Linotype and Intertype: a quiet rivalry

From the late 1800s and through most of the 20th century, Linotype wielded a significant influence over the print industry, whilst inspiring rival companies to perfect its ideas and innovations. One such company was Intertype. 

Linotype: the clue’s in the name

The Linotype Machine, developed in the US by German emigré Ottmar Mergenthaler and first patented in 1884, was a machine that produced a line of hot metal type – as opposed to the previous method which required the laborious composition of lines of type, by hand, of individual characters. 

In our digital age of instantaneous reproduction, it’s hard to imagine quite what a revolution this innovation was. For years, inventors and engineers had been wrestling with the challenge of automating the setting of type, and the Linotype Machine was the first to succeed.

Visually the Linotype Machine resembled a union between intimidating agricultural machinery and a typewriter. It was, in fact, a masterpiece of precision engineering (Mergenthaler was a clock maker by trade) and almost magical in its complexity and operation. A seemingly impossible mechanical objective made real. 

A Linotype operator could produce around six times more type than the previous manual process. This sped up the publishing process, increased productivity, lowered costs, and revolutionised the print industry – most notably newspapers, which as a consequence were able to radically increase their readership. 

Adopted by publishers across the English speaking world, Linotype quickly became a hugely successful and profitable business, becoming one of the mainstays for typesetting. It was particularly effective for small body text, making it ideal for newspapers, magazines, and advertisements. 

An opportunity for competition

The Mergenthaler Linotype Company jealously guarded its patents, and for decades successfully kept competitors out of the line-casting market.

However, in 1912 the patents covering the basic mechanism of the Linotype expired, and a group of investors and former Mergenthaler employees formed the International Typesetting Machine Company. 

The company was founded in 1911 by Hermann Ridder in New York, and by 1916 had been rebranded as the Intertype Corporation. Intertype originally made modifications to existing Linotype machines, contacting Linotype users and listening to their complaints. 

This origin as a modifier and improver of existing machines shaped Intertype’s commercial identity. By making modifications to Linotypes, the company was initially regarded as a copycat, and with the perception of having liquidity problems. However, from 1917 they produced their own models and their fortunes improved substantially from that point.

Parallel technologies

The general principles of operation of the Linotype and Intertype are the same – in fact, most of the matrices are interchangeable. Both machines operated on the hot metal ‘line casting’ principle: the machine assembles matrices (moulds of the letter forms) in a line, which is then cast as a single piece called a slug from molten metal. The matrices are then returned to the type magazine via a distribution bar, to be reused continuously. 

This circulating matrix system was the core innovation that both companies built upon – a technology that excelled at setting many short lines of straight copy quickly. 

Intertype’s commercial strategy

From the outset, Intertype’s great advantage was not technical novelty but disciplined standardisation and customer service. Intertype marketed their machines as “standardized models,” meaning that parts were universal and could be exchanged between different machines, with statements such as “no standardized Intertype has ever become obsolete.” 

This was in direct opposition to the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, which produced parts that were often difficult to exchange. They also had several production plants that made their own variations on the machines — for example American, English, and German models – disadvantages that were capitalised on by Intertype’s sales operation. 

The founders of Intertype felt that the marketplace was ripe for a competitor to Linotype and that they could produce a machine with enough improvements to create that competition. By many accounts they did – the Intertype was a simpler machine than the Linotype, incorporating a number of improvements while retaining its core functionality.

Technical differences between the machines

A detailed comparison compiled by Leonard A. Spencer, a veteran Linotype mechanic, reveals a remarkable number of engineering differences between the two systems, despite their functional equivalence.

It’s pretty technical stuff, so if you really want to nerd-out you can read Spencer’s essay at Linotype.org: http://www.linotype.org/OnLineDocs/Miscellaneous/differences.html

Linotype vs Intertype: first mover advantage

The Mergenthaler Linotype Company was by far the more commercially successful company, becoming the world’s leading manufacturer of newspaper and book typesetting equipment. Intertype was a legitimate and capable competitor but always the smaller player.

There are several reasons for Linotype’s dominance despite Intertype’s engineering advantages:

The head start was enormous. Linotype had a roughly 25-year monopoly; from the mid-1880s until the patents expired around 1912. By that time it was already embedded in the newspaper market with thousands of installed machines, trained operators, and deep customer relationships. Intertype entered a market where most buying decisions had already been made.

Established base and switching costs. Once a newspaper composing room was equipped with Linotype machines, its operators were trained on them, its maintenance staff knew them, and its matrices were specific to them. Switching to Intertype involved real costs and disruption. The general principles of operation of the Linotype and Intertype were the same and most matrices were interchangeable, which helped Intertype sell into mixed rooms. But institutional inertia still favoured Linotype.

The typeface library: arguably Linotype’s most durable competitive advantage. While both Mergenthaler and Lanston Monotype were known for producing new and innovative type designs, virtually all of Intertype’s typefaces were derivatives of, or supplied to them by, the Bauer Type Foundry. The only type designer of note associated with Intertype was Edwin W. Shaar.

Linotype, by contrast, commissioned or licensed a vast and prestigious library of typefaces, giving customers another reason to stay loyal.

Intertype’s fate. Despite initial liquidity problems, Intertype was quite successful in later years, always innovating. In 1957, Intertype merged with Harris-Seybold, a manufacturer of presses and paper cutters, to become Harris-Intertype Corporation. The merger signalled that Intertype, though viable, lacked the independent scale to survive the transition to phototypesetting alone. Mergenthaler Linotype, by contrast, continued as a major force through the phototypesetting era and beyond.

It could be said that whilst Intertype built a better mousetrap, Linotype had already caught all the mice.

Other competitors

It is worth noting that Linotype and Intertype were not the only players. For example, the Linograph Manufacturing Company started around 1911 producing machines similar in principle and operation to Linotype. However, Linograph was acquired by the Intertype Corporation around 1944 and dissolved. This acquisition effectively left Intertype as the only serious challenger to Linotype.

Although not a direct rival to either Linotype or Intertype, the Monotype Corporation was another significant player in the print industry, manufacturing typesetting machines that cast individual letters. Arguably Monotype machines produced higher quality print, making it a popular choice among fine book printers, and its movable type was favoured by catalogue publishers. So although there was a degree of commercial cross-over, Monotype’s philosophy was radically different from the slug-casting approach of Linotype and Intertype.

The End of the Rivalry

Intertype was the one of the first companies to develop a keyboard-operated photo-typesetting machine, the Fotosetter, around 1950. Originally a standard Intertype machine with the casting mechanism replaced by a lighting installation, the matrices contained a film negative that was projected with light onto photographic paper. Although the Fotosetter itself was soon overtaken by rival machines, the technology marked the beginning of the end for hot metal typesetting. 

Neither Linotype or Intertype survived the digital transition intact. Major newspaper publishers retired hot metal typesetting machines during the 1970s and 1980s, replacing them with phototypesetting equipment and later computerised typesetting and page composition systems. 

Mergenthaler’s Linotype held a near-monopoly for decades through aggressive patent protection, but once that wall fell, Intertype competed effectively by building a simpler, more standardized, and more maintainable machine – proving that in industrial machinery, serviceability and parts interchangeability can be a powerful selling point.

It's a commercial rivalry that remains one of the great contests in printing history. 

At Skylona we hold type specimens, trade documents and other printed ephemera for both Intertype and Linotype. 

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