Morris Fuller Benton

Morris Fuller Benton was the son of Linn Boyd Benton, 1844 -1932. Both worked for American Type Founders, a consortium of typefounders formed in 1892 to compete with Mergenthaler Linotype. In the 1880s, the elder Benton’s invention of the pantographic punchcutter altered forever the design of fonts. Conventional hand hand filing of steel punches could not provide the series of identical replacements required for volume manufacture of matrices. Filing each letter in steel at actual size was replaced by the preparation of a scaled engineering drawing for each character. With his son as assistant, Linn Boyd Benton set up the first such drawing office shortly after the founding of ATF. In 1895, working with Theodore Lowe De Vinne, Lynn Boyd designed the typeface Century Expanded for Century magazine. In 1896 Morris Fuller took over. Facing the welter of typefaces available from the resources of the combined companies, Benton chose to originate his own new designs. He completed at least twenty-three series, approaching a design a year, the heart of American type design for the first half of the twentieth century. A close pair, the two Bentons shared a house in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and used to walk to and from work together. Font Bureau offers ten designs based on their work.