Binkley, Marshall, Power and the Typescript Book

Optimism:

Now I come to the second part of my talk today, and that is on the possibility of utilizing these technological developments in an economic way by taking the commercial control of the process. (Binkley at American Historical Association, Toronto, 29 Dec. 1932)¹

Pessimism:

Lastly, one wonders why the Mediaeval Academy, which has accustomed us to sumptuous and elegant publications, has this time used a printing process resembling typescript whose typographical appearance is wretched! (André Boutemy, 1938, reviewing The Shorter Latin Poems of Master Henry of Avranches Relating to England)²

This post looks into a coincidence between my grandfather’s academic career and my own, which have a single point of contact: the medieval historian Josiah Cox Russell. Russell wrote a dissertation at Harvard in 1926 on the 13th-century poet Henry of Avranches, who was also the subject of my dissertation in 1991.³ The book based on Russell’s dissertation was published nine years later using “near-print” techniques pioneered by Binkley and others in the intervening years, being printed by photolithography from a typescript master. When the AHA and CHA held a joint conference in 1932 at the University of Toronto (my alma mater), Binkley and Russell were both speakers and may have met; but they did not hear each other’s papers, as their sessions were simultaneous. If I ever get a time machine, I’ll have to use it twice to hear them both.

The Shorter Latin Poems of Master Henry of Avranches Relating to England, my daily companion during my thesis-writing period, was the book. It was published by the Medieval Academy of America in 1935 as the first volume in the new series “Studies and Documents” (see below). It was clearly meant to be a working text rather than a fine book. Binkley wasn’t directly involved with the series as far as I know, but his campaign for the adoption of “near-print” publication technologies in academia had brought him into collaboration with two people who probably were: John Marshall, Executive Secretary of the Medieval Academy of America from 1926 to 1933, and Eugene Power at Edwards Brothers, where Russell’s book was printed.

It is fascinating to compare the adoption of new publishing technologies in Binkley’s world with the same processes for newer technologies in my own time. As a librarian I’ve been involved in several projects around the publication and preservation of scholarly documents, from formal publications to reproduced theses to more informally shared resources (like this blog). A common theme in this time has been the competition between open source software and open access publications on the one hand, and the products sold or licensed by commercial vendors to libraries on the other. Open source advocates (like me) say that as commercial customers we sacrifice control of the product and burden our readers with unnecessary costs; commercial customers say the open source developers rarely achieve the quality of the commercial products and struggle to maintain their systems over time.

This post will look at this theme of competition in the development of in-house publishing capabilities among academics in the 1930s. Binkley attempted to maximize academics’ control of the process by having as much of it done in their offices as possible, but he ran up against better-resourced commercial services that were moving to dominate the new market of academic near-print (and soon microfilm) publishing.

I won’t be able to tell the story of these collaborations and competions fully until I’ve spent time with the archives of the Medieval Academy, the ACLS and the Rockefeller Foundation, but here’s a start.

1. Methods and Survey, 1931-32

Binkley’s ideas on the possibilities of the typescript book first found expression in Methods of Reproducing Research Materials, the report he wrote for the Joint Committee, published in 1931. This was itself a typescript book, a showpiece of the new method. Binkley’s promotion of the typescript book is the subject of a wonderful chapter of Lisa Gitelman’s book Paper Knowledge, and if you haven’t read it and you’re interested enough to get this far in this post you should stop and go read Gitelman now.

This publication method was intended to illustrate the Joint Committee’s project (proposed by Binkley) to develop a publication service, using new technologies to enable publication of resources (under the broad rubric “materials for research”) which were difficult to bring out under the traditional technologies and practices. The first framing of this project was to meet the needs of small scholarly communities, up to 300 people, who had a documentary source or a research output which they wished to share among themselves by subscription. The use of photo-offset printing and the guaranteed sales of the subscription model would make it possible to publish 300 copies while keeping the unit price comparable to what commercial publishers would charge at their profit point of 2000 copies sold.

