Yesterday’s Technology . . . Today!
A collection of print-related limericks sent in by Greg Fischer, who spent 42 years working on the Trentonian newspaper in Trenton, New Jersey, USA.
A machinist who came from Timor
Changed magazines often before.
But the lock wasn’t tight
To the left, but was right.
And he dumped mats all over the floor.
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.”
Alan Young tells us of his days as possibly one of the last Linotype operators.
STARTED my career at Wolf Composition in Reading, Massachusetts, USA in 1964.
Another fascinating story from Dean Nayes takes us back to the Salt Lake City Tribune in the 1950s.
I RETURNED to the Salt Lake Tribune just a few months after going through the first time, on my way back to Denver, to get my family, and return to San Francisco.
Dean D Nayes aka The Itinerant Typographical Engineer tells a story from his travels in the 1950s.
IN 1956, myself, and a friend, Joe McGowan, left the Rocky Mountain News in February, after the Xmas layoffs.
Ex Linotype operator Thomas A Berkheiser tells of his time working on the Shamokin News-Dispatch in the 1960s and 70s.
MY NAME is Thomas A. Berkheiser, from Paxinos, Pennsylvania.
Dean Nayes gives us an insight into what life was like for a travelling compositor in the USA in the 1960s.
BACK in 1968, after 13 years of “homesteading”, I decided I was going on the road again.
Dean Nayes sent in this amusing story about a very ingenious Linotype operator.
DURING my travels across the United States I came across a very ingenious Linotype operator.
A poem about the Linotype from the book “In the Beginning was The Word” by David Andrus.
1954:
Central S.S., Hamilton
A poem about the Linotype from the book “In the Beginning was The Word” by David Andrus.
It was one of those days
the machine began to act up,
th troubl somwhr in
th distributor mchanism,
nd I only begn to notice it
when my proofs cme bck
nd the proofreder’s red ink
ran frm my type like blod
frm a slaughtered pg,
lke paint frm Van Ggh’s
Hed of A Womn,
and the sharp, terrile lines
wounded me at my machin,
so that siting a the keord
I flt like
a World War II fighter plot
going down with hi craft,
in front f me th burning lead
scummd ovr with dust nd
dross, al of it trembling
bcuse of a slightly-loos
driv blt, and th day
ending badly when the elevatr
jammed and a spurt f lead
ejaculated int the air and
came down on my head lik
hot hot rain,
nd now as I get oldr
and baldr, the smll burn scars
becme mor and mor visible,
remindng me of tht day
th machine began to act up
and finlly hurt me
hurt m bdly