Type (Gr. Tvttteiv To Stamp), a piece of metal or wood having the form of a letter or other character in relief upon one end, used in printing. The various forms of type have been described in the article Printing, which also contains the history of their invention, the methods of their use, etc. The material of which book and newspaper types are made is an alloy known as type metal, composed of lead, antimony, tin, and sometimes copper and other metals. The metals of this alloy are combined in different proportions, to meet the different requirements of hardness, softness, tenacity, or cheapness. Lead is the chief constituent; antimony is added to compensate for the softness of the lead, tin to give toughness, and sometimes copper to give a still greater degree of tenacity. Copper is sparingly used; one per cent, of it gives to type metal a perceptible reddish tint. Type metal, although melting at a comparatively low heat, fills the mould with great solidity, and shrinks very slightly in cooling. It does not oxidize seriously when exposed to the action of air, water, ley, or ink.

The durability of types has been greatly improved by the process of copperfacing, invented and patented in 1850 by Dr. L. V. Newton of New York. Through the agency of the electrotype battery (see Galvanism, vol. vii., p. 601) a thin film of copper is deposited on the face of the type, making an efficient protection against abrasion and rapid wear. - The success of typography depends on the accuracy of the types. They must be made so that they can be combined and recombined and interchanged with the greatest facility. The page of a daily newspaper, which may contain 150,000 pieces of metal, must be truly square, as if made of one piece. The first step is the making of punches, which consists in cutting on the end of a short bar of soft steel a model for oach character which will be used in the font or assortment of types. When the steel has been hardened, the punch is struck on the side of a thin bar of rolled copper, producing a reversed duplicate of the model type, which when truly squared and fitted to a mould constitutes the matrix. All the matrices of a font are made to fit one mould. The type mould consists of two firmly screwed combinations of several pieces of steel, making right and left halves, each of which is almost the counterpart of the other.

These halves are immovable in the direction which determines the height or depth of the body, but are readily adjustable in the direction which determines the width of the letters, so that they can produce either 1 or W with no further delay than that caused by the change of matrix. At one end of the mould the matrix is fitted; at the other end is an opening through which the melted metal is injected. The founding of book and newspaper types is now done by a type-casting machine, which contains in the centre of the framework a pot of type metal kept fluid by a fire beneath. The mould is connected with the melted metal through a channel. In the pot is fitted a piston or plunger, which, receiving motion from a cam, forces the fluid metal through the channel into the mould and matrix. The metal injected, fused at low heat, and cooled by a blast of cold air, solidifies almost instantaneously. As soon as the mould receives the metal, it opens, the matrix springs backward, and a little hook throws out the type. The mould closes, the matrix falls into its seat, and the plunger injects a new supply of metal, which is again thrown out as a type.

The speed of the machine is governed by the time required for cooling the metal in the mould, varying from 70 types of pica to 150 types of nonpareil in a minute. The type thrown out of the mould is usually perfect as to face, but imperfect as to body. A long piece of metal, called the jet, is attached to the foot, and must be broken off; the fracture made by this breaking must be grooved out; the corners of the body are sharp or wiry, and must be rubbed down on a grindstone. The types are then set up in rows and carefully examined, one by one, under a magnifying glass. The defective letters are thrown into the melting pot, and those approved are packed in paper, ready for the printer. - For the large displayed letters of posters, types are made of wood, usuallymaple or bay mahogany, and rarely of smaller size than one square inch. As these types are used only in single lines, and are kept in true line by straight strips of wood called reglet, they do not require the accuracy of body which is indispensable in metal types.

Wood types are made by an ingenious application of the pantagraph, the invention of William Leavenworth of Allentown, N. J., who introduced it in 1834. A tracing point at one end of the pantagraph follows the outline of a large model letter; this tracing motion is accurately repeated at the opposite end by a rapidly revolving cutter or router, which cuts a letter of similar shape out of a block of wood. The routing tool does nearly all the work; only a few cuts of the graver are required to finish the type. - The types of all American type founderies are made to the standard height of 92/100 of an inch. British types are usually of the same height, but those of founderies on the European continent are variable; some German types' are nearly an inch, and Russian types are more than an inch in height. In all countries the graduations of sizes or of bodies of types has been very irregular. Pierre Simon Fournier of Paris, in 1764, proposed the first practicable system. He divided a selected body of type, then known as "Cicero," into 12 equal parts, and made one such part, which he called a typographic point, the unitary basis for determining the dimensions of every larger size. All sizes were to be even multiples of the typographic point.

