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American Type Founders (ATF) was created in 1892 by the merger of 23 type foundries, including Binny & Ronaldson, Boston Type Foundry, Central Type Foundry, Dickinson Type Foundry, and Farmer, Little & Co. Other major competitors were absorbed soon thereafter, including Bruce Type Foundry in 1901 and Barnhart Brothers & Spindler in 1911.

ATF was the dominant American manufacturer of metal type from its creation in 1892 until at least the 1940s, and continued to be influential into the 1960s. Faced with competition from composing machines such as the Linotype machine, profits began to decline in the late 1920s, and the company was never the same after its original key managers retired and it then went through a bankruptcy reorganization in 1934.

However, the company continued to manufacture metal type, declining very gradually over the years. By 1983, the company had shrunk to six employees. In 1986, the remnants were acquired by Kingsley, and in 1993 ATF-Kingsley closed its doors, auctioning off the remaining type and equipment. The printing division became ATF Davidson, and for a while Kingsley/ATF made the attempt to sell digital fonts under the ATF brand.

During its heyday, ATF manufactured metal type of renowned artistic quality and technical excellence. ATF vice president Joseph W Phinney oversaw the initial amalgamation of type libraries, and worked with outside designers. The later-famous type designer Frederic Goudy submitted his first typeface design to ATF, and Phinney gave him $10, twice what Goudy had asked for.

Morris Fuller Benton, arguably the most prolific type designer in history, served as ATF's chief type designer from 1900 to 1937, and many of his scores of designs continue to be popular today, including Franklin Gothic (Microsoft's corporate typeface), Bank Gothic, Broadway, and most of the Century family.

The specimen books produced by ATF, particularly the 1912 and 1923 editions, are masterpieces of printing as well as showcases for the diversity of font designs. Type designers and printing historians continue to study these sources as inspirations for font design and digital typography technology.

Another legacy of ATF is its typographic museum and library, which it operated for many years before finally transferring the collection to Columbia University in 1936. The books are integrated into the main Columbia collection, but there is an archive of ATF materials as well in Columbia's special collections.

ATF also developed the first low cost phototypesetter, based on the Friden Flexowriter/Justowriter equipment in the late 60s, early 70s. The ATF system was designed to fulfill the typesetting need for smaller printing operations. Although typesetting with light onto film was not entirely new at the time (see Linotron ZIP), the ATF phototypesetter brought phototypesetting technology to "the masses".

ATF produced type disks with all their popular type faces. These disks were concentric rings of fonts on a transparent plastic material in negative form. Usually these disks contained roman, italic and bold versions of the same face. There was even a disk with the only Canadian type design at the time, called "Cartier".

The ATF Phototypesetter was sold world wide—in Canada, Germany, Italy, Denmark, France, Belgium, England, etc. In Denmark, several newspapers were produced on ATF Phototypesetters.

The German film manufacturer Perutz manufactured a special rolled film with the emulsion outside and without an anti-halo emulsion. This enabled the ATF Phototypesetter to produce wrong reading film, emulsion up, by exposing through the film backing for positive film stripping, common in Europe at the time.

• ATF reference books
• brief history of the American type founders
• Bookplate archive: Typographic Library and Museum of the ATF
• Scanned copy of 1923 ATF Specimen Book and Catalogue in the Universal Library at Carnegie-Mellon