Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899). In this woodcut we see Whitelaw Reid, Mergenthaler's chief financial backer and owner of the New York Tribune, saying to Mergenthaler, "Ottmar, you have just set a line o type" and thus his machine became the Linotype. The year was 1886 and success was immediate. Linotype linecasting machines dominated the typesetting industry for almost a century.