May 17, 2026
Hot type, hotter drama
Twilight of the Velocipede: Typesetting Races Before the Age of Linotype
Before keyboards, print workers turned speed-typing into a cash-fueled spectator sport
TLDR: In the 1870s, hand-setting newspaper text became a wildly popular spectator sport, with George Arensberg setting a jaw-dropping speed record and others chasing fame and big prize money. Commenters are split between delight at the absurdity, awe at the skill, and anger that women had to race for respect on the job.
The internet is absolutely losing it over this forgotten era when newspaper workers raced to place tiny metal letters by hand while crowds cheered like it was prizefighting. The big star of the story is George Arensberg, a 20-year-old New York typesetter nicknamed “The Boy” who smashed expectations in 1870 by setting more than 2,000 units of text in an hour — a number commenters are treating like the 19th-century version of breaking a sports world record. A lot of readers were stunned that this was even physically possible, with many joking that old-school print shops were basically “Formula 1, but with fingers.”
But the real comment-section fireworks came from the culture war around it. Some readers were delighted by the sheer weirdness of a time when typesetting races filled halls and offered giant cash prizes, calling it proof that people will gamify literally anything. Others zoomed in on the women “Swifts,” cheering the part where female speed-setters used their skill to push for fairer treatment at work. That sparked debate, with some arguing these contests were empowering, while others said they still turned brutal labor into entertainment for bosses and crowds. Meanwhile, the jokes were flying: people compared the racers’ nicknames like “Bangs” Levy and “The Velocipede” to wrestling personas, and one popular mood was basically, “We used to have blindfolded typesetting champions, and now we argue online about fonts.” For many commenters, this wasn’t just quirky history — it was a reminder that obsession, hustle culture, and workplace drama are very much not modern inventions.
Key Points
- •George Arensberg of The New York Times set a record of 2,064 ems of solid minion type in one hour on February 19, 1870.
- •At the time, a typical compositor set about 700 ems per hour, while 1,200 was fast and 1,400 exceptional, making Arensberg’s result extraordinary.
- •Typesetting races evolved from informal printshop contests into public entertainment events in dime museums during the 1870s.
- •Top racers known as “Swifts” drew crowds in the thousands and competed for prize purses of up to $1,000.
- •By the 1880s, the contests had become formalised, with rules and results published in the 1887 booklet Fast Typesetting.