Many thanks to Mike Wilson for sending in this picture of a poster that he bought in 1976.
It seems to have been very well produced and Mike tells me it is in excellent condition.
William Caxton Quincentenary
Category: Historical
Historical items
1954 Compositors Handbook
Many Thanks to Mike Wilson, from Yorkshire in the UK, for sending in this story.
This 104-page booklet was full of tables and facts for the printing trade.
Free Cobb Shinn Retro Clipart
Metal Type is proud to offer this superb 1950s retro clipart.
The zip file contains three versions of the same artwork in True Type Font (.ttf) Open Type Font (.otf) and Scaleable Vector Graphics (.svg) formats.
Linotype Model 1 Video
Rubén Brizuela, who runs a letterpress print shop in Mendoza, Argentina is the proud owner of this Model 1 Linotype, which is in full working condition.
He would like to see the machine taking pride of place in a museum somewhere, but nobody seems interested.
Christophe Plantin Print Shop
Many thanks to Mike Topper for sending in these pictures he took at the Christophe Plantin Museum in Antwerp.
British Print Trade Union Cards 1946-1993
From the late Dave Bowles’ collection of London Fleet Street compositors items comes this great collection of trade union membership cards from 1946 right through to the 1990s.
We have another page of union membership cards, covering the period 1924-1945 here: British Print Trade Union Cards 1924-1945.
Linotype Model 1
Single-letter machine. The Model 1 Machine was later improved and built for double-letter matrices.
(This machine produced type faces up to 11-point and type bodies up to 12-point, in all measures up to 30 pica ems.)
Compugraphic Universal 2
It would appear to be one of the Whittaker company’s early photosetters.
Steve Robertshaw, Ex Whittaker & Compugraphic UK Engineer, updated this page with the following:
Intertype Fotosetter
It is an early photosetter that used mainly linecaster technology to produce photoset output.
Interested in early photosetting technology? Check out the Early Photosetting Chat section of the Forum.
Linotype Linocomp 1
This is an early, computerised typesetting machine. The operator selects a character on the keyboard, which triggers a stroboscopic flash to set the type.
Four type styles, each with 105 characters, were available to the operator through filmstrips held on a drum.