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.
Streamlined to the nth degree, on one vast floor, dominated by a control gallery, the plant of this truly exceptional metropolitan daily was completely uncomplicated by the exigencies of restricted space that are to be found in congested Fleet Street or Times Square.
Here by the airport, with sun-swept windows and spacious clean alleys, everything was arranged in functional sequence.
From copy desk to the batteries of forty-two Linotypes and the modern Monotypes, the assembled material was rushed from the make-up turtle to the matrix-rolling machines.
Here extra sheets of dry mats were cast, to be flown by special plane to Leningrad, there to be cast in the stereo room of the Leningradskaya Pravda for the Soviet-built rotary presses that would print an edition of 240,000 for the inhabitants of the Karelian Soviet Republic.
Meantime the original dry mats proceeded to six great Winkler-Fallert stereo machines which translated them into plates for the twenty-one-unit English Hoe rotary press which produced an edition of three million daily for distribution by plane, train and truck throughout the Soviet Union.