Electrotype

Electrotyping in printing

Electrotype was also used to manufacture matrices that could be used as moulds for individual pieces of metal type. This had several advantages over conventional punchcutting in hard steel: only soft metal was needed for carving the type master, which was also useful for large sizes of type, since it was hard to drive large punches into a matrix effectively. It cut the cost of decorative types that would not be used as often as body text typefaces. On the other hand, it gave no steel punch that could be used to create multiple matrices quickly, and was reported not always to give such good results as steel punchcutting.