Specimens of Printing Types Made by the Lindsay Type Foundry
A 212-page oblong trade catalogue from the Lindsay Type Foundry of 75 Fulton Street, New York.
What it is
A 212-page oblong trade catalogue from the Lindsay Type Foundry of 75 Fulton Street, New York. It opens with price tables for brass rule, leads and dashes in cents per foot. Body faces from Agate up are shown as full newspaper columns of notices dated 1867: a steamship company's stockholders' meeting, a city tax notice, a court summons, a gout remedy, a market's fixtures for sale. Between them sit the foundry's own ads, for hard metal, metal furniture, presses bought at makers' prices, labor-saving rule, wood type, inks and estimates for new printing offices. Book faces carry Franklin's Poor Richard and a passage on Columbus. Display pages set trade phrases one size per line, with the letter count and price per font on each, such as Pica Van Dyck at $2.10. A Signal Service character font, rustic corners, dashes and newspaper cuts close the book.
Why read it now
The catalogue makes one point that still holds: show the product doing the buyer's own work, with the price in the same line of sight. A printer sees a summons, a tax notice or a carpet sale already set, which is next week's job, and the price per font sits at the shoulder, so he can decide without writing a letter. Gartner's research on B2B buying found that buyers spend only about 17 percent of their buying time with suppliers, so a page that answers the price question does work no salesperson gets the chance to do. The second move is planting the foundry's own ads inside the specimen columns, so the claim about hard metal is printed in the metal it praises. What has dated: the claims rest on adjectives and long experiments without a single figure, and notices dated 1867 still run in a catalogue of about 1890, which a careful buyer would notice. Use: on a service or product page, show the offer applied to three jobs your buyer actually has, and put the price or starting price next to each.
Passages worth keeping
It is the result of long continued experiments for the purpose of obtaining such toughness as will preserve the hair lines, and resist the pressure put upon it by power press printing.
المسبك يربط صلابة المعدن بمشكلة يعرفها الطابع: تكسر الخطوط الدقيقة تحت ضغط الآلة، لكنه لا يقدم رقمًا يثبت الدعوى.
The letters have deep counters; and the Metal is hard, and has a solidity and toughness which gives it great durability.
الحجة تقنية لا عاطفية: فراغات عميقة داخل الحرف ومعدن صلب يعنيان عمرًا أطول للحروف.
Printers who are ordering Bills of Type can avail themselves of our services, and have their purchases made through us.
المسبك يعرض أن يشتري نيابة عن الطابع، فيتحول من بائع حروف إلى وكيل يوفر على العميل عناء التعامل مع موردين كثيرين.
EDITORS OR PRINTERS WISHING TO ESTABLISH a Newspaper, Book or Job Office, will be furnished with an Estimate in detail for the same.
عرض تقدير مفصل مجانًا لمن يؤسس مطبعة يجذب العميل في أول قراره، حين تكون الطلبية أكبر ما تكون.
I concluded, at length, that the people were the best judges of my merit, for they buy my works
نص العينة المأخوذ من فرانكلين يقول إن حكم الناس الحقيقي يظهر في الشراء، لا في المديح.
The scanned text has OCR errors. The passages are quoted from it, with only obvious slips fixed.
What it teaches best
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