Linn Boyd Benton (1844–1932) was an American typeface designer and inventor. He was a co-founder of Benton, Waldo & Co. Type Foundry, which later merged with the American Type Founders Company, where Benton served as director and chief consultant.Knittel Cost, pp. 1–2 & 64–84.
Benton’s many technological inventions proved central to the industrialization of type founding. The Benton Pantograph became an important tool in the production of type, allowing for quick expansion of one master drawing to a large family of related styles.Ibid, pp. 19–53.
The only typeface credited to Linn Boyd Benton is Century – a roman and italic developed for the Century Magazine on commission from the American printer and publisher Theodore Low De Vinne in 1894.First shown in the November 1895 issue of Century Magazine. (Low De Vinne, 1895). The Century typeface enjoyed great success. Benton’s son, Morris Fuller Benton later expanded the design to a large type family.Knittel Cost, pp. 146–156.
Monokrom’s Dewey Decimal traces its origin back to Century, by way of Chancey H Griffith’s Excelsior and their semi-proportional typewriter adaptations, IBM Dokument and Documentary.
Boyd Benton, L. (1894). Century [Typeface]. Benton, Waldo & Co.
Fuller Benton, M., Boyd Benton, L. (1900–24). Century Expanded [Typeface]. American Type Founders.
D. Stempel AG. (ca. 1960). IBM Dokument [Typeface].
Griffith, C.H. (1931). Excelsior [Typeface]. Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
Helland, F. (2023). Dewey Decimal [Typeface]. Monokrom Skriftforlag.
Knittel Cost, P. (1986). The Contributions of Linn Boyd Benton and Morris Fuller Bent to the technology of typesetting and typeface design [Master Thesis]. School of Printing Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. Retrieved 15 September 2026 from repository.rit.edu/
Low De Vinne, T. (November 1895). Century Magazine, p. 795.
