Yesterday’s Technology . . . Today!
The Life and Deaths of the Printed Word. Details of a book written and offered for sale by Metal Type contributor Bill Sonn.
METAL TYPE contributor Bill Sonn has had his book on the history of the printing industry published – after a long gestation period!
Dan Williams remembers the inauguration of the Elrod machine at his father’s commercial type shop.
ANY PRINT SHOP of the letterpress era needed loads of spacing material. My dad’s type shop was no exception.
A poem written by Frank Granger.
I like this printing job I just got.
But there are things I wish were not.
An amusing poem written by Frank Granger.
all the sentences started with lower case.
The 3 em indent was way two much space.
The Futuria type was very, very bold,
Also not the face the customer was sold.
This short piece from Merchant of Alphabets describes the brand new Pravda printing plant in 1934.
ON THE very first day of my arrival Gene Garin, with pride and enthusiasm, took me out to the new Pravda plant – the dream come true of their deliberations four years ago.
How a Linotype matrix is made from Merchant of Alphabets by Reginald Orcutt.
FAR MORE than the layman may find it easy to appreciate, every good type letter is fraught with human spirit. Whether its essence stems from the Humanists of the Renaissance, or comes from the artistic expression of to-morrow morning, its beauty and clarity – and thus its legibility and function – stem from the genius and personality of the artist who designed it and the craftsman who brought it into being.
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.
Bob Turner’s second story for this site is the fascinating story of his print career to date.
HERE I sit in beautiful Dunedin, Pinellas County, Florida. 68 years old, semi-retired, working part-time for a direct mail operation where I make plates for the offset presses, run an MBO folder and bore the kids with my stories about the “good?” old days. How did I get here?
Bob Turner’s certainly kept up with the times. Still working part-time in the print industry at the age of 68.
We had to pay a scrap dealer to haul it away after I disassembled it. Sad!
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.