Fournier's system, which was adopted in France, had the serious defect of an undetermined size for the body Cicero. To remedy this defect, Didot fixed the body Cicero at -1/72 part of the royal French foot, and gave all the bodies made therefrom standard numerical names, which defined the number of points belonging to each body. Didot's system is now used in nearly all type founderies on the continent, but it has the disadvantage of being based on a disused measure, the royal foot, and of being in entire disagreement with the French metrical system. It has not been adopted by any English or American type founder. In 1822 George Bruce of New York introduced in his own type foundery a new system, in which the dimensions of the bodies were determined by the rule of geometrical progression, doubling every seventh size in any part of the series of sizes, and making each size 12.2462 per cent. smaller than the size following it. The distances between the sizes are irregular, but the dimensions of the bodies are in proper correlation. (See Printing, vol. xiii., p. 847.) - The matrices and moulds of the first printers were always made by goldsmiths and mechanicians, but the printers cast the types. As early as 1550 type founding was made a business entirely distinct from printing.

Although types are now cast by machinery, and with improved appliances, the more important tools used in making them (the punch, matrix, and mould) are substantially the same as those used in the 15th century. Attempts have been made repeatedly to cast many types by one operation in multiple moulds, or to cut them like nails out of cold metal, but they have failed chiefly through the inability to secure accuracy of body. As the required accuracy can be produced only by casting types in an adjustable mould, it may be assumed that the inventor of the type mould was the inventor of typography. The literal translation of a tablet put up at Mentz in 1507 says that John G-utenberg was the first to make printing letters in brass. Engravings made by Amman at Frankfort in 1564, and by Moxon at London in 1683, prove that the old method of casting types by hand was that used by all type founders at the beginning of this century. The first important improvement in hand casting was made in 1811 by Archibald Binney of Philadelphia, who attached a spring lever to the matrix of the hand mould, giving it an automatic return movement which enabled the type caster to double his old performance.

In 1834 David Bruce of New York attached a hand force pump to the mould, which was of great value in the casting of large types, and gave a new impetus to the making of ornamental letters. William M. Johnson of Hempstead, Long Island, invented in 1828 a typecasting machine, which was used for some years by Elihu White of New York; but it was finally abandoned on account of the porousness of the types made by it. In 1838 David Bruce, jr., patented the machine which is the basis of most of those now used in America and Europe. The making of matrices by the electrotype process instead of by punching (a process of some value in the reproduction of matrices from types, or engravings in wood or soft metal) is the only recent improvement which has been generally adopted. - Types were first made in the United States by Christopher Sower of Germantown, Pa., about 1735. He cast several fonts in German and English for himself, and perhaps for others, and the anvil on which he forged his matrices of copper is still to be seen at Germantown. Sower, a publisher of books, was prevented from printing the Bible in English by the patent then held by the university of Oxford. As there was no patent on the Bible in German, he undertook this enterprise, making types, ink, and paper for the purpose, and published the first German edition of the book in America (4to, 1743). Christopher Sower, jr., continued the business, but neither lie nor his father can fairly be considered as type founders to the trade.

Their type-founding material was bought by Binney and Ronaldson of Philadelphia in 1798, who were materially aided by a grant of $5,000 from the state of Pennsylvania, and by the use of type-founding implements bought by Franklin when he was minister at Paris. Mitchelson, a Scotchman, made types in Boston in 1768, but soon abandoned the business. In 1769 Abel Buell of Killingworth, a silversmith, petitioned the assembly of Connecticut for money to establish a type foundery. He made types at the Sandemanian meeting house in New Haven, but with no benefit to himself or to the printers. William Wing of Hartford, in 1805, made unsuccessful attempts to cast types in conjoined moulds. His partner, Elihu White, established a type foundery at New York in 1810, and afterward at Buffalo and Cincinnati. Robert Lothian, from Scotland, began to make types at New York in 1806. He failed, but many years afterward was succeeded by his son George. John Baine, a type founder of Edinburgh, at the close of the revolutionary war established a foundery at Philadelphia. In 1813 the printers David and George Bruce, who then had the first stereotype foundery in the United States, began business as type founders.

George Bruce won a high reputation as a punch cutter and as a scientific type founder.