Dex­ion was a print­er’s solu­tion to a print­ers’ prob­lem. Demetrius Comi­no, an Aus­tralian-Greek immi­grant to the UK estab­lished a print­ing busi­ness. Curios­i­ty about how bet­ter to store things and lay out space led him to devel­op ​‘slot­ted angle’, long strips of met­al, fold­ed to cre­ate an L shape down the length, but cru­cial­ly per­fo­rat­ed with a selec­tion of holes, and marked every three inch­es. Dex­ion slot­ted angle was born in 1947, and the Dex­ion com­pa­ny was estab­lished in 1949. The orig­i­nal print­ing firm, Kris­son, con­tin­ued trad­ing as a part­ner com­pa­ny to Dex­ion.

With its sci­en­tif­ic design of slots and holes, Dex­ion is unusu­al­ly strong, eas­i­ly joined. Because Dex­ion can be used over and over again there is no waste.

What Is Dex­ion? From Dex­ion Angle Mag­a­zine, Issue 4

While the mate­r­i­al could rea­son­ably have been envi­sioned as an indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of ear­li­er uses of wood, met­al and bolts; what is remark­able is the amaz­ing num­ber of uses found for this mate­r­i­al when com­bined with bolts and a suit­able cut­ter.

Keep­ing to print­ing, I’ve seen small stands for print­ers’ saws, work­bench­es but also stair­cas­es and offices perched on the top of Dex­ion angle.

In 1962, as part of their series Pro­duc­tion Aids for the Print­ing Indus­try, the British fed­er­a­tion of Mas­ter Print­ers offered a love­ly leaflet, Uses for Slot­ted Angle, as the more gener­ic name for what was now a wide­ly-imi­tat­ed idea.

The print­er can reap great advan­tage from its sim­plic­i­ty, uni­ver­sal appli­ca­tion and low cost. It can be wide­ly used in com­pos­ing and machine rooms, bindery, litho and gravure depart­ments, ware­house and also in offices.

British Fed­er­a­tion of Mas­ter Print­ers, Uses for Slot­ted Angle.

The BFMP sug­gest­ed using slot­ted angle to cre­ate machine guards, spe­cial trol­leys to cor­rect Mono­type mate­r­i­al and above larg­er press­es to hold paper for tym­pa­ns.

Away from print­ing, Dex­ion was used for a myr­i­ad of things. Fol­low­ing earth­quakes in Greece in August 1953, Dex­ion offered 20,000 feet of the mate­r­i­al and sent engi­neers to build pro­to­type homes.

Even­tu­al­ly, 3,000,000 feet of Dex­ion was used in the re-con­struc­tion of 2,000 homes.

Dex­ion’s own mag­a­zines –Dex­ion Angle for cus­tomers and Good Com­pa­ny for staff record some of these cre­ative uses.

One ter­ri­fy­ing pho­to shows Dexy, a 17′6″ robot made from 871 feet of Dex­ion shown at the Cana­di­an Nation­al Mate­ri­als Han­dling Exhi­bi­tion.

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Location

Head Office: Dex­ion Lim­it­ed, May­grove Road, Lon­don, NW6

Fac­to­ries: Waltham Abbey, Enfield, South Ching­ford, Hemel Hemp­stead

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Head­er Image: ​“File:Old-slotted-angle-shelving.jpg” by Con­struc­tor­Grp is licensed with CC BY-SA 3.0.