New Look in Printing

In a dozen U.S. cities the International Typographical Union, A.F.L. had struck newspaper plants. Once, such a walkout by the linotype operators would have paralyzed the papers. But last week most of the strikebound dailies were on the stands, thanks to a new technique in printing and, chiefly, to its sponsor, Manhattan's small (total assets: $800,000) Ralph C. Coxhead Corp. Its Vari-Typer machines, glorified typewriters which automatically set straight right-hand margins, were being used by most of the strikebound papers to by-pass the linotypers. The biggest fault that readers found with the papers was that they looked like a stenographer's work.

This week Coxhead Corp. was ready to get rid of the typewritten look. It had a new model machine whose type was almost indistinguishable to the layman from ordinary newspaper print. Unlike the old Vari-Typers, which can print in Arabic and 50 other foreign languages, the new machine has only five type faces, as yet, but they are specifically designed for newspaper printing.

Off the Abacus. Tall, California-born Ralph C. Coxhead, the company's tinkering board chairman, had never set out to start a lower-case revolution. A salesman of office machines, he once helped to get Hawaiian sugar growers to use mechanical calculators in place of the Chinese abacus. He did even better in New York, where, in partnership with his brother, Stuart (now president of the company), he set up Coxhead Corp. as an agency for German Mercedes calculators.

When Mercedes sold the patents to another company, Coxhead hastily looked around for a product of his own. He found it in the old Hammond typewriter. Through deaths and bankruptcies, it had become the VariTyper and was up for sale for $300,000. Coxhead bought it. He made some 1,400 changes and developed it into an efficient printing machine* for house organs, direct-mail campaigns, etc.

Into the Newspapers. In 1946 the big break came. The Bayonne Times, a small New Jersey newspaper, used Vari-Typers when its linotype men walked out. The strike lasted only one day, but it was long enough to start the orders rolling in from other newspapers. Last year Coxhead sold about 3,500 Vari-Typers (priced from $308 to $910) for some $3,000,000. This year he hopes to move his 225 workers into a new factory, double his output.

Meanwhile, Coxhead's eye is on business offices and small daily newspapers and weeklies that are not yet saddled with the traditional expensive printing equipment. For large newspapers--except in emergencies -- VariType printing is still too slow (photoengraving alone takes an hour) and can't print headlines.

The biggest obstacle is the high cost of photoengraving the Vari-Typed pages. Coxhead hopes that engraving cost will soon be cut by another new invention. John H. Perry, publisher of a chain of Florida newspapers, and William J. Higgens have developed a method of photoengraving Vari-Typing directly on printing-press plates. By combining their method with his, Coxhead hopes to make Vari-Typing as cheap as linotyping.

* International Business Machines Corp. also makes a proportional-spacing machine but it has little type variety and is not being merchandised to newspapers.

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