BB&S tool ID

Looked through several old catalogues but can’t find this BB&S printers tool. So heavy and crudely finished, thinking it was simply for compressing paper? 8.5 x 5.5 x 2 inches.

image: IMG_0245.jpeg

IMG_0245.jpeg

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Surely its for crushing flat any arguments against this newfangled ‘point’ system for type sizes.! In passing I note that the 6th April 1936 issue of the New York Times, in its
public notices columns talks to its customers about ‘agate’
size lines of type. Surely by then one would expect ‘five and a half point’. So much for progress in the land of the . er . free. Seriously tho’ by then the point system had pretty much totally taken over here in the UK, with only the Oxford University Press holding out until its end, with unique Monotype caster moulds etc etc.

BB&S Specimen Book No. 9, page 984 (1011 of the pdf version at the Hathi Trust) shows the Ideal Tableting Apparatus, i.e. a padding rack, which uses a very similar weight. However, the catalog shows a weight with vertical sides, not beveled sides.

image: idealtablet.jpg

idealtablet.jpg

Thanks for finding that. Sides appear beveled because of photo angle, but actually are vertical.

Ah. Perspective is an issue everywhere.