My brother Clint sent me the above YouTube link as a reminder of our youth ...and of an awkward, bulky Rube-Goldberg-looking contraption which was used for typesetting for a hundred years.
Clint and I first learned to set type by hand, from a case, in a composing "stick", but neither of us ever learned to run a linotype machine. In the 70s, however, while with the daily papers in Vancouver, BC, we did work at dreadful old blind (8-or 10-character display) qwerty (typewriter style) keyboards, punching 8-level tape, which in turn ran automatic linotypes.
We did have a linotype machine in our family printing shop in the 60s, and I was the trainee-designate but, after considerable deliberation, Dad decided "cold type" (offset printing) was on the verge of replacing "hot metal" (letterpress printing) so there was no point in having me learn a keyboard so vastly different from the typewriter, which I already knew.
We might have managed to get five or even ten years' worth of work out of the linotype, but it had other disadvantages besides impending obsolescence—it was dangerous, almost more dangerous than a printing press. A squirt of molten lead was not an injury to be taken lightly, or even to be risked by one's admittedly-clumsy teenage daughter.
Nevertheless, when I worked in newspaper editorial departments, I loved to visit their composing rooms to listen to the "music" of dozens of linotype machines setting type of different sizes, and the different sound of monotype machines setting headline sizes. It was an entirely different world from what we know now.
Dad wasn't omniscient, but he did have a lot of knowledge about printing, which lent him his foresight. By the early 70s, I was using computerized typesetting equipment and, at the time, was somewhere close to the leading edge of technology. I can laugh about it now, when technology is so far ahead of me. We thought things moved fast in the 70s and 80s, but it was nothing like the 21st century.
Yes, ours really was an entirely different world.
Posted for
Our World Tuesday
To see other worlds, click HERE!
Clint and I first learned to set type by hand, from a case, in a composing "stick", but neither of us ever learned to run a linotype machine. In the 70s, however, while with the daily papers in Vancouver, BC, we did work at dreadful old blind (8-or 10-character display) qwerty (typewriter style) keyboards, punching 8-level tape, which in turn ran automatic linotypes.
We did have a linotype machine in our family printing shop in the 60s, and I was the trainee-designate but, after considerable deliberation, Dad decided "cold type" (offset printing) was on the verge of replacing "hot metal" (letterpress printing) so there was no point in having me learn a keyboard so vastly different from the typewriter, which I already knew.
 |
| Image from Google |
Nevertheless, when I worked in newspaper editorial departments, I loved to visit their composing rooms to listen to the "music" of dozens of linotype machines setting type of different sizes, and the different sound of monotype machines setting headline sizes. It was an entirely different world from what we know now.
 |
| Image from Google |
Yes, ours really was an entirely different world.
Posted for
Our World Tuesday
To see other worlds, click HERE!
