I learned about the most delightful little device today at @SFCB.
You know these typical old-school restaurant bills in America?pic.twitter.com/vgrSfcwhvh
Writing a book about the history of keyboards: http://aresluna.org/shift-happens · Design manager @figmadesign · Typographer · Occasional speaker · He/him
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I learned about the most delightful little device today at @SFCB.
You know these typical old-school restaurant bills in America?pic.twitter.com/vgrSfcwhvh
I never thought twice about the numbers on them, but it’s a tricky challenge. You want the number to be different on every copy, but typesetting a completely new number every time is cumbersome – and numbering by hand afterwards might be equally annoying.
Say hello to the Ultra-Force numbering device. It seems like a regular rotary stamp. You can rotate the digits to whatever number you want by hand if you want to. But that extruded typeset numero is not a weird accident.pic.twitter.com/fAabIoKnCj
Turns out, it is actually a *button*. Each press increments a number by one. That’s more convenient, I suppose, just pressing it every time you print another copy… …but here’s the kicker: the button is meant to be pressed by the printing press itself.pic.twitter.com/HYKNmOMKkv
Every time the press goes down to make an impression on the digits and the №, it also presses that numero, incrementing the number just before printing. It’s so wholesome!pic.twitter.com/LXa7sx9A6N
I love the ingenuity and practicality of this little device. It is tangentially related to earliest automatic typing machines, or mail merge, or… We haven’t tried it out today, but if I ever do more letterpress – I would love to use it, just for fun.pic.twitter.com/7Mb8kX8rON
And, if anyone is interested, here’s the patent: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cd/33/9a/64ad4b15256df6/US1798176.pdf …
/cc @robinsloan + @GlennF + @mkirschenbaum
(It’s funny how one could confuse it for an old, broken counter that’s really, *really* hard to press – but the point is that this is a rare button not meant for human fingers!)
I used to use those on a Heidelberg windmill to number cheques etc.
That’s a good life!
Letter presses are pretty cool to run. Ran one of these too for larger stuff.https://youtu.be/kMyg9wA-zmc
Part of my job was to take them apart and clean them... they tend to get sticky with ink over time.
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