How did the Linotype machine make newspapers, magazines, and books less expensive to produce?

The Linotype machine, patented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1884, significantly reduced the cost of producing newspapers, magazines, and books by automating and accelerating the typesetting process.

Unlike earlier methods that required setting individual characters by hand, the Linotype allowed an operator to use a keyboard to select brass matrices for an entire line of text at once. The machine then cast these lines as single, solid metal slugs, which included automated justification—the process of spacing words to fill a line perfectly.12

By integrating the casting of type into a single, rapid cycle, the machine eliminated the time-consuming manual labor previously required for composition and distribution. Because the metal slugs could be melted down and reused after printing, the system was highly efficient and economically advantageous for high-volume publishing. This dramatic increase in speed fostered a significant expansion in the production of printed materials, making them more affordable to manufacture.342