A historic duplicate printing plate made by casting molten type metal into a mold (called a flong or matrix) taken from a locked-up form of movable type. This allowed printers to free up their expensive metal type for other jobs while keeping a solid plate to print subsequent editions. It revolutionized high-volume newspaper and book printing by enabling multiple presses to run the same pages simultaneously.
The foundry just delivered the stereotypes for the Sunday edition, so we can lock them onto the cylinders.
Do not confuse this with an electrotype, which is grown chemically in a bath rather than cast from molten metal.
Also heard as
- stereo
Related terms
Electrotype
A duplicate printing plate created by electroplating a mold of the original set type or engraving.
Flong
A papier-mâché mold pressed against a form of lead type to cast a solid printing plate.
Matrix
A metal mold used to cast individual type characters or entire lines of text.
Typeform
The fully assembled block of type and image plates locked together for printing.