I recently acquired an old Specimen Book of Linotype Faces from my grandfather who was a professional offset printer for about 50 years starting around the time of WWII. The book is an amazing tome of information: over 1200 pages of typeface samples and offset printing information intended for professional printers. I am going to try to put some of the information from the book into digital form here in the following months.

Here is the forward from the book:

This book reflects the typographic resources of Linotype for printers and publishers throughout the world. Through its pages will be found a type face for every printing purpose—books, newspapers, periodicals, the wide fields of advertising composition and commercial printing, as well as the important spheres of foreign language and more specialized work.
There are display and text faces in abundance among the 325 different designs in well over 1500 point sizes shown; a range of size from 4- to 144- point—and a range in design to meet the most critical standards for every phase and requirement of contemporary printing.

In addition, there is shown a considerable umber of special characters, as well as comprehensive display of Linotype figures, fractions, accents and similarly-needed material for reference and occasional purposes.

Constant additions to Linotype’s extensive resources are inevitable. While every effort has been made to have this volume as complete and comprehensive as possible, even before its distribution new developments were in process. And so will they continue to be, since the Linotype organization is dedicated and determined to serve publishers and printers the world over.

Consultation on any suggestion or problem concerning matrices or composing machine practice is welcomed. It will be a pleasure to see you at headquarters or at any of our agencies.

Mergenthaler Linotype Company ( )