California Job Case

This U.S. lay is that of Hamilton Manufacturing Co: Catalog (1897) shown in Pryor: History of the California Job Type Case, in Journal of the Printing Historical Society No.7 (1972). It is also shown in American Type Founders: Desk Book (1900) and Specimen of Type (1903) and Line Type Book (1906), and Barnhardt Bros & Spindler: Book of Type Specimens No.9 (1907), Henry: Printing for School & Shop (1917), Polk: Vocational Printing (1918), Hague: Textbook of Printing Occupations (1922), Hamilton Manufacturing Co: Modern Printing Office Furniture Catalog 15 (1922) and Polk: The Practice of Printing (1926, 1937 and 1945) and Kelsey Press Co: Do Your Own Printing (1930), and as a Thompson case in Missouri-Central Type Foundry: Price List (1959). The purpose of the K- box in the top caps row is unclear, and it was not shown by ATF in 1900. The Kelsey illustration does not divide the box above the i box, and shows it empty, rather than having 1 and 2, but as the adjacent boxes are shown with 3 and 4, this was obviously a mistake, or a fault in the engraving.

There are several variants of this lay, with only the characters in the top right row changing:

J.Ben Lieberman, Printing as a Hobby, 1963, and Willshire-Jacobs, Small Printer June 1988:	$  @ %              ( )
Polk, The Practice of Printing, 1964:	$   –       [   ]   (   )
Hermann Zapf print by Myriade Press, 1978:	$  %  °   /  *  [ ] ( )
Atkins, Art & Practice of Printing, 1932 and Hostettler, Technical Terms of the Printing Industry, 4th rev ed 1963:	$        AE OE ae oe
Polk & Gage, Composition Manual 1953:	$
Gaskell, The Lay of the Case, in Bowers, Studies in Bibliography, vol 22, 1969:	AE OE ae oe
De Vinne, The Practice of Typography, Methods of Book Composition, 1904:	$   £
Hamilton c.1932, Kelsey, Printers Supply Book, 1969:	$ @ % AE OE ae oe

Gaskell called the lay the Anglo-American Double, and gave Hostettler, The Printer's Terms (1949) as his source. He leaves the 5m and 4m boxes empty. Hostettler in 1963 actually calls the case English American, and includes the 5em and 4em. There is also, for example, a different English version shown by Whetton: Practical Printing & Binding (1946), and an Australian version of c1960.

The empty configuration is shown as California Job. The x and q boxes should be the same size, and not as shown here (although the : ; boxes are correct in being smaller than . - boxes). Note that the right hand bay has one short row, and four tall rows, eg Palmer & Rey (1884), BBS (1893), Hamilton (1897), De Vinne (1904), ATF (1906), etc. Pryor, in History of the California Job Type Case (Printing Historical Society's Journal 7, 1972) has shown that this case directly descends from the Improved Job of Southward (1875) as used by McCorquodale. There are two modern versions, both with an upper bay of one short row, three tall rows, and one short row. One has the : ; boxes the same size as the x q boxes, e.g. Polk 1926 followed by Lieberman, Willshire-Jacobs, Polk (1964), Zapf, Kelsey, and the other with : ; boxes smaller than the . - boxes, e.g. Henry 1917 followed by Hamilton (1932), Atkins, Hostettler, Polk & Gage, Gaskell.