In 1880 American inventor Joseph Thorne of Hartford, Connecticut, received
U.S. patent 232,157 for a "Type Setting and Distributing machine." By August 24, 1895 when the
Scientific American published a cover story on the Thorne Type-Setting Machine more than a thousand of the machines were in use.
This brochure, of which a digital copy from the Stephen O. Saxe collection is available from the Internet Archive, is dated 1894. Notice that its illustrations reproduce photographs by means of half-tones in comparison to the Scientific American, which in 1895 retained the then archaic or traditional style of reproducing its images as engravings.
Page opening from 1894 brochure on the Thorne Type-Setttng & Distributing Machine.
The Thorne machines were eventually renamed Simplex and Unitype
Jeremy Norman Collection of Images - Creative Commons
