. Bell telephone magazine . the type used for theregular customer directory. This ar-rangement, while considered satisfac-tory at the time, required considerableduplication of operations on the partof the telephone company in main-taining printers listing copy, and onthe part of the printer in setting upand handling two complete sets oflisting slugs. Development of Hard Metal Type In the original consideration of theproblem, it had been recognized thatthe use of one set of listing slugs forboth the Information directory andthe regular directory would be aneconomy and would speed up the pro-duc
. Bell telephone magazine . the type used for theregular customer directory. This ar-rangement, while considered satisfac-tory at the time, required considerableduplication of operations on the partof the telephone company in main-taining printers listing copy, and onthe part of the printer in setting upand handling two complete sets oflisting slugs. Development of Hard Metal Type In the original consideration of theproblem, it had been recognized thatthe use of one set of listing slugs forboth the Information directory andthe regular directory would be aneconomy and would speed up the pro-duction of the regular directory, sincethe type would be kept up to date forInformation record purposes. Theproblem here, however, was that regu-lar type metal is relatively soft and,as previously mentioned, would besubject to considerable wear if usedfor printing Information type metal used for listingslugs is about 85 per cent lead, 11 percent antimony, and 4 per cent tin, 22 Bell Telephone Magazine FEBRUARY. Locking Up These eight pages of listing slugs are being made up in four-column pages for the productionof an Information directory for use in a city where the customer book is three columns wide. and tends to scratch and show otherimperfections when handled fre-quently. The idea was advanced that theuse of a harder metal in the castingof listing slugs might permit using oneset of type for all alphabetical recordswithout impairing the clarity of thetype. Experiments were made witha number of metals available com-mercially, but it was several years be-fore a suitable metal alloy of the re-quired hardness and other essentialcharacteristics was developed. In themetal alloy finally adopted, the leadcontent was materially reduced, theamount of tin and antimony increased,and very small quantities of copperand cadmium added. 1 HE use of one set of type for print-ing both the regular customer direc- tory and the alphabetical Informationdirectory made it desirable th
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