【NSTM’s collections】Hand Powered Type Casting Machine

The earliest manual type casting machine was invented by D. Bruce in the US in 1838. This collection was manufactured during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan in the 1930s, which was used by Chung Nan Type Foundry and was a model modified by the Japanese to cast large sizes of types for typography.  It mainly consisted of two parts: lead pan and casting mold. A lead pan was loaded with melted lead and heated by coal while matrices were assembled on a casting mold. It was powered by hand to infuse the melted lead into the matrix mold to manufacture lead type for printing.