Here is the best illustration of just how much the printing press changed human life: more words are printed every second today than was printed every year during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A number of men are to thank for the vivacity of print — the inventor of the printing press, Gutenberg, of course, but also an Ohioan name Tolbert Lanston, who invented the monotype casting machine, a forerunner to modern typewriters and keyboards. Together with the Linotype machine that used the same principle for quicker newspaper publications, the Monotype revolutionized the business of printing.

On this day, June 7, in 1887 Tolbert Lanston patented his first monotype mechanical typesetting device, the first machine-set type since Gutenberg’s movable type invention.

The Lanston Monotype Company was founded a little while later in Philadelphia, eventually growing so large they required their own train stop. The company continued to thrive in the 1930s and 40s, and though with diminishing fortunes even into 2000, continuing to make casters for monotype machines. They are around still, as a subsidiary of the P22 type foundry in New York, now focused more on digitization.