Career
Mathematically, these are cases of affine transformation, which is the fundamental geometric operation of most systems of digital typography today, including PostScript. Benton was joint owner of Benton, Waldo & Company Type Foundry which became part of the original group of mergers forming the American Type Founders Company (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives) in 1892, after which he was a director and chief consultant to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Benton invented many of the most important type founding technologies of the day, including a mould (1882), self spacing type (1883), a punch cutter (1885), combination fractions (1895), a type dressing machine (1901), a matrix and punch-cutting machine (1906), and automatic type-caster (1907), and a lining device for engraving matrices of shaded letters (1913).
In 1894, at the commission of the publisher of the Century Magazine, Theodore Low De Vinne, he designed his only type-face, the original Century.
De Vinne wanted a blacker and more legible face than the typically thin type used before, and slightly condensed to fit the double-column format of the magazine. Century Roman (1894, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives)
Century Roman Italic (1894, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives).
