INTERACT FORUM
More => Music, Movies, Politics, and Other Cheap Thrills => Topic started by: JimH on May 28, 2012, 06:15:16 pm
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MPR had a feature today on Linotype machines. I had to look it up on Wikipedia to learn a little more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine
This technology was invented in the 1880's and used in newspapers until the 1960's, just 50 years ago.
It's called linotype because it could produce a line of type, cast from molten lead. For its time, it was a big improvement. Type had previously been set by hand, one character at a time.
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That thing is huge.
Nothing like lead poisoning.
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When I was a kid I helped my dad sometimes during boring summer holidays. He was an engineer for a large sales company in envelope printing presses. In the early days they also had a small hall with some presses for taking small local orders, nothing big. In the early days their line of presses still had an old press with the lead letters. Big drawers full of lead letters with a label showing the typeface of the letters. I watched with complete amazement how fast these dudes grab the letters and place them in the tray (mirrored, obviously!). They have to use a lot of spacers too to justify alineas. They also had many different drawers, with different type faces, roman, arial, even written text.
When that machine finally got replaced, my dad brought some of these letter drawers home. We had those for a long time but eventually trashed them. I guess he hoped it would be worth something some day lol. ::)
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My grandfather used to run one of those machines. It was the main reason he dropped dead in his 30s. The other reasons would be all the drinking, smoking and fighting.