At this time the Joint Committee on Materials for Research (JCMR) had been running for almost two years, and was ready to publish two significant reports of its own: along with Binkley’s, it had Franklin F. Holborn’s Survey of Activities of American Agencies in Relation to Materials for Research in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (produced under the guidance of Solon Buck, the chair). The JCMR had been working on arrangements for reduced-sized reproduction of newspapers during this time; for example, Binkley had arranged to have The Tinker & Paterson Psychology Co. (i.e. Miles Tinker and Donald G. Paterson at the University of Minnesota, pioneer researchers on typography and legibility) do research on reduction and legibility.⁴ The arrangements for publication of the two texts were being made separately, by Buck in Pittsburgh and by Binkley in Cleveland, but both editors relied on information in Binkley’s report, and both reports were to be produced as typescript books. Binkley and Buck discussed their publishing options with each other, as they got bids and suggestions about format from printers and other sources. Buck ended up giving the Survey to local Pittsburgh job printer P.R. Connell Co., while Binkley reached further afield to Edwards Brothers in Ann Arbor, and opened a richer array of possibilities.

Edwards Brothers in Ann Arbor, Michigan was a publishing house that was developing a service to teachers, printing textbooks and classroom materials using lithoprinting to print from typescript masters. (Here’s a sampling of its publications, 1930-1940 at Internet Archive.) Edwards Brothers was very keen to take on the publication of Methods and use it as a sample of their work. At their first mention in the JCMR papers, in October 1931, they are offering to print 100 copies of Methods for free (which they ultimately did).⁵ This was when the typing of the finished text was starting. Binkley ultimately used Edwards Brothers’ printing service but not their text-preparation services, and the result involved some confusion. Bound in at the back of Methods are six 8x11" pages, folded in thirds, mostly containing the same sample text. They are in different formats: four are two-column, two are single column, there are different type sizes and pitches. One of the two-column formats fits four reduced 8½x11" typed pages; others resemble the later Edwards models such as that used in Binkley’s 1935 Manual, with a ruled line between the columns of text. Oddly, in Methods there is no indication of the purpose of these sample pages. They are not mentioned in the table of contents or elsewhere; there is nothing to associate them with Edwards Brothers, even as they follow sample pages from other identified publishers. This is presumably an oversight, due to the rush to finish the typing in Cleveland and get the text to Ann Arbor to be printed and distributed before the Joint Committee meeting in December, 1931.

Eugene Power, business manager at Edwards Brothers, must have been very annoyed when he noticed that the sample pages were unidentified, for they are the key to the service Edwards Brothers was selling to the academic market. Starting in 1931 it published a guidebook for its academic customers: Manual of Lithoprinting: Containing Complete Information on the Publication of a Preliminary Textbook and Samples Illustrating the Possibilities of this Process. This Manual described the process of preparing and submitting a textbook, and provided sample pages made with Edwards Brothers’ in-house layouts, which it called “Standard Lithograph Models”. The unidentified sample pages in Methods resemble these layouts.

The earliest copy of the Edward Brothers Manual I have seen is the 1935 edition, which provided sample pages from some of their publications from 1932-1934. It describes eight models, with identifiers like “700.D”. The number is the word count per page, and it’s not clear to me whether the letter is descriptive. Edwards Brothers recommended 700.D as the most readable: “clear and legible to the highest degree, according to psychological tests conducted simultaneously in upwards of a score of universities.” (p.5) For cost-cutting, model 800.D is recommended. These are both two-column models. The Manual quoted prices both for typing by Edwards Brothers and the customer (p.7); the latter brought savings of about 33%.

The final draft of Binkley’s Methods was typed in October and November 1931 by the departmental secretary Clara Pfister, when she had time from her other duties.⁶ Binkley met Power (“the technical man of Edwards Brothers”) in Cleveland on November 12 and discussed the final layout. He wrote to Buck suggesting the use of Edwards Brothers’ “forms” for Holborn’s Survey: “Two such forms are available. One is a reduced book size, 5-3/8 X 8-1/2; the other, four pages in one, 8-1/2 x 11.”⁷

On November 27 Binkley sent the text of Methods to Edwards Brothers, and the next day (Saturday) sent carbon copies to Leland, Lydenberg and Buck. A third carbon must have been a trial to read, and indeed Leland wrote that he hadn’t read it carefully because the typing was so faint and his eyes were tired.⁸ At the same time it appears Binkley ordered 200 copies of a “pamphlet” titled “Medieval Architecture” from Edwards Brothers, no doubt for teaching (with surprisingly little care in the correspondence to keep the two projects separate).⁹

Lest we be left with too one-sided a sense of amateurism in the preparation of Methods and the Survey for publication, let me quote Edwards Brothers’ 1935 Manual on the key to their service, with a most unfortunate typo:

2. Page Design: Collaboration with Marshall

John Marshall is best known for his work as an officer of the Rockefeller Foundation starting in 1933, but before that he was in charge of publications for the Medieval Academy of America, based in Cambridge, MA.¹³ In 1931 he published a survey of the state of academic publishing in America made for the ACLS.¹⁴ He met Binkley at least as early as 1932, and contributed his knowledge of the business of academic publishing, which Binkley lacked. They had the opportunity to collaborate closely during Binkley’s year at Harvard (1932-33). Marshall’s experience in academic publishing contributed many ideas to Binkley’s proposal, such as a revolving fund to pay for publications – something the Mediaeval Academy had (funded by the Carnegie Corporation),¹⁵ and which was covered in Marshall’s report.

Despite the existence of page design models and a publishing service at Edwards Brothers, Binkley continued to pursue the local option for near-print publication. He struck up a friendship with Marshall (more personal than his relationship with Power: Binkley and Marshall signed and addressed their letters by first name, but with Power it remained surnames). There is not as much correspondence with Marshall in the papers I’ve seen, however; perhaps there is more in the parts of the JCMR papers I haven’t seen yet, or perhaps a file has been lost.

Power reported in his memoir a meeting convened by Binkley and Marshall in late 1931 in Cambridge, Mass. to discuss methods of dissemination of scholarly information. (p.16) Power’s memory of dates in his memoir is, however, often faulty.¹⁷ I haven’t been able to identify a 1931 meeting in Cambridge, but in November 1932 Binkley organized a meeting in New York to discuss his plan for a Publications Service to be established by the JCMR. There is no indication in the sparse documentation I’ve seen that Power or Marshall was present, but it would have suited both their agendas and Binkley’s for them to be there.¹⁸

The Publications Service failed to materialize, and the JCMR’s work on near-print publication continued with individual projects. The self-organized energy of academics could only take the process so far, it seems, and when their capacity shrank the gap would have to be filled by paid labour.

3. Mediaeval Academy of America Studies and Documents

Two years after Marshall left, the Medieval Academy of America began publishing typescript books in the new series Studies and Documents. Six volumes were published in this series between 1935 and 1942, all lithoprinted from typescript by Edwards Brothers. I have not yet had access to materials that would indicate whether this series inherited design work begun by Marshall – it appears likely, but the extent of his influence is unknown. Whether or not Marshall was the direct source, the interest in typescript page design evident in the Russell book looks like a continuation of Marshall’s work with Binkley in 1933.

Volumes of Studies and Documents

Volume	Author	Title	Year
1	Josiah Cox Russell and John Paul Heironimus	The Shorter Latin Poems of Master Henry of Avranches Relating to England	1935
2	J.D.A. Ogilvy	Books Known to Anglo-Latin Writers from Aldhelm to Alcuin (670-804)	1936
3	Leonard Ellinwood	The Works of Francesco Landini	1939
4	W. Thomas Marrocco	Fourteenth-Century Italian Cacce	1942
5	Helen M. Hewitt and Isabel Pope	Harmonice musices Odhecaton A	1942
6	Johannes Buridanus	Quaestiones super libris quattuor de caelo et mundo, ed. Ernest Addison Moody	1942

Looking at the Russell volume now from a typographic point of view, I can see that it contains some experimental layout work in the typography. It does not match any of the models in Edwards Brothers’ 1935 catalogue. It generally approximates justification by adding a space before the last word of a line where needed. On three pages (89, 98, 123), it attempts full justification by inserting spaces evenly along the length of each line, not just near the end. The result is imperfect (the count of inserted spaces is often off by one) but non unpleasing. Presumably it was decided that the effort wasn’t worth it.

The second volume, which appeared a year after the first, used the same layout (62-character lines); volume 5 is the only one that uses an Edwards Brothers two-column layout. After the first two volumes the series was mostly used for music texts, with the music hand-scribed – another job suitable for reproduction by photo-offset.

4. Manual (1935): The High Point of the JCMR Typescript Book

In the summer of 1935 as the Manual was wrapping up, Binkley was teaching at NYU Washington Square and preparing the final text of his book Realism and Nationalism for the press, as a traditional job of academic publishing. The Depression and the New Deal carried on: Binkley went to see a rally in Union Square, and heard the communist youth chanting

Give the bankers home relief
We want jobs!

With the Manual Jo McCarter found herself in a situation similar to Schellenberg’s in the microfilm work of the year before: caught between Binkley’s desire to show that the process would save money and the vendor’s desire to produce a good-looking product. Schellenberg agreed with Recordak about producing a professional product and resented Binkley’s interference; McCarter was more amenable to trying an inhouse process, by letting Adeline Barry do the typing in Binkley’s Cleveland office. Power had to be blunt with her. He sent some 700-D sheets for Barry to try, but gave this counsel to McCarter:

I don’t believe you are quite aware of what you are getting into when you suggest typing this since the experience of a great many others who have done this in the past is that our charge for the work is no where near commensurate with the difficulty and bother involved, and fewer and fewer of our authors are using this method. If you are going to issue a text to show what can be done by this method it would seem foolish to me to produce what must be–and this is no reflection on you–a second-rate book.²⁷

He described the current work at Edwards Brothers as “so far above what we used to do two years ago that there is hardly any comparison”. McMaster summarized Power’s thoughts as expressed in a long-distance phone call:

He seems much opposed to our doing the master-copy here, even going to the extent of saying “My God!” about it.²⁸

Was this fair? The “great many others” who had used Edwards Brothers to publish their classroom materials seem to have been mostly individual academics or small groups, not a team with the technical expertise and academic commitment of the JCMR staff at this point. With the addition of McCarter and Barry (both masters students) they had come a long way since Clara Pfister had had to type Methods in small stints when her other typing was done. But it seems that Power won, and the typing was done in Ann Arbor.

Binkley’s willingness to downplay the importance of a press-like appearance, which Power emphasized, is perhaps explained by Gitelman’s insight into the role of typescript as opposed to print in the range of academic publishing possibilities: it represents an insider status, a working document, something dynamic that can be modified and reissued, as opposed to the traditional printed book, handsome and formal, liable to be replaced by a second edition but not to be updated piecemeal: what Gitelman calls “the strangely in-process quality of typescripts”.²⁹ A book produced by the secretarial pool of his office, women who managed the flow of information into and out of his various projects, whose careers he fostered (McCarter and Barry both at least started advanced degrees under his supervision), made sense as an academic program in a way that Power’s distant profit-oriented approach did not.

Conclusion

Turning back to my initial comparison between Binkley’s promotion of near-print publication and my own experiences with open source software: I see similar lessons. If implementors are not willing to accept the initial difficulties of an open solution, the for-profit vendors will take over the space and the only limit on their extraction will be commercial competition. Open implementors will understand the service better than customers of commercial vendors, and will have more influence on its development.

I’ll close with a little further family history. Binkley’s children, Robert jr. and Tom, both took an interest in photography and publishing, inherited from their parents. Tom (the musicologist and performer of medieval music Thomas Binkley) ran a side gig in publishing medieval music on microfilm in his student days; Bob was an active amateur photographer and dove into desktop publishing when it came along in the 1980s and ’90s, producing well-designed classroom materials under the title “The London Close Reasoner”, for his philosophy students. And I blog.

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1. Doc. 7529 (1932-12-29): Robert C. Binkley, “Methods of Reproducing Research Materials”, paper given at the Conference of State and Local Historical Societies, at AHA in Toronto (stenographic notes) (corr.1931-33/C)↩︎

2. (My translation). “Enfin, on se demande pourquoi la Mediaeval Academy qui nous a accoutumés à de luxueuses et élégantes publications, a adopté cette fois une impression imitant la dactylographie dont l’allure typographique est déplorable!” A. Boutemy, review of The Shorter Latin Poems of Master Henry of Avranches Relating to England, by Josiah Cox Russel and John Paul Heironimus, Latomus 2, no. 1 (1938): 75–76 at p.76.↩︎

3. Josiah Cox Russell, “Master Henry of Avranches” (Harvard, 1926); Peter Binkley, “Thirteenth Century Latin Poetry Contests Associated with Henry of Avranches, with an Appendix of Newly Edited Texts” (University of Toronto, 1991).↩︎

4. Doc. 17112 (1931-03-05): RCB to Tinker & Paterson Psychology Company (Buck/13_JCMR-1931)↩︎

5. Doc. 17139 (1931-10-13): RCB to Solon J. Buck (Buck/13_JCMR-1931).↩︎

6. Doc. 17146 (1931-11-03): Clara Pfister to Solon J. Buck (Buck/13_JCMR-1931)↩︎

7. Doc. 17153 (1931-11-12): RCB to Solon J. Buck (Buck/13_JCMR-1931)↩︎

8. Doc. 9624 (1931-12-02): Waldo G. Leland to Solon J. Buck (JCMR/77-binkley)↩︎

9. Doc. 3699 (1931-12-09): RCB to Edwards Brothers (corr.1930-32/E)↩︎

10. Doc. 6817 ([1931-12-06]): RCB to FHWB (misc/38)↩︎

11. Doc. 17190 (1931-12-21): Solon J. Buck to RCB (Buck/13_JCMR-1931).↩︎

12. Doc. 17249 (1932-03-22): Solon J. Buck to Christopher B. Coleman (Buck/13_JCMR-1932)↩︎

13. William J. Buxton, “John Marshall and the Humanities in Europe: Shifting Patterns of Rockefeller Foundation Support,” Minerva 41, no. 2 (2003): 133–53.↩︎

