia that is part of Australia' ...
". 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.
Duplicators
In 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 a small (10 x 15" sheet size) duplicator at their
Whitinsville, Massachusetts
Whitinsville is an unincorporated village within the town of Northbridge in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Whitinsville is a census-designated place (CDP) and its population was 6,750 at the 2020 census. Whitinsville is pronoun ...
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
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
'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
Itek Corporation was a United States defense contractor that initially specialized in camera systems for spy satellites and various other reconnaissance systems. In the early 1960s they built a conglomerate in a fashion similar to LTV or Litto ...
and
Ditto
DITTO is a company that sells software that aids eyewear companies sell their products online using virtual fitting. Originally DITTO was a retailer that sold designer prescription eyeglasses and sunglasses. The company is based in San Francisco, ...
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.
In 1966
White Consolidated Industries
The White Sewing Machine Company was a sewing machine company founded in 1858 in Templeton, Massachusetts, by Thomas H. White and based in Cleveland, Ohio, since 1866.
History
Founded as the White Manufacturing Company it took the White S ...
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 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 designs) 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. 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
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 ...
, the last person trained to run these 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 Inc., while it is unclear if Printer's Parts remains interested in reviving the Davidson line of presses.
Typefaces
Branches after consolidation
From the merger in 1892 until 1903, when all typecasting was centralized in
Jersey City
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.Farmer, Little & Co., (1892,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
), (established 1870).
** Boston Type Foundry,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
, a subsidiary of Central of Saint Louis, (established 1817).
*
Bruce Type Foundry
American Type Founders (ATF) Co. 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. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...
, (1901,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
), (established 1813).
* H. L. Pelouze & Son Type Founders, (1901,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
)
*
Barnhart Brothers & Spindler
Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Foundry was an American typeface company 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 an ...
, (1911,
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
), operated as an independent entity until 1929.
**
Western Type Foundry
Western 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 Ro ...
(
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
), bought by B.B.&S in 1918.
*** Advance Type Foundry (AKA ''Wiebking, Hardinge & Company''), (
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
), bought out by Western Type Foundry in 1914.
*
Inland Type Foundry
The 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. Although it was founded to compete directly with the "type trust" (American Type Founde ...
(1912,
St. Louis
St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
), bought by
Thomson National Company Thomson may refer to:
Names
* Thomson (surname), a list of people with this name and a description of its origin
* Thomson baronets, four baronetcies created for persons with the surname Thomson
Businesses and organizations
* SGS-Thomson Mic ...
in 1927
*
Keystone Type Foundry
American Type Founders (ATF) Co. 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. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...
(1919,
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
), (established 1883).
*
H.C. Hansen Type Foundry
American Type Founders (ATF) Co. 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. De Vinne, Theodore Low, ''The Practice of Typography,'' Century Comp ...
(1922,
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
Mount Vernon, New York
Mount Vernon is a city in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, New York (state), New York, United States. It is an inner suburb of New York City, immediately to the north of the Borough (New York City), borough of the Bronx. As of t ...
), a manufacturer of offset presses and the Little Giant letterpress cylinder press.
* Dystrom Corporation, a furniture manufacturer
*
Davidson Corporation
Davidson may refer to:
* Davidson (name)
* Clan Davidson, a Highland Scottish clan
* Davidson Media Group
* Davidson Seamount, undersea mountain southwest of Monterey, California, USA
* Tyler Davidson Fountain, monument in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
* ...
Lanston Monotype
Monotype Imaging Holdings Inc., founded as Lanston Monotype Machine Company in 1887 in Philadelphia by Tolbert Lanston, is an American (historically Anglo-American) company that specializes in digital typesetting and typeface design for use with ...
, (1969,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
), assets later sold off to M&H Typefounders.
* Several other firms.According to David Consuegra (''American Type Design & Designers,'' Allworth Press, New York City, p. 263.) Damon and Peets (perhaps double listed as Damon Type Foundry), a manufacturer of letterpresses, and an agent for ATF type in New York City, also became part of ATF. He also states that the Pacific States Typefoundry became part of the firm while Annenberg (Annenberg, Maurice, "TYPE FOUNDRIES OF AMERICA AND THEIR CATALOGS," Oak Knoll Press, New Castle, Delaware, 1994.) says explicitly that they did not. Consuegra also lists a "Standard Type Foundry," and an "Illinois Type Foundry," for which no further information can be found.