A Century of Excellence

The Pioneer Days and Tolbert Lanston

Tolbert Lanston (1844-1913) was a born inventor. He was one of those rare people who, without any training in engineering, could devise original ideas. It was a machine for classifying and tabulating statistics by the use of perforated card that suggested to him the basic idea of a Monotype Keyboard and Caster, and he patented his earliest models in 1887. A Monotype Machine was first demonstrated in London in 1887, and the whole project would have failed if a British syndicate had not provided the necessary capital with which to finance it. In December 1897, The Lanston Monotype Corporation was formed. 

The Lanston Monotype Corporation: 1897 - 1931

Following improvements to justification in 1897, John Sellers Bancroft redesigned the casting machine in 1899 which incorporated a more efficient matrix-case mechanism. During this time in England, construction of Works premises commenced at Salfords in Surrey which was completed in 1900. H.M. Duncan (technical advisor to Lanston) returned to England where he held the position of Technical Director until his death in 1924. In the first 8 years of the century, installations exceeded 1,100 casting machines and 1,550 keyboards. During the following years, many improvements were made to the casters and keyboards and in 1928 an entirely new 'Super Caster' was introduced which functioned independently from a keyboard. During the 1920's and 1930's, an ambitious typecutting programme was started which led to the introduction of fonts such as Baskerville, Bembo, Garamond and Times New Roman. In 1931, the company name was changed to The Monotype Corporation.

The Monotype Corporation: 1931 - 1992

The production of Hot Metal machinery dominated the pre- and post-war years until 'Monophoto' filmsetters, based on a hot-metal design, were introduced in 1955. At about the same time the 4-line mathematical system was introduced for hot-metal casting and was then adapted for filmsetting. In 1963, the extended matrix case was developed as well as a keyboard with keybanks of 14x12 rows. The mid-sixties saw the start of the computer age in phototypesetting and in 1967, the Corporation presented its electronic perforator, for automatic justification and tabular composition. The 'Monophoto' 600 filmsetter and 600 tape perforator were shown st GEC Milan in 1969 and the 1000 and 2000-series filmsetters were developed in the following years, the latter being the fastest filmsetter of its day.

In the late 60s and early 70s a number of companies introduced phototypesetters using Cathode Ray Tube light sources. These were inherently faster than existing mechanical systems but produced poorer quality output. Monotype did not adopt this technology but investigated the feasibility of using a scanning laser beam as a light source. This investigation led to the development of the Lasercomp which was introduced in 1976. This was the world's first raster scan laser based typesetter. The Lasercomp was arguably several years ahead of its time - it was only some 10 years later with the advent of PostScript and page make up programs on powerful standard computers that this capability came into common usage.

Monotype Systems Limited: 1992 - Present

The IPA Group purchased the company in 1992 and changed the name to Monotype Systems Limited. The objective of this new company, as the name indicates, was to become systems integrators in the Prepress Industry concentrating on development of RIPs and graphic handling and workflow systems with the flexibility to interface to all major imagesetter manufacturers. The company is located in a purpose-built building on the original Monotype site at Salfords in Surrey.