Hamilton (News) Lower Case

ffi fl 5
em
4
em
 '  k e  1  2 3 4 5 678
jbcdisfgff9
?fi0
!lmnhoypw,en
quad
em
quad
z
xvut3 em
spaces
ar;:quads
q.-

This U.S. lay is that in De Vinne, The Practice of Typography, Modern Methods of Book Composition (1904 and 1914), and American Type Founders, American Line Type Book (1906), Barnhardt Bros & Spindler, Book of Type Specimens No.9 (1907), Hamilton Manufacturing Company, Modern Cabinets, Furniture and Materials for Printers, Catalog 14 (c.1907), Henry, Printing for School & Shop (1917), Polk, Vocational Printing (1918), Hamilton Manufacturing Co, Modern Printing Office Furniture Catalog 15 (1922) and Catalog 16 (c.1932) case model 2725, and American Type Founders, Catalogue (1923), Gujarati Type Foundry, Type Book (1928 and still current in 1980s), Polk, The Practice of Printing (1926 and 1937), Selvidge & Witt, Instruction Manual for Young Printers (1926), Updike, Printing Types (1937), and Missouri-Central Type Foundry, Price List (1959) and the Hamilton Industries, Catalog (nd) illustration in Long, Wood Type & Printing Collectibles (1980). The Hamilton Cap is the companion upper lay, and is where ffl is.

The lay is also shown in Audin, Histoire de lImprimerie par l'Image (1929), called an American case, and in Hostettler, Technical Terms of the Printing Industry (1949 and 4th rev ed 1963), called an English case (but unlike the U.S. Lower, English cases have a single box above the i box, and do not use the terms 3em 4em and 5em for spacing). The lay is the same as Palmer & Rey, Type Specimen Book (1892) and Lockwood, American Dictionary of Printing and Bookbinding (1894) except that ? and ! swap boxes. It is also almost the same as MacKellar, The American Printer (1870), except that he reverses w and , and almost the same as BBS (1890s), except that they have a hair, not fl, box. It is the same as the Lower News of Hague, Textbook of Printing Occupations (1922) except that he incorrectly shows two boxes for fi, rather than an fl and an fi box.

The ATF Hamilton case measures 32 3/16 x 16 5/8 ins (or 32¼ x 16¾ x 1 according to De Vinne). The empty case configuration is MacKellar's US Lower.

Other empty cases
ie with the boxes left blank
Other type layouts
ie with characters assigned to boxes
Full Index of layoutsGlossary of terms usedSources of the layoutsIntroduction
Quantities in a fount of typeQuantities in a case of type
Notes about Job
and Double Cases
Notes about Upper casesNotes about Lower casesAlembic home page

This page was written in 1997 by David Bolton and last updated 18 May 2016.