Vari-Typer

Vari-Typer is the brand name of a variable-spacing typewriter used between the 1930s and the early 1980s in printing, as well as for the production of office documents of typographic quality.

On Coxhead's death, the company was acquired by Addressograph-Multigraph, which originally manufactured duplicators and desktop offset presses, and then began to diversify into the field of typesetting.

In 1950, Princetown University Press estimated the average cost of a technical book (composition on Linotype and letterpress printing) at $600.

This simplifying of the work of justified typesetting with typewriters and offset printing did not go unnoticed by the leaders of some press companies.

Although some North American newspapers (in Canada, Florida, Texas and New Jersey, for example) were encouraged enough by this experience to equip themselves with IBM Selectric Composers and Proportional Spacing Typewriters to escape the control of the book syndicate, typewriter-type typesetters eventually proved unsuited to the rigors of the daily press – the quality of the letters was insufficient, the photoengraving processes used were not fast enough and the deadlines imposed by the new organization of work did not suit advertisers.