Linotype

Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German watchmaker in Baltimore, patented it in 1884, and the New York Tribune set its first page on one in 1886. The operator typed at a 90-key keyboard, brass matrices dropped from the magazine into a line, wedge-shaped spacebands justified it, and the machine cast the result — a line o' type — in molten type metal before returning the matrices to their channels automatically. Edison is said to have called it the eighth wonder of the world.

The keys were ordered by letter frequency, so an operator discarding a botched line would run a finger down the first two columns: etaoin shrdlu — the nonsense phrase that occasionally slipped into print. The New York Times cast its last lead page on 2 July 1978, recorded in the documentary Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu.