author
Raymond Means
A practical early 20th-century writer on printing technology, remembered for helping explain one of the machines that transformed newspaper and book production. His work is best known to modern readers through Linotype Mechanism, a detailed guide to the famous typesetting system.
1 Audiobook
Linotype mechanism
by Alvin Garfield Swank, Raymond Means
About the author
Raymond Means is known today as the co-author of Linotype Mechanism, a technical manual first published in 1926 with Alvin G. Swank. The book focuses on how the Linotype machine worked and was written for students, operators, and owners who needed a clear guide to its moving parts and upkeep.
The surviving edition identifies Means and Swank as instructors at the U. T. A. School of Printing in Indianapolis, and the book was published by Swank and Means. That places him in the world of hands-on printing education rather than literary authorship, writing for people who learned by doing and needed dependable, step-by-step instruction.
Very little biographical information about Means appears to be readily available online, but his book has lasted because it captures a key moment in printing history. For readers interested in how books and newspapers were physically made, his work offers a direct window into the mechanical skill behind the age of hot-metal type.