I was recently asked about a marking a friend had seen on some type, wondering if it could be from the Montreal Type Foundry, or even if such a place ever existed.
First, a bit of type-casting technology: Since the technology developed by Gutenberg, type was originally cast using a hand mould, which as its name suggests is a mould that the user holds in their hand while casting. It generally has two main pieces, and also holds a matrix that has the actual glyph to be cast, and the user fills it with molten type metal using a small ladle. After a few seconds the metal has solidified and the users takes the two halves apart and removes the new piece of type. In this way one could cast perhaps 4 pieces of type per minute. The resulting type still required finishing work before it could be used, including breaking off the jet where the metal was poured in and cleaning off any bumps that would prevent the type from standing or locking up properly.
In the late 1830’s, a machine called a pivotal caster was developed which essentially went through the same motions, but mechanized at the turn of a crank. In order to assure proper ejection of the type, one side of the mould was equipped with a small pin which protrudes a bit into the mould cavity. This is sometimes called an “ejector pin” but that is a somewhat misleading name because that makes it sound like the pin actually pops up to eject the type. In fact, these pins were fixed, and only acted as a sort of snag to ensure that when the mould opened the type reliably stayed attached on one specific half of the mould.
The pivotal caster allowed a faster production rate and made more consistent type. This was in part due to the consistent injection of molten metal because this caster also included a pump mechanism for the metal. This machine was the primary means of casting type for perhaps 50 years, but by the late 1880’s, other machines, notably the Barth caster, were developed. These machines ran faster and produced type that required little or no finishing steps. These newer casters had no need for an ejector pin, so the marks left by the pins were no longer found on type. The pivotal casters remained in limited use in smaller foundries or for smaller production runs.
Foundries using pivotal casters realized that they could engrave the head of the pins to leave a distinctive mark on each piece of type as a trade mark to identify where it was cast.
Now that old fonts of type have their own historical interest such pin marks can be an important tool in identifying the history of a font of type.
I recently did a quick survey of pin marks that I could find on type at the Mackenzie Printery and Newspaper Museum where I volunteer, and here are some of the more legible ones I found:
The mysterious “M.T.” pin mark on an en space which probably started this whole adventure
A pin mark from the Baltimore Type Foundry, a.k.a. BaltoType
A European entry from Lettergieterij Amsterdam (the ‘T’ stands for “Tetterode”, the foundry owner’s name)
I found several pin marks from the Chicago Type Foundry. I’m not sure of the significance of the “28”.
As for the Montreal Type Foundry, this did exist between about 1830 and 1887. It was succeeded in Montreal by the Dominion Type Foundry and around that time the Toronto Type Foundry was also established. I have, however, no definitive proof that this “M.T.” pin mark is from the Montreal Type Foundry, and so far I’ve only found two instances of it at the Museum, both on spaces rather than type.
I should note that although casters no longer have ejector pins, it is still possible for the mould to be marked to trademark the type, but this is trickier to do with newer moulds because of tighter tolerances and the way the mould parts must slide past each other. Another practice was for a foundry to mark the counter of the type by modifying the matrix; this was usually only done for a few sorts, notably uppercase H or M.
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