War Work and Postwar Direction
During the Second World War, the ATF plant in Elizabeth was converted almost entirely over to military production. Barth Casters were used to make firing pins and ATF operated two plants in Newark making ordnance.
After the war, ill-conceived efforts were made to diversify. A furniture manufacturer, Dystrom Corporation, was acquired. A competitor, Lanston Monotype, was purchased in 1969, but nothing came of this, the assets being sold off later to M&H Typefounders.
The decline of foundry type in this period might well be illustrated by the size of ATF specimen books. While the magnificent 1923 catalog was typical of its day at 1148 pages, subsequent editions were ever smaller. The 1934 catalog was only 207 pages, while the 1941 catalog was only slightly smaller at 191 pages. By 1956 the “descriptive index of types” was down to only 24 pages, but this recovered a little by 1966’s catalog of 30 pages. The last ATF catalog, published in 1976 and distributed right to the end, was down to only 14 pages and, by the 1980s, came with an insert listing the faces that were no longer available.
Some innovations did take place during this period however. The brilliant lettering artist Charles H. Hughes was engaged to produce a new version of the popular Century Type that would reproduce the same in offset and letterpress and the result was the lovely Century Nova (1965). ATF also produced the first optically scanning typeface, OCR-A font, in 1969 and this remains the standard on printed bank checks to this day.
Read more about this topic: American Type Founders
Famous quotes containing the words war, work, postwar and/or direction:
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“Our kids will develop a work ethic only if we require them to pay a portion of the cost of some of the things they want. They’ll learn to defer gratification the moment we stop routinely pulling out our wallets. And they’ll learn self-discipline only if we care enough to enforce reasonable limits.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as the special responsibility of mothers ... any shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“It is wonderful how well watered this country is.... Generally, you may go any direction in a canoe, by making frequent but not very long portages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)