Category: Trade Category

Willimantic Daily Chronicle, 1961

Willimantic Daily Chronicle
The newspaper was located in this building at 24-26 Church Street, Willimantic, Connecticut from 1877 until 1972. The building was demolished in 1976 after the newspaper had moved to the outskirts of town. The old location is now the Arthur W. Crosbie [memorial municipal] parking lot. My father, who died shortly before the parking lot was build, would have chuckled if he’d have known a parking lot was named after him.

Vin Crosbie allowed these excellent photographs to be used on Metal Type.

Vin said: “These photographs detail the production of a 10,000-circulation daily newspaper in Connecticut on Friday, March 17, 1961. I found these slides among those of my father, the paper’s general manager. The Chronicle has been owned by my family since 1877. I’m the fifth generation and the sixth is already working there. Read the Full Article . . .

The Graphotype

Graphotype
Graphotype (new model) composing and casting machine; view of right-hand side from the front

Many thanks to Robin Kenworthy for sending in this article, originally published in a book called “Typographical Printing Surfaces” shortly after 1907. The Graphotype was an early rival to the Monotype system, but had the keyboard and casting system in the one machine.

Robin has a museum-worthy collection of machines, type and matrices as well as an extensive library on the subject of letterpress. Read the Full Article . . .

Shaffstall Mat Detector

Everett G Shaffstall
Everett G Shaffstall photographed in 1972.

Tony Shaffstall from Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, got in touch with Metal Type to give us details of the Shaffstall Transistor Mat Detector that his father (Everett G Shaffstall) invented.

Tony sent in the patent application (10 pages with some nice illustrations) dating from 1960 and a 1965 copy of the Installation Instructions and Trouble Diagnosis (72 pages). Read the Full Article . . .

Express Gifts

Intertype Monarchs
An overview of the 3 Intertype Monarchs.

Chris Johnson contacted Metal Type in November 2007 saying that he was an engineer working for Express Gifts, part of Findel PLC and had been looking after 3 working Intertype Monarchs for the past 11 years. The company had recently acquired a refurbished Intertype C4 to bring the count of working linecasters up to 4! The machines are used to produce slugs of people’s names to manufacture personalised gift items.

The machines all have a Decitek Floppy Disk Drive operating a Fairchild Teletypesetting unit. Chris very kindly sent in the following photographs. Read the Full Article . . .

Excelsior Press

Offset press
Multilith Offset Press

Alan Runfeldt runs a 1930s era print shop in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, USA. As well as traditional letterpress printing Alan rescues, restores and passes on old letterpress equipment such Kelsey Excelsior Platen Presses, Chandler & Price Platen Presses and Vandercook & Challenge Proof presses. He also collects, catalogs, uses and some times passes on fonts of hand-set foundry type and wood type as well as the cases and cabinets to keep them in.

I don’t think this press is in Alan’s collection, his website says the press is in Philadelphia. I had to include the picture, though, it’s got to be the oldest litho press I’ve seen. Read the Full Article . . .

Daily Mirror, UK

Daily Mirror
FROM L-R: Bert Heinman, Tom Bailey (who sent in the photograph), Charlie King and Norman Barnes overseeing the last wet dab of the front and back pages of The Mirror on the night of his retirement as “The Printer” in the early 1970s

Tom Bailey sent in this picture of Norman Barnes retiring from his job as “The Printer”, early 1970s.

Tom Bailey said: “To my mind the setting of type was an art form and having spent many hours setting five point type, visually letter-spacing said type for advertisements to be published in newspapers; actually cutting up cigarette papers and bus tickets to use in the spacing. Remember I was not the only one, I had to learn from somebody. Read the Full Article . . .

Yorkshire Evening Press, 125 Years

Linecasters on lorries
Linecasters are put onto lorries in October 1986 outside the Evening Press’s office in Coney Street, York. The Press’s trio of mechanics are in attendance.

There are six pages of Yorkshire Evening Press photos on Metal Type. Check the “Related Pages” menu to see the rest.

In October 2007 the Yorkshire Evening Press, based in York in the UK, celebrated 125 years of production by delving into their archives and publishing a special souvenir supplement. Read the Full Article . . .

Wood Press, RAF Wroughton

RAF Wroughton

Deep in the countryside of Wiltshire, in the UK, lies the disused World War Two Airbase RAF Wroughton. In six huge, decaying hangars named in typical military style: L1, L2, etc. lie thousands of the modern world’s greatest treasures, guarded round-the-clock by British Army veterans.

The Airbase acts as a storage facility for the Science Museum. The Museum’s public face in South Kensington can only show eight per cent of their massive collection. Read the Full Article . . .