Yesterday’s Technology . . . Today!
I wrote this thesis back in 1979 as part of City and Guilds studies. I have reproduced it here exactly as it was written.
IN THIS thesis I am setting out to give a brief summary of mechanical composing machines from Mr Church’s first unsuccessful effort back in 1822 to the present day.
Roy Bowker’s story of the possibly unique “banging in” ceremony at Spicers, London.
SO WHERE do I start? Well my first insight to the printing game was at secondary modern school when the teacher asked if anybody was interested in joining a printing class that was being started. My hand went up basically because a friend of mine had volunteered.
Two spoof April Fool’s day articles that appeared in the Guardian (UK) newspaper. Many thanks to Ernest Bray for submitting these.
Population: (1973 census) 1,782,724 consisting of approx. Europeans and mixed race 640,000; Flongs 574,000 Creoles 271,000; Malaysians 1,17,000; Arabs 92,000; others 88,000.
Mike Wilson tells us of his career on the Bridlington Chronicle, Yorkshire, UK.
MY EAGLE CLUB DIARY has the following note for Monday, 8th September, 1952: “Started work at 8. Did metal for Linotype. 12-1 dinner. Left at 4.30.” On Thursday the 11th: “After dinner went to sorting office.”
Award-winning journalist John Pilger tells the real story of Rupert Murdoch’s introduction of new technology in the 1980s.
The following piece is taken from John Pilger’s book “Hidden Agendas” which is available for viewing, downloading or purchase from his website http://www.johnpilger.com/
George Clark takes us back to London’s Fleet Street, from the 1960s onwards.
FIRSTLY, there is something which I think I should explain. I have been as guilty of this as much as anyone else. In referring to a “Ship” I have failed to precede the word with an apostrophe. It is in fact an abbreviation of “Companionship”. When I entered Print in the 1930s printers had their own vocabulary, a layman would have been mystified to hear Compositors conversing in those days. A body of Compositors were known as a Companionship.
George Clark tells us about his 22 years on the Sunday Telegraph and takes issue with a couple of points made in Malcolm Gregory’s “Fleet Street Piecework” story.
MALCOLM GREGORY paints a very black picture of the S.T. Grass Ship, as one who served on this Ship from April 1964 retiring as a “Regular” on 29th March 1986 I feel I should give a clearer picture.
Malcolm Gregory describes his time working on the Daily Telegraph in London’s Fleet Street from the early 70s to the closure in 1987.
I WAS working on an Intertype at the Walthamstow Guardian when I managed to get a ‘Grass’ on the Sunday Telegraph (this meant working the Saturday as a casual operator) through a fellow operator who put in a word, knowhatimean?
George Clark sent in this very interesting list of old printing trade terms.
A Chapel.-A meeting of compositors is called a chapel, and the members of the chapel form a companionship (shortened to ‘ship) pledged to watch over the interests of the London Society of Compositors (L.S.C.) and its members in the chapel.
Dave Hughes tells of his time on the Yorkshire Evening Press and South London Press, UK.
I WAS first introduced to the Linotype machine in the mid 1970s when I started work as an Apprentice Compositor at the Yorkshire Evening Press, then located in Coney Street, York.