Mackie’s manifold type-setting machine

This novel and simple machine is only useful for setting duplicates of, say, ten, twenty, or fifty. In either case the workman sets at half the speed he would set one column, so that in setting fifty duplicates he actually sets at the rate of twenty-five columns, Times size, per day. The modus operandi is the following:—

Upon thin brass rules with one edge and one end turned up, you place, say. twenty letters all alike, and on the flat. This you repeat with every letter and figure in the fount, duplicating them scores or hundreds of times. When ready for setting, you empty one brass after another into a common setting-stick, with i lie following results. Suppose you wish to set the heading of this article, yon empty one brass of cap M’s into your stick the narrow way; then one of a’s, one of c’s, one of k’s, one of i’s, one of e’s. one of s’s, and so on, thus:—

By the time your stick is full you will have twenty lines of, say, fifty letters each, or one thousand lines in all, all set by fifty movements of the hand, i.e., by emptying fifty brasses. To be useful, the twenty duplicates are put on to twenty different galleys, and form the first lines of twenty columns. It will be seen that the reading is very easy, any wrong letter being instantly visible. The distributing is done by reversing the last operation, and a “slicing” machine slices each row upon its own brasses—in rows of M’s, a’s, and c’s, ready for further use. Mr. Mackie invented this system in order to supply duplicate columns to various newspapers, and for setting handbills, labels, short telegrams, &c. It may be of much use, as Mr. Mackie supplies all the mechanism required for £20. The exact cost of setting, reading, and distributing twenty columns was 1s. 4½d. per column.