The Linotype Matrix - No.33

[Dave Hughes]

Interesting find on Instagram, I believe this was a British publication.

The Adsans font brings back memories of setting classified ads on the South London Press back in the 1980s.

I think we used 4.75pt but the figures were quite wide for prices, phone numbers, etc.

View this post on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/p/COM8CDuJMpA/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

[Mechanic]

They were originally published by Linotype and Machinery UK. Recently by Linotype GmbH
There was also version published in the USA Linotype News

https://issuu.com/linotype/docs/matrix_4.2


https://asset.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/BZT3AKWFVHWBA8V/E/file-779d6.pdf

[Dave Hughes]

Nice info George, PDFs now render nicely, as you can see from the above.

[Bruce Anderton]

Very interested to see this. Quite different to the English "L&M News".
I was rather worried to read the article on TTS operation which suggested that an operator working one Lino should also "keep an eye" on another machine nearby which would be running on tape. NOT a good idea!

[Dave Hughes]

Hi Bruce, nice to see you on here 

Agreed. You can't operate one Lino and keep an eye on another one! Just Linotype trying to big-up how reliable their machines were I guess.

Was it 6 or 8 tape-operated linecasters that the York Press had, with 2 men "keeping an eye", as I remember?

[Bruce Anderton]

Hi Dave,
I seem to recall that at York, and also at Bradford & District Newspapers, where I started my hot metal life, the monitors didn't have too many Linos (or Intertypes) to look after compared to what went on in America, where one man might have to keep half a dozen linecasters churning out slugs. I have read some horror stories of guys trying to do this.
I had experience later on of being a monitor when I worked at Express Gifts at Church, near Accrington, where they had three Intertype Monarchs which had been brought over from America (!), altered to English depth moulds and driven not by tape but by floppy disc drive.
This was fine so long as nothing went wrong, but when the inevitable happened and say you were half way through the job, there was no way of restarting the casting operation at the point at which it had halted (as you could do with tape): thus you either had to start again from scratch or do the rest of the setting manually, which is what we normally did!
Because of the speed at which these Monarchs normally operated, they were arranged to either cast on alternate or consecutive moulds in order to avoid overheating (in the latter case, of course, one had to cast four lines before your first line dropped on to the galley).
Happy days!
Bruce