Hazel Deering reads the final edition of The Burleson Dispatcher
seated at her Model 14 Linotype on September 25, 1985
Photo Courtesy Alicia DuVall
The Burleson Linotype is the last surviving piece of equipment from the Burleson News (later Dispatcher), the newspaper which served Burleson, Texas from 1900 to September 25, 1985. The Linotype sat undisturbed in the derelict newspaper building until 1999, when the City of Burleson moved the machine outdoors and restored the structure, turning it into the Burleson Heritage Visitors Center.
Robert Griffith found the Linotype at the City of Burleson’s former service center on July 14, 2005. Griffith, who knew nothing about printing, was told the hulk of iron, tumbled over in the dirt was a rare printing press. Although he soon learned the Linotype did not work with ink and paper, Griffith decided to press on. The City of Burleson moved the machine into a workshop at the old service center on January 27, 2006. On March 3, 2006 the restoration began, and with support from family and friends, it has been going strong ever since. In the process, Griffith has learned the heritage of Burleson's first newspapers and come to appreciate the history of his town.
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So, what is a Linotype?
The Linotype revolutionized the world of print communication in 1886 when Ottmar Mergenthaler’s aptly named contraption (Line-o-Type) made its debut in the composing room of The New York Tribune. For centuries, “printer’s devils” hand-set print jobs by plucking individual letters, numbers, and characters from type cases. The Linotype allowed a single operator to set and cast type with ease.
On a Linotype, small molds called matrices are released with the press of a key. Assembled, the matrices move across the machine to a pot, where hot metal is squirted across them to form a solid, legible line of type. Once the line has been cast, the matrices move further up the machine to a distributor which reinserts them into a specific slot in a magazine, ready for reuse.
Linotypes (and similar machines like the Intertype) were standard in composing rooms for nearly a century. The Mergenthaler Linotype Company manufactured and sold tens of thousands from its principal factory in New York City and from agencies around the world. As the Industrial Revolution forever changed transportation with the automobile, the Linotype ushered in the golden era of letterpress printing.
Replaced by a series of technological advancements beginning in the 1950s, the Linotype all but disappeared from newspapers by the mid 1970s. The Burleson Dispatcher was one of six newspapers still utilizing the “hot type” method of printing when it closed on September 25, 1985. Linotypes are still found in Texas, some in museums, but most are hidden in the shops and garages of men and women who learned a respect for an old way of printing.
Linotypes, when cared for, will run forever. Can we say the same for our automobiles, computers, or cell phones? In a world in which technology seems outdated the moment it leaves the factory, Linotypes were dependable, efficient machines.
Special thanks to Dan Williams, Gary Haas, Walter Moten, Mike Beard, and Michelle Griffith
for their assistance, support, and steadfastness in the restoration of the Burleson Linotype.
For more information on letterpress printing, visit--
