Question

Many people, including the writer Mark Twain, invested millions of dollars in the search for automatic typesetting. Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German immigrant working in a Baltimore machine shop, demonstrated his Linotype machine on July 3, 1886, in the office of the New York Tribune. The Linotype allowed the operator to compose an entire line of type by operating a keyboard that released a __________ for a particular character.

Answer 1

Answer:

Brass matrix

Explanation:

The linotype machine invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German immigrant, later came to be known as an inventor in America. He invented the first mechanical typesetting machine that was able to use type metal to complete lines. This machine needed matrices, which consist of small brass pieces that have edges indented with characters that are grouped into lines to produce text.