Linotype Typesetting (1960) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcp60z0E3ls

by CaliforniaKarl • 9 years ago

76 49 9 years ago

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drivers99• 9 years ago

The teletypesetter, driving the keyboard with a paper tape, at the end was the icing on the cake.

farss• 9 years ago

RIYL this: there's a surprisingly good documentary about the history of Linotype: http://www.linotypefilm.com/

avs733• 9 years ago

If you want to see the entire workflow as implemented by the New York Times there is a great documentary about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU

The documentary covers the last day that the NYT used a metal/linotype press and talks through the entire process that happened from newsroom to printing. It is a truly interesting way to spend 28 minutes.

52-6F-623• 9 years ago

I hard second this.

I've seen this before. If you're into media, arts, operations, design, whatever -- it's a great doc.

Aloha2• 9 years ago

this is absolutely incredible!

emmelaich• 9 years ago

A newspaper printing press at full speed is really something to behold. Something I did as a morning paper boy.

Such a noise! Wait till it speeds up... https://youtu.be/G8cCS3o62iI?t=887

Note the lack of safety measures and ear protection.

georgestephanis• 9 years ago

Archive.org version: https://archive.org/details/FarewellEtaoinShrdlu

RockDoggyDaddy• 9 years ago

This was great. Thanks for posting.

ballenf• 9 years ago

Incredible method of doing full line justification of text:

https://youtu.be/jcp60z0E3ls?t=17m0s

The machine as a whole really strikes me as akin to complex computer system engineering.

microcolonel• 9 years ago

I wish my printer had a vat of molten lead in it.

On a more serious note, I think a lot of people today have a hard time believing that specialized machines as complex as this were ever built. It's like looking at one of those pocket mechanical calculators.

52-6F-623• 9 years ago

If you're still in Toronto, pay a visit to Coach House Books: https://chbooks.com/ / Loc: https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Coach+House+Books/@43.66628...

I'm not sure how they feel about drop ins these days, but they usually take part in the Open Doors Toronto days.

They still have an operational Linotype, or at least they did 8-10 years ago. I don't know if old Stan Bevington is still involved much. They used to show guests how to operate it. That and an old fly-wheel platen press.

edit: It looks like they've opened a bookstore there now. They also used to do a fall and spring launch. The fall launch they'd host at the shop and serve beer. The spring launch used to be held at a venue of some kind. Not sure about it anymore -- it's been a while.

KGIII4• 9 years ago

Beer, machinery, and molten metal! I'm not even kidding when I say that is right up my alley.

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

While not quite lead, there are printers that print by melting sticks of ink.

Never mind that laser printers print by melting ink dust.

Still, i am a bit curious about how well a certain line of Epson printers work, as they do not use cartridges but rather refillable ink tanks.

Animats3• 9 years ago

That's from the Internet Archive, uploaded to YouTube with ads enabled. Internet Archive version, with slightly better audio: [1]

The Linotype is dates from 1885. The basic design didn't change much for 90 years. It wasn't the first typesetting machine, but it was much better than its predecessors, and nothing that came later was significantly better. Until typesetting became computerized.

A surprisingly small number of people designed the few mechanically complex machines that worