SHAW'S PATENT "UNDERNICK" TYPE.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1829, 12 November 1874, Page 2

SHAW'S PATENT "UNDERNICK" TYPE.

A California!! telegram went the rounds of the New Zealand 'Press-not long-since* in reference to a new kind of type in^ \ vented by Mr. Shaw, weir known as a printer and newspaper proprietor in Melbourne, Dunedin, on the West Coast, and Thames Goldfiieds, and in Auckland. The last number of the Printer's Register contains ..the .following description otihe. type in question :— "We have to invent this term ' undernick' for Mr. Shaw's type, since he leaves it without an adjective. His improvement is designed to facilitate correction^ particularly in solid mat! or, or'table and figure work, or matter hemmed in by rules where the line cannot be lifted by the bodkin or nippers. The top part of the type is cut away flush to the foot of the letter for about the sixteenth of an. inch. The rest of the type is like any ordinary letter. The head of- the- type is thus left standing apart, as it were, and if some of these lines be set up solid, there will be a hollow, space of cut-away metal all the way along each line. "W^iere the metal is thus cut away a supplementary and special squar.- nick is made. Into this nick fits the correcting, tool which draws the faulty letter out at once. A sufficient idea of the " undemick " letter will be obtained if the reader supposes that the letter has a high top nick, as, c. £„, three-nick Jotter mostly has, and that the metal from tho beard to 1 the nick has been partly cut away, leaving a cavity where the nick was. It is easy to see that a tool could be made to drop into the cavity, and hook the letter out more easily than by any present plan. The mventor says on its behalf:—'Another great advantage arises from the facility with which type adhering together is separated and withdrawn by the correcting tool at the same moment, without the possibility of injury to the type. This invention in no way diminishes the present facilities for correcting and altering, nor does it in any way interfere with the races or appearance, or the usual method of setting or distributing; on this account the new type can be used with the bidthusradmittine: of its gradual introduction into established offices.' It is manufactured by the Patent Type Founding Company, lied Lion-square, at the current rates of ordinary type with l.| ,per cent, added." [In addition to the information supplied above we learn from a private source that the principal typefounders in London have offered to alter their matrixes to produce Mr. Shaw's type if he will share the royaltr with them.—Ed. Star.]