Cutter. A tool used by Founders of Printing Type to cut from the bodies of pieces of type parts which would damage the impression and to make them more tidy. These tools are of two kinds, wooden and iron. The wooden one is the older and has existed since the beginning of Typecasting. It is a strip of wood cut from a single piece supported on a sort of closed area all around to receive the material cut off the type. The cutter is slotted to a depth of three or four inches along its whole length. Into this slot, against its left side, one puts the wooden justifier containing two or three hundred letters, more or less depending on their width, arranged side by side. Then, between the right side of the slot and the justifier one places a wooden wedge to fill up the empty space which, when hit several times with a mallet, locks up the letters in the justifier so that they will resist the force of the plane with which one smooths them. See Justifier.

The iron cutter is a modern invention - better designed, tidier and more convenient - with which the work is done better and more securely. This [metal] tool is very much better designed than the other [wooden cutter] which is noisy and liable to variations in the atmosphere which distort the wood. See Plate III of typecasting, figures 1 and 2.

It was invented at Sedan by Jean Janon, engraver, typecaster and printer of that town, who published in 1621 a book of samples of type which he had cut. Here is what triggered the invention. Janson’s wife had been ill for a long time and this engaged all his attention. The repeated sound of the mallet blows to drive in the wedge holding the letters in the wooden cutter echoing in her ears caused her great distress followed by headaches. This man [Janon] sought means to relieve his wife and shared his intentions with an able armorer of the same town. Together, the two of them, after several experiments, invented a machine for the purpose with which they had set out: to avoid noise; to this they added all that their skills could devise to make a good device, convenient and easy to use; and in all this they were successful. The inventor did not long enjoy the fruits of his invention; he died a short time later. His foundry passed into the hands of several founders who did not understand at all the use of this new cutter , which resulted in it remaining unknown until the foundry, having passed into the hands of master Langlois, printer and bookseller and later a syndic of the Librairie de Paris, then passed to master Cot, a typefounder of the same town, who gathered together the parts and, recognizing the usefulness of this new device, had one made by an armorer in Paris, one Labrune, who copied the original and made some small modifications.

M de la Chapelle, superintendent of the King’s buildings, having been told of the usefulness of this new cutter , had one made to Cot’s deign for the King’s foundry at the Louvre. In 1739, master Fournier the younger had one made for his own use and changed and transposed several parts to make it better and more convenient. It is after that model that we have illustrated the one in our Plates. [1] See the Plates and the article Printing type.

Notes

1. The descriptions of the cutter in the text and in the figure legends follow very closely - sometimes word for word - those of Fournier le Jeune in his Manuel Typographique : Fournier le Jeune, Manuel Typographique, vol. 1 (Paris, 1764), pp. 213ff and Plate XI.