Getting ready for my talk on November 12th at Type Americana in Seattle.
I’ll be speaking about Linn Boyd Benton at this conference, and Juliet Shen will talk about Morris Fuller Benton.
Yesterday I went in to the Cary Collection at RIT to look through my Benton files once more. I found an old xerox copy of a photograph of Boyd Benton (as he was called) at the age of 20, but it didn’t have the sparkle of the photograph we used on the Type Americana website (see below). One of the things I want to discuss in Seattle is how happy Linn Boyd Benton was at his type foundry in Milwaukee. It’s a conjecture on my part, perhaps, but one that has been corroborated by (and in fact suggested to me by) Benton’s great-grandson. Benton invented the punch engraving machine there, in order to more quickly produce fonts of his other new invention, the so-called self-spacing types. He had been working on a different invention, a justifying machine, but when the type he designed for it appeared to be marketable in itself, he switched gears and poured all of his efforts into getting his self-spacing types to market as quickly as possible. It must have been an exciting time.
Boyd Benton had a rich, full life in Milwaukee. He was very happily married, and although his son Morris was a sickly child, the family took good care of him and eventually he overcame the after-effects of the scarlet fever and other illnesses he had had as a young boy. Boyd had a fine baritone voice, and sang as a soloist in St. James and St. Paul Episcopal Churches in Milwaukee. He and his wife also belonged to a singing society, and took part in a number of Gilbert and Sullivan and other light operas.
I also want to share several anecdotes about Boyd Benton’s childhood at the conference, because they reveal his unusual character. More later . . .
