Linn Boyd Benton

Linn Boyd Benton (1844 in Little Falls, New York – 1932 in Plainfield, New Jersey) was an American typeface designer and inventor of technology for producing metal type.

The son of Congressman Charles S. Benton, he was named for his father's friend Linn Boyd. (Mathematically, these are cases of affine transformation, which is the fundamental geometric operation of most systems of digital typography today, including PostScript.) The technology allowed metal type to be designed on large plan drawings and then cut at the desired size, rather than being hand-engraved at the desired size.

In 1894, at the commission of the publisher of the Century Magazine, Theodore Low De Vinne, he designed his most famous typeface, the original Century. De Vinne wanted a blacker and more legible face than the typically thin type used before, and slightly condensed to fit the double-column format of the magazine. It was first used in 1895 and soon became enormously popular and many variations were later designed by his son Morris Fuller Benton.

Typefaces Century Roman (1894, ATF) Century Roman Italic (1894, ATF)