Patent Number 547860
Broadcast: September 28, 1954
Added: Jul 21 2017
The next time you look at a newspaper, book or magazine, notice that every line is exactly the same length - they all begin and end just right, one below the other. It's called justifying, and its one of those little things we all take for granted. But getting a machine to set type this way wasn't so easy, one man spent twenty years and two and a half million dollars, turned out one of the most ingenious devices in the entire history of mechanical invention, and produced a colossal mistake. This is the story of patent 547860.