Communication · 1886

Linotype machine

A keyboard casts whole lines of hot-metal type, ending hand typesetting.

Ottmar Mergenthaler's Linotype was first used at the New York Tribune in 1886 and let one operator set type several times faster than by hand. It made thick daily newspapers and cheap books economical for the next 80 years.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Typewriter 1868
Steam-powered press 1814

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

New book titles per million people, UK Latest: 2.11k titles per million (2009) Source: Our World in Data

Literacy rate, England/UK since 1475 Latest: 98.5 % (1950) Source: Our World in Data