Course:LIBR548F/2010WT1/American Type Founders

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American Type Founders

The American Type Founders, or ATF Inc., was a company that originally formed in 1892 with the joining of 23 separate type foundries across the United States.[1] Type foundries are responsible for the design and production of typefaces, as well as other printing apparatuses and services. The American Type Founders were at one time responsible for 85% of the output of type in the United States. Their slogan was “Everything for the printer,” and they provided not only new type designs and matrices, but also revolutions in design and printing technology. [2]

Pre-formation and Early Years

As the American Type Founders was the result of the merger of smaller, often long established foundries, the roots of the company trace the history of printing in the United States back to its earliest presses. German immigrant Christopher Sauer established one such press in Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1735. Sauer was supposedly responsible for printing the first quarto Bible in the country, done in German. [3] Another historical foundry of note was the one established by Benjamin Franklin, who began the Franklin Foundry in 1786 after purchasing type equipment in France. He operated the press until his death. [4] Like Sauer’s material, Franklin’s foundry was absorbed by the Philadelphia foundry Binney & Ronaldson, one of the first successful foundries in the United States, which changed hands several times until eventually being absorbed as part of the American Type Founders in 1892.

The creation of the American Type Founders arose from the need to overhaul the type-foundry trade in the United States toward the end of the 19th century. Many small foundries existed independently across the country in order to provide services to local areas with immediacy; but such a system became economically unsound for profit as traditional type methods became challenged by the innovations of linotype and other composing machines. [5] The formation of the ATF intended to “concentrate manufacturing in a few plants to take advantage of mass production.” [6] The initial merger came at a time of anti-trust sentiment in America, and coupled with the fight of the individual foundries to keep their separate identities paramount to the corporate one meant the first few years of the American Type Founders was rocky and for the most part unprofitable. [7]

1920's-1940's

The American Type Founders did not begin to really come into its own as an economic force until the beginning part of the 20th century. It continued to acquire foundries on top of the original merge participants.

Some of the foundries that were incorporated into ATF included: Binny & Ronaldson Inland Type Foundry Boston Type Foundry Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Marder, Luse & CO. James Connor & Sons Cincinnati Type Foundry AD Farmer & Son Type Foundry Type Founders Damon Type Foundry Central Type Foundry Dickinson Type Foundry Bruce’s New York Type Foundry Keystone Type Foundry Pacific States Type Foundry Standard Type Foundry Illinois Type Foundry Damon & Peets Great Western Type Foundry Benton, Waldo & Co. Type Foundry H.C. Hansen Type Foundry MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan [8]

The 1920’s saw the heyday of the American Type Founders, with an increase in not only type designs, but the production of presses as well. William M. Kelly helped to develop a faster automatic job press under the auspices of the ATF. The successful press, known as the Kelly Press, was mass produced by ATF manufacturing plants and shipped worldwide. [9] The first few decades of the 20th century saw the ATF as one of the producers of an “unprecedented number of new typefaces” [10] with designers such as Morris Fuller Benton (who designed the fonts Franklin Gothic, Garamond, Century Schoolbook,) Will Bradley (Wayside,) and Joseph W. Phinny (Jenson.) [11] Henry Lewis Bullen, joint manager of the New York branch, wrote in his Discursions of a Retired Printer (1906):

“On starting business in 1891, it [ATF] had matrices for about two thousand series of type. Discarding duplications, it had matrices for about seven hundred and fifty series of distinctive typefaces. In 1900, nine years after starting, it issued a complete general specimen book, containing the salable residuum of its type faces—525 series of job and thirty-seven of body type.” [12]

The company began to see a decline in the late 1920’s, starting with the death of Robert W. Nelson in 1926, who had been the president of the Board of Directors since 1901 and was credited with much of the company’s success in those years. [13] The Great Depression was the next blow, and in 1934 the ATF had to declare bankruptcy.

At this time, some of the materials of the ATF were sold to the Butler Library at Columbia University in 1936, supposedly including the press purchased by Benjamin Franklin in France. [14] Reorganization was successful, but the ATF never regained its status as a prominent member of the printing trade.

Post-War and Decline

During World War II, many of the ATF’s facilities were given over to the U.S. government for the war effort, and after the way were either reconverted for printing purposes or sold. [15] Changes in technology further decreased the ATF’s importance in the field. A large amount of materials of the ATF including drawings, patterns, and matrices were donated to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. [16] In 1986, Kingsley, a manufacturer of imprinting and marking equipment, acquired the ATF Corporation and it became Kingsley/ATF Corporation. [17] However, the foundry declared bankruptcy in 1993 and had to auction off the remaining equipment in its possession.

Today

Today the ATF licenses certain fonts digitally with companies such as Bitstream and Adobe, but are otherwise defunct. [18]

Annotated Bibliography

Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. “Type to Print: Tde Book and The Type Specimen Book, March 30, 2001” (Exhibit.) The American Type Founders Company. (Accessed September 18, 2010.) http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/data/indiv/rare/type-exhibit/atf.htm

Though the information from this particular site is small, the association between the ATF and Columbia University is significant, especially since the company is now defunct and many of their important historical materials are at the university’s library.

Jones, Thomas Roy. Printing in America, and American Type Founders. New York: Newcomen Society of England, American Branch, 1948. 8-13

This book was written by one of the Presidents of the ATF, originally as a speech. It has the most in-depth history regarding the years before the ATF founded, as well as how the business was run during the early part of the 20th century.

Consuegra, David. American Type Design & Designers. Allworth Communications, Inc. 2004 http://books.google.ca/books?id=alglQxkHi-wC&pg=RA5-PT14&dq=type+foundries&hl=en&ei=SMWWTIH3N4OmsQOi0YnuAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=type%20foundries&f=false

This resource provided the information regarding the foundries that joined the ATF, as well as one of the most comprehensive and recent history of the ATF after WWII.

References

  1. ↑ Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. “Type to Print: Tde Book and The Type Specimen Book, March 30, 2001” (Exhibit.) The American Type Founders Company. (Accessed September 18, 2010.) http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/data/indiv/rare/type-exhibit/atf.htm
  2. ↑ Jones, Thomas Roy. Printing in America, and American Type Founders. New York: Newcomen Society of England, American Branch, 1948. 8-13
  3. ↑ Jones, 9.
  4. ↑ Jones, 11.
  5. ↑ Jones, 13.
  6. ↑ Ibid.
  7. ↑ Jones, 15.
  8. ↑ Consuegra, David. American Type Design & Designers. Allworth Communications, Inc. 2004 http://books.google.ca/books?id=alglQxkHi-wC&pg=RA5-PT14&dq=type+foundries&hl=en&ei=SMWWTIH3N4OmsQOi0YnuAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=type%20foundries&f=false
  9. ↑ Jones, 21.
  10. ↑ Heller, Steven & Fili, Louise. Typology: Type Design from the Victorian Era to the Digital Age/Steven Heller & Louise Fili. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999. 107.
  11. ↑ Macmillan, Neil. An A-Z of Type Designers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
  12. ↑ Consuegra, 263.
  13. ↑ Jones, 22.
  14. ↑ Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
  15. ↑ Jones, 25.
  16. ↑ Consuegra, 263.
  17. ↑ Typophile. “American Type Founders.” Copyright 2000-2010. (Accessed September 19, 2010.) http://typophile.com/node/13552
  18. ↑ Ibid.
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