JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
I've written a couple of times on this blog on "tubes", including tubular cars and ships, and of course pulp sci-fi adventures in tubular rocket ships, person intra-space tube propulsion systems, x-ray tubes, vacuum tubes, "tubes of uranium, and that sort, tubes as tubes. Plus there was the "extended tube", like telescopes, canons, boilers, vacuum tubular whatzis of the future, plus the extended idea of the tube as an open-ended shaft and tunnel (there must be an opening on both ends otherwise you have a "hole", which has its own category). In these side tube researches I've never encountered the idea or phrase "alphabet tube", until today.
The Domincan priest Father Vincenzo Calendoli invented (between 1893 to 1895) an unusual and seemingly-simple-but-hardly-so linotype machine that was seen by some as “the typsetting machine of the future...”(--C. Cochrane, American Printer and Lithographer, vols 21-23, 1896). The image below shows Calendoli in serene concentration seated at his machine which looks like a cross between a small Jacquard loom and an odd harpsichord (emphasis on the harp). And what Calendoli is concentrating on is this, his keyboard:
The Scientific American Supplement (1895, pp 16055-16057) illustration is reproduced exactly in an uncommon publication called the Rosary Magazine, (1895)--exact, with the exception of the additional caption: the writer annotates it by identifying the “checker board”, “inclined wire and galleys”, and the indescribably beautifully-named “alphabet tubes”! The explanation of what this tube is is far less interesting than its title--tubes filled with type--though the machine overall was extraordinary.
Here are a few notices on Calendoli's machine, all from Typographical Journal, vol 30, 1900.
“The machine which will eventually control the market and supplant the typesetting machines now in use will not be properly speaking a typesetting machine but a combination of typewriters tape punching devices and type bar or type block forming machine...Father Calendoli's machine has hit upon an idea in keyboard mechanism which must eventually supersede present keyboards. He makes use of fifteen alphabets each of which is arranged in a square or block the keys in each block being so separated and colored as to be readily distinguished. In each block the letters are so arranged that a number of common words and syllables may be struck in order....”
“The invention: Imagine a kind of harp whose cords are replaced by metallic tubes adhering to each other in four series. These tubes communicated through an electrical device with a keyboard or rather checker board divided into twenty one small squares covered with electrical knobs three for caps fifteen for ordinary letters and the remainder for figures and accented vowels. Points of punctuation and accents formed a horizontal line on the lowest part of the checker board and were operated with a pedal. Each letter was printed on the little knobs and to avoid useless motions of the arms the squares were repeated three by three. In these squares the consonants were not repeated but the vowels were triplicated and surrounded the consonants in a very ingenious way which permitted the composing of most of the syllables with a single finger in touching two knobs at once as be bi bo bu etc..”
“...Father Calendoli's machine has hit upon an idea in keyboard mechanism which must eventually supersede present keyboards. He makes use of fifteen alphabets each of which is arranged in a square or block the keys in each block being so separated and colored as to be readily distinguished. In each block the letters are so arranged that a number of common words and syllables may be struck in order....”
“The machine which will eventually control the market and supplant the typesetting machines now in use will not be properly speaking a typesetting machine but a combination of typewriters tape punching devices and type bar or type block forming machines...”
“Happy will be the compositor who fifty or a hundred years hence can look down from printers heaven and note the progress made in the art since he laid down his composing stick.”
“.. ingenious combination of type tubes...When the keys are struck electric impulses are given to wires which release types from certain tubes. The length of these tubes is so arranged that the longest slide or fall is given to the last letter of the set and a proportionately shorter slide to the others so that each is sure to fall in proper order although the whole four or live are struck simultaneously. It is obviously necessary to employ fifteen sets of type tubes as there must be a tube for every key on the keyboard...”
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