Boat Builders

BOAT BUILDERS By: Melissa B. Carrasco

Egerton, McAfee, Armistead & Davis, P.C.

DETERMINATION OF APPEARANCE

Charles Swan Benton was a lawyer in Little Falls, New York.1 Correction: he was the lawyer of Little Falls, New York, a tiny town about seventy-five miles east of Syracuse. Like many lawyers practicing in a small town, Mr. Benton wore a lot of hats. He was a Colonel of the New York State militia, was the clerk of the New York Court of Appeals, and eventually was elected for two terms to the U.S. House of Representatives.2

He also had a side hustle as the founder, publisher and editor of the local newspaper: the Mohawk Courier & Little Falls Gazette. 3 And, that may be precisely the reason why his son did what he did.

Young Linn Boyd Benton (they called him Boyd) lost his mother when he was only three years old.4 A few years after that, Mr. Benton moved Boyd and his brother Charles to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Benton bought a 1/3rd interest in the Milwaukee News and became its editor.5 In fact, it was at the young age of 11 that Boyd had his first experience with typography in the composing room of Benton’s newspaper, and young Boyd was hooked.6

“Typography” the design or selection of letter forms to be organized into words and sentences to be disposed of in blocks of type as printing upon a page. . . . The word typograph without modifier usually denotes the activities and concerns of those most involved in and concerned with the determination of the appearance of the printed page.7

“Typographer” –this is a term that perfectly describes Boyd. He honed his art cutting letters onto tombstones (hence the phrase “set in stone”) and got his foot in the door at the age of 22 when he got a job as a bookkeeper for a Milwaukee type foundry—the sort of place where the metal type used in printing was cast and produced.8 When the financial markets crashed in 1873, Boyd saw the typing on the wall and bought the Western Type Foundry, and Benton Waldo & Company was launched.9 That was when Boyd, the typographer, got to work and invented two things that have revolutionized the legal field to this day.

Until the 1880s, magazines, newspapers, and other publications had a real problem. There was no such thing as standardized type. Publications basically were held hostage by the type foundries because each type foundry turned out its own type (no pun intended) of font, size, width, etc. So, if a publication liked the look of a particular type of font, it had to do business with the foundry that made it.10 That was great for type foundries and bad for the mass publication process, but that was about to change.

In 1886, the United States Type Founders Association adopted the American System of Interchangeable Type Bodies, which officially standardized a method for measuring type.11 By adopting the “pica and point” system, publishers everywhere could specify exactly how big or how wide each character should be.

This standardized the characters themselves, but what about the spaces between the characters and the words? Honestly, how could anyone comply with the Tennessee Supreme Court’s requirement that all Appellate Briefs that are electronically filed be fully justified?12 At the time, if you wanted to justify a line of type, the printer had to carefully, and manually arrange each and every individual character and spacers using trial and error to space them out evenly across the line of type.13 That took a long time . . . a really long time. Considering the fact that newspapers require justification for each and every column, this was killing the publishers’ efficiency rates.

Boyd wasn’t having it. In 1883, he received US Patent 290,201 for Self Spacing Type. The publishing industry never looked back, and we are still using the computerized version of Boyd’s invention to this day.

But, Boyd made one more, significant contribution to the legal field. In 1895, his friend Theodore Lowe DeVinne made a request. Mr. DeVinne was the publisher of The Century, a magazine that was published—you guessed it—at the end of the 19th century.14 Mr. DeVinne wanted something special for his magazine, so he commissioned Boyd to create a new typeface to replace the current fonts which, when reduced in size for the magazine, were very difficult to read.15

Boyd got to work and the first of the Century typeface family was used in publication in 1895.16 With heavier hairlines and an increased height, Century was easier to read when it was reduced to a smaller size. It also had less space between the characters, which meant you could put more characters on a line—precisely what a magazine would need.17 In 1975, forty-three years after Boyd passed away, the Century typeface was formally recognized by the International Typeface Corporation.18

If that was not enough of an honor, consider the fact that Boyd’s typeface is the only one acceptable to the United States Supreme Court. Look it up. Rule 33(b) is quite clear that only fonts in the Century family are acceptable.19 The same goes for the Tennessee Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, if you plan to file electronically.20 However, you should note that the rule for paper-filed briefs still calls for Times New Roman, 12 point font, so just keep that in mind.21

These are details. . . tiny details, but these details were Boyd’s world. And, Boyd’s meticulous attention to detail and devotion to the art of the printed letter changed your world and mine to this very day. That is the essence of a boat builder—someone who changes the world by simply doing her or his job each and every day.

1 Multimediaman, Linn Boyd Benton: 1844-1932, available at https://multimediaman. blog/2014/09/20/linn-boyd-benton-1844-1932, last visited Oct. 9, 2021. 2 U.S. House of Representatives, History Art & Archives, BENTON, Charles Swan, available at https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/B/BENTON,-Charles-Swan(B000394)/#biography, last visited Oct. 9, 2021; see also Proceedings of the State Bar Association of Wisconsin, vol. 3, 260 (1901), available at https://books.google. com/books?id=3nRMAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA206&lpg=PA206&dq =charles+swan+benton+milwaukee+news&source=bl&ots=YdHQ_0QxWw&sig =ACfU3U2htcD3w79cvFEbcOD3kXg-TgwEsA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjV5L7 z1L7zAhV8kmoFHfWXAFMQ6AF6BAgeEAM#v=onepage&q=charles%20swan%20 benton%20milwaukee%20news&f=false. 3 Id.; see also Library of Congress, Mohawk Courier, and Little Falls Gazette 18321834, available at https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84031847/, last visited Oct. 9, 2021. 4 Multimediaman, supra n.1. 5 Id.; see also Proceedings of the State Bar Association of Wisconsin, supra n. 2 at 260. 6 Id. 7 Encyclopedia Britanica, Typography, https://www.britannica.com/technology/ typography, last visited Oct. 9, 2021. 8 Multimediaman, supra n. 1. 9 Id. 10 Id. 11 Id. 12 See Tenn. S. Ct. R. 46 § 3.02. 13 Multimediaman, supra n. 1 14 ITC, ITC Century, https://www.fonts.com/font/itc/itc-century/story, last visited Oct. 10, 2021. 15 Id. 16 Id. 17 Id. 18 Id. 19 See U.S. S. Ct. R. 33(b). 20 See Tenn. S. Ct. R. 46. 21 See Tenn. R. App. P. 30.