Friday, Nov. 18, 2022 -- Baskerville Matrices
I had ordered some mats from the Type Archive recently, apparently the last they will produce before they go "into storage". One matrix was a lower case "t" that I thought was not aligned properly in my original mat case. I'm very new at operating a comp caster and don't know if I'm wrong about this, however, in the past with Lanston Monotype, this was an apparent concern from time to time. From correspondence with Roy Gurney, the late manager of the University of Toronto Press, he wrote the following about matrix alignment.
"I had several jousts with Lanston Monotype especially during the 50"s. My main customer for formula setting was becoming extremely critical about some items. E.g. the colon used in ratio viz 1:1 looked different when the ratio was for instance 1:2 it didn't look centred, this was getting a little 'hairy' so I ordered four or five matrices of the colon punctuation sign and because of the worn out machinery for punching the matrices they varied I selected one that would look centred and threw the rest away. We cast up some `sorts' and whenever the problem arose we would insert one by hand. Deliveries of special matrices was a 'bugbear'. For instance although we had alternate mats for the Greek letter `alpha', one of our big customers was not satisfied and showed me what she wanted, it was out of a British journal of course it was from the British Monotype Corporation's catalogue, it was frustrating to try and explain that that particular matrice was not available to Canadian typesetters. I ordered it from Lanston who had punches made (which they charged me for) and I got a matrix or two, (months later). While I was away one year our associate director told me that she had met the president of the Monotype Canada and had ordered the Bembo "it only cost $1500.00". Several years later and thousands of dollars we had a setup to ensure a reasonable quality job. We paid for I don't know how many punches to be cut, the irony was we paid for the punches and then any typesetter could order a matrix at a fraction of the cost. Later on when we had some British keyboards and casters I threw the original Bembo away and replace in its entirety with British matrices. "
Friday, Nov. 18, 2022 -- Baskerville Matrices
I had ordered some mats from the Type Archive recently, apparently the last they will produce before they go "into storage". One matrix was a lower case "t" that I thought was not aligned properly in my original mat case. I'm very new at operating a comp caster and don't know if I'm wrong about this, however, in the past with Lanston Monotype, this was an apparent concern from time to time. From correspondence with Roy Gurney, the late manager of the University of Toronto Press, he wrote the following about matrix alignment.
"I had several jousts with Lanston Monotype especially during the 50"s. My main customer for formula setting was becoming extremely critical about some items. E.g. the colon used in ratio viz 1:1 looked different when the ratio was for instance 1:2 it didn't look centred, this was getting a little 'hairy' so I ordered four or five matrices of the colon punctuation sign and because of the worn out machinery for punching the matrices they varied I selected one that would look centred and threw the rest away. We cast up some `sorts' and whenever the problem arose we would insert one by hand. Deliveries of special matrices was a 'bugbear'. For instance although we had alternate mats for the Greek letter `alpha', one of our big customers was not satisfied and showed me what she wanted, it was out of a British journal of course it was from the British Monotype Corporation's catalogue, it was frustrating to try and explain that that particular matrice was not available to Canadian typesetters. I ordered it from Lanston who had punches made (which they charged me for) and I got a matrix or two, (months later). While I was away one year our associate director told me that she had met the president of the Monotype Canada and had ordered the Bembo "it only cost $1500.00". Several years later and thousands of dollars we had a setup to ensure a reasonable quality job. We paid for I don't know how many punches to be cut, the irony was we paid for the punches and then any typesetter could order a matrix at a fraction of the cost. Later on when we had some British keyboards and casters I threw the original Bembo away and replace in its entirety with British matrices. "