Gorton is a family of monoline lettering styles used with pantograph engraving machines. It was sold by the George Gorton Machine Co. of Racine, Wisconsin, as sets of physical templates that the company called "Master Copy Type". The principal variants included Gorton Normal, Gorton Condensed and Gorton Extended. The lettering is associated with the pantograph-engraving system developed by the British optical and precision-engineering company Taylor, Taylor & Hobson. A Taylor-Hobson engraving machine was illustrated in a trade publication in 1891, and William Taylor patented improvements to the company's engraving machinery in the 1890s. George Gorton later licensed the Taylor-Hobson system for use in the United States. Gorton lettering was used for engraved labels, signs, instrument panels and equipment markings. Several Gorton styles were later listed as acceptable engraving fonts in United States military specifications for aircraft controls and displays. Gorton styles were also discussed in United States government research on the legibility of alphanumeric characters.
History
Taylor-Hobson engraving system Taylor, Taylor & Hobson was an optical and precision-engineering company based in Leicester, England. An engraving machine produced by the company was illustrated in an 1891 trade publication. The machine was intended in part for engraving information on lens mounts. William Taylor subsequently patented an engraving-machine mechanism in which the cutting spindle was carried on a hinged arm controlled by a lighter pantograph mechanism. The United States version of Taylor's patent dates from 1895, following an application made in 1894. The George Gorton Machine Co. later licensed the Taylor-Hobson design and applied its operating principles to its own pantograph engraving machines. The surviving licensing documentation dates the relationship between the two companies to the 1890s.
George Gorton Machine Co. George Gorton established a machine shop in Racine, Wisconsin, in the early 1890s. A 1916 history of Racine County states that Gorton entered the manufacture of machine tools and engraving machines in 1892. The same source records that the company produced engraving machines ranging from equipment for extremely small lettering to machines used for marking industrial rolls. It also produced matrix-making machinery for typewriter, typecasting, type-foundry and adding-machine manufacturers. By 1916, the company's products were being sold internationally. Gorton continued to manufacture pantograph engraving equipment during the twentieth century. A 1950 instruction manual describes the use of copy type, copyholders and tracing styles on its pantograph machines. A United States Army technical manual issued in 1984 for the Gorton/Lars P1-2 pantograph engraving machine likewise describes standard brass characters as "copy" used to guide the pantograph through a tracing stylus.
Master Copy Type George Gorton Machine Co. referred to the physical templates used with its engraving machines as Master Copy. Its 1952 catalogue defined Master Copy as the templates or patterns from which characters or designs were reproduced on a pantograph machine. The catalogue states that the pantograph could reproduce a Master Copy at a reduced scale, in some applications down to one-tenth or one-hundredth of the template size, depending on the machine used. Sets contained alphabets, numerals, punctuation and special characters engraved on individual brass bodies. The individual pieces could be assembled in a typeholder to form the required inscription before being traced with the machine. The catalogue offered Master Copy Type in several forms, including sunk V-groove, sunk square-bottom groove and relief forms, as well as plain and reversed characters. Standard templates were made from engraving brass; hardened or chromium-plated versions were also offered for production work. Gorton also manufactured special copy type, masters, patterns and templates to customer specifications. In its 1952 catalogue, the company stated that it had specialized in this work for more than fifty years.
Typeface family
Gorton Normal Gorton Normal was the principal Gorton lettering style. The company's 1952 catalogue described it as its most popular face and as the most widely used of its typefaces. The catalogue characterized the design as having relatively few sharp corners, allowing rapid tracing with a smooth movement of the pantograph stylus. It also stated that simple, single-line characters with few corners, including the Gorton face, could be cut more quickly than more complicated engraving styles and were preferable for legibility. Gorton Normal was available as capitals and with matching lowercase sets. Sets also contained numerals, punctuation and other symbols.
Gorton Condensed Gorton Condensed was a narrower version intended for general engraving where reduced character width was useful. The 1952 catalogue described it as the company's second most widely used face after Gorton Normal. Gorton Condensed capitals could be combined with the Gorton lowercase set and with capitals from other Gorton widths. The catalogue specifies common center-line measurements for corresponding characters of the same nominal size.
Gorton Extended Gorton Extended was a wider version of the Normal design. The Gorton catalogue described it as the same general style as Gorton Normal but intended for applications requiring greater character width. The company recommended Normal in cases where the additional width was not required. The same lowercase alphabet could be used with Gorton Normal, Condensed and Extended capitals.
Other styles George Gorton Machine Co. sold additional engraving alphabets alongside the three principal Gorton widths. Its 1952 catalogue includes Gothic, Extra Condensed Gothic, Inclined Gothic, Century and other styles. The catalogue described Extra Condensed Gothic as the company's third most popular face, after Gorton Normal and Gorton Condensed, and recommended it for applications including rollers, discs and numeral wheels.
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
