Empty California Job Case

                                                  
                   
   
       
             
 
       
           
          

This U.S. case configuration has a right hand (caps) bay with one short row, three tall rows, and one short row, as shown by Lieberman: Printing as a Hobby (1963), Kelsey: Printers Supply Book (1969), Zapf: Standard Lay of the Case (1978), and American Printing Equipment & Supply Co: Catalog (1983 and 1987), and in use at the Gypsy Press in 1997. It is shown in England by Whetton: Practical Printing & Binding (1946 and 1965), Stephenson Blake & Co: Printing Equipment (1960s), and Willshire-Jacobs in British Printing Society: Small Printer (June 1988), and in use by Camberwell College of Arts in 2001, and Alembic Press in 2009, and in Australia by Western Australia Education Department: Course for Composing Apprentices (c.1960) and in New Zealand by Cobblestones Printing Works (2015). It is also shown by Hostettler, The Printer's Terms (1949 and 1963).

A variation with the : ; boxes smaller than the . - boxes, is shown by Henry: Printing for School and Shop (1917), Hamilton Manufacturing: Catalog 15 (1922), American Type Founders: Specimen Book (1923), Polk: The Practice of Printing (1926), Hamilton Manufacturing Co: Printing Plant Equipment, Type Storage Section, Catalog 16 (c.1932), Thompson Cabinet Co, Equipment for Printing Plants, Catalog 47 (c.1949), Polk & Gage: A Composition Manual (1953), and Missouri-Central Type Foundry: Price List (1959). The Black Rock Press at University of Nevada, Reno in 1998 had both styles of case made by Hamilton, and both styles made by Thompson. An earlier configuration has a right hand bay with one short row, and four tall rows, as shown by Palmer & Rey: New Specimen Book (1884) in Pryor, History of the California Job Case, in Journal of the Printing Historical Society No.7 (1971) and also shown e.g. by Barnhart Bros & Spindler: Pony Specimen (1890s), and indeed, diagrammatically, by Polk: The Practice of Printing (1926). These three slightly different styles of configuration can be seen as California styles.

Pryor puts the introduction of the original California Job Case as 1874, becoming the most popular U.S. typecase by the early 1890s, and Palmer & Rey in 1892 state it to have been in constant use on the Pacific Coast for nearly 20 years, and the best full-size case ever made. An early type lay can be seen as Palmer & Rey 1892 and some of the subsequent variations as California Job. A modern U.S. version is Polk & Gage, and three foreign versions are UK California Job, and Western Australia California Job and New Zealand California Job.

The empty two-third case is Two Third but there is some confusion between this and the Two Third Yankee.

Other empty cases
ie with the boxes left blank
Other type layouts
ie with characters assigned to boxes
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This page was written in 1997 by David Bolton and last updated 9 May 2015.