14. John Marshall, Publication of Books and Monographs by Learned Societies: A Survey Made for the American Council of Learned Societies (American Council of Learned Societies, 1931), published as vol. 16 of the ACLS Bulletin.↩︎

15. Marshall, Publication of Books and Monographs by Learned Societies, p.11.↩︎

16. Peter Binkley, “‘If You Could Send over Your Documents to the Photostat Department…’: Paris Peace Conference Documentation and the Advent of Microfilm,” paper presented at Open Ideas 2021, University of Alberta Library, December 16, 2021.↩︎

17. The precise date Power gives for Schellenberg’s visit to Ann Arbor which triggered his interest in microfilm publication is demonstrably wrong, and he reports Binkley’s death in the wrong season of the wrong year. He gives the date of Schellenberg’s visit as Sept. 19 1934, but it is clear from the JCMR papers that Schellenberg was in Washington then and visited Ann Arbor the following January (as will be shown in the last installment of the AAA and NRA Microfilms posts). Power places Binkley’s death in the autumn of 1941 (p.126), but it happened in April, 1940.↩︎

18. Gitelman identified the meeting and the materials in box 79 of the JCMR papers in the Library of Congress. I didn’t look at box 79 in my week in Washington a few years ago.↩︎

19. Doc. 17279 (1932-08-26): RCB to Solon J. Buck (Buck/13_JCMR-1932)↩︎

20. Doc. 17280 ([1932-08]): [RCB], “Project for the Production and Distribution of New Books and Reprints of Books or Periodicals out of Print” (Buck/13_JCMR-1932)↩︎

21. Robert C. Binkley, “Joint Committee of the ACLS and the SSRC on Materials for Research, Report of Activities, 1931-32,” American Council of Learned Societies Bulletin 20 (December 1933): 63–72, at p.67.↩︎

22. Doc. 11269 (1932-11-02): Louis R. Wilson to Carl R. Milam (JCMR/32-gen-ala)↩︎

23. Doc. 17288 (1932-11-07): RCB to Solon J. Buck (Buck/13_JCMR-1932)↩︎

24. Doc. 11216 (1933-03-17): RCB to L.V. Coleman (JCMR/33-gen-coleman).↩︎

25. Doc. 11215 (1933-03-20): L.V. Coleman to RCB (JCMR/33-gen-coleman). In a handwritten postscript Coleman suggests that Kent would advise Binkley at no charge (“It’s his job in a way”), but I haven’t seen evidence that Binkley consulted him.↩︎

26. Doc. 11013 (1933-05-29): RCB to Robert T. Crane (JCMR/33-gen-crane)↩︎

27. Doc. 9629 (1935-07-10): Eugene B. Power to Jo McCarter (JCMR/77-binkley)↩︎

28. Doc. 6264 (1935-07-13): Jo McCarter to RCB (corr.1933-40/Mc)↩︎

29. Gitelman, p. 70.↩︎

30. Doc. 11281 (1935-07-29): RCB to Jo McCarter (JCMR/32-gen-b)↩︎

31. Elizabeth M. Richards, Alexandre Vattemare and His System of International Exchanges (Cleveland: Flora Stone Mather College Library, 1940), also published as “Alexandre Vattemare and His System of International Exchanges,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 32, no. 4 (1944): 413–48, where it is noted that the experimental print was deposited at Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and the Boston Public Library (p.447). Binkley’s copy went with many of his books after Frances’ death in 1962 to Colorado State University at Fort Collins, where it still is. HathiTrust scanned it from Berkeley’s copy, which was the review copy sent to J. Periam Danton, later dean of the library school there, by Adeline Barry as she was wrapping up JCMR business after Binkley’s death: Doc. 10150 (1940-09-25): Adeline Barry to J. Periam Danton (JCMR/36-cash).↩︎

32. Doc. 11283 (1935-07-24): RCB to Jo McCarter (JCMR/32-gen-b)↩︎

33. Doc. 11283 (1935-07-24): RCB to Jo McCarter (JCMR/32-gen-b)↩︎