Word: coxhead
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...farmhouse of the late Frederic W. Goudy, famed designer of printing types, was put up for auction. Till the day of the sale, Goudy's family had hoped that somebody might offer to make a "shrine" of the place, but nobody had come forward. Then Ralph C. Coxhead, manufacturer of VariTyper machines (widely used by publishers whose typesetters go on strike), got the farm on an $18,000 bid. His plan: to "perpetuate it as a shrine...
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...
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...
...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...