Yesterday’s Technology . . . Today!
Superb 1957 photograph of the Heidelberg “windmill” press production line in Germany.
A rather cynical commentator has said: “And each worker adding a single impossible-to-remove taper-pinned part.” Sounds like the comment is a result of bitter experience!
Many thanks to Dave Gladwell for sending in these photographs, taken at Richard Clays, a large book printing company, based in Bungay, Suffolk, UK.
Taken from a Linotype brochure published in Berlin in the 1930s. Some quite unusual machines.
Linotype fan? Don’t miss the Linotype Chat section of the Metal Type Forum.
Thanks to Richard Goodwin for sending in these photographs taken at the Quincy Patriot Ledger between 1969 and 1975.
Thanks to Teo Pelho, from Finland, for sending in these pictures, taken at the Deutsches Museum, Munich and the Gutenberg Museum, Mainz, Germany.
I have very little information about the pictures, so if you think you can “flesh out” any of the captions, please post your suggestions here. Please refer to the pictures by number.
Thanks to Kevin Brown for sending these pictures in. Kevin says: “I did my apprenticeship for the Dominion Newspaper, it was a morning paper in Wellington, New Zealand, printed six days a week and we also printed a Sunday paper called the Sunday Times. Copies were sent to most places in the north and south island every day, a truck left Wellington every morning with the first edition and drove up to Auckland.
I took a lot of the pics in 1975, I was working on the day shift, but on the last night that the paper was going to be printed in the old Mercer Street Dominion building I went in and took some pics, that’s why you see people gathering together for me to take the shots and that was 1976.
Many thanks to Ken Blasbery for taking the trouble to copy and send in this book, which was published in 1949, celebrating the centenary of Britain’s oldest provincial evening newspaper.
As you would expect for this type of publication a lot of emphasis is placed on the journalistic side of things, with production matters tending to take second place.
Andy Taylor took this video of Amberley Museum volunteer Richard at work on the West Sussex, UK attraction’s Model 78 Linotype.
Richard looks like an experienced operator, his keyboard technique is very smooth – not the “pick and peck” method seen on so many of these type of videos.
Some of you may remember an article that appeared on Metal Type last year called David Evans, A New Era, 2011. It took a look at David Evans’ move from Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK to new premises in Mytholmroyd, four miles up the road.
David, and new partner Stanley Wilson, have even managed to add to their collection of letterpress equipment since the move. I visited the new premises again in June 2012.
Bruce Anderton recently digitised some of his old photographic slide collection, and sent these in to Metal Type.
Says Bruce: “Note space at the side of the masthead; this was where the edition seal was printed in red (the only colour in the paper in those days); latterly the “fudge” – or late news secor, on the back page – was also printed in red.