TTS at Sydney Morning Herald

[Dave Hughes]

Sorry no pic of a Linasec, but George Finn sent in this great video of the TTS operation at the Sydney Morning Herald in 1971.

It seemed to me that the manning levels on the linecasters was quite generous.

I seem to recall at the Yorkshire Evening Press it was one man attending to four linecasters!

[Mechanic]

Yes Dave,

At the time the movie was made, there was a monitor including apprentices to each of the 24 Elektron Linotypes. Later the machines were relocated so that the machines were in groups of six, three machines facing each other, with two monitors for the six machines. The machines were all adjacent to a galley conveyor that carried takes along to a stone where they were proofed and delivered to the page.
The monitors were retrained Lino operators used to operating machines at half the speed of the Elektrons, many were apprehensive. On the other hand the younger inexperienced apprentices took to the machines like ducks to water. In about 1973 we went to a no spaceband operation using fixed spacing to justify the lines, which improved the performance of the machines.