Improved Jobbing Double Case

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This English layout is given in Southward Practical Printing 1882 and 3rd edition 1887, and the improvement is the reduction in rows in the upper case bay, from seven to five, to make more room for the capitals. It is cited by Pryor: History of the California Job Case, in the Printing Historical Society's Journal 7, 1972, as the forerunner of the California Job Case. Pryor illustrates this layout as first shown by Southward in Printer's Register 1875, and already in use by McCorquodale. Pryor notes that McCorquodale made heavy use of Miller & Richard, who would thus be aware of McCorquodale's development, and hence so would Read when opening his Californian agency for Miller & Richard. Pryor considers it to have been this case, Americanised, that Read referred to as his own style of job case in 1876, and his successor, Palmer, again referred to in 1878. Pryor further notes that Palmer specifies that this new style of case with upper as one smaller row and four larger rows of boxes was designated a Job case. (The ordinary double cases were called Italic cases in the U.S.)

The empty configuration is Improved Double. The more modern Improved Double Case of Stephenson, Blake & Co. (1922) differs in having 6 rows of boxes in the upper case section, rather than 5 rows.

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 1998 by David Bolton and last updated 15 April 2015.