Andover Museum Linotypes (Model X?)

In another thread today, Bill Whitley wrote:

> Linotype holdings at the Museum of Printing in N. Andover MA are listed here:

http://www.museumofprinting.org/Collection.html

But there is a puzzle in that page. The first Linotype they list is:

“Model 1 (‘X’) The Second Band Machine”

That description doesn’t make sense. It seems to conflate three machines into one.

Mergenthaler’s “Second Band Machine” was a prototype; it cast slugs, but did not use recirculating matrices. If indeed they have this machine, then it is an important historical object. You can see a picture of it in the 1944 Mergenthaler book “Milestones of Machine Typesetting” online on Bill Spurling’s linotype.org

http://linotype.org/onlinedocs.html

The Model 1 was the second name used (it was also called the “Simplex,” according to Huss) for the first Linotype that looked more or less like a Linotype as we know it.
The International Printing Museum has a Model 1, s/n 160. See:

http://www.printmuseum.org/museum/collection/

The “Model X” is an entirely different beast altogether. Mergenthaler never made a “Model X” - it’s an Intertype conversion of a Linotype. Intertype would take Linotypes in trade. They would then refit them quite extensively with Intertype parts and re-label them. They were quite honest about describing this - the new Nameplate would say “Linotype No. NN,NNN Modernized with Intertype Parts” while the plate on the distributor bar would say “MODEL X.” Example:

http://www.galleyrack.com/images/artifice/letters/press/cr-stuff/quicklo...

So it’s a composite machine, both a Linotype and an Intertype.

There were several variations (documented in the Intertype parts books), so I suspect that every Model X ever made was just a bit different. They also did the same thing with a Model W and a Model Z. (But I think that the Model V was different; pure Intertype.)

The reason that this interests me is that I have a Model X. See:

http://www.galleyrack.com/images/artifice/letters/press/cr-stuff/quicklo...

I’m beginning to think that, sadly, it might be the last one left in the world. But does the Andover museum really have one? Does anyone who’s been to the museum have a photograph of the machine they call a Model 1 / Model X / Second Band machine? The three machines would be easy to distinguish: the Second Band Machine looks “nothing like a Linotype,” the Model 1 is a single-magazine machine, and the Model X is a two-magazine machine (even though rebuilt from single-magazine Linotypes).

Regards,
David M.
www.CircuitousRoot.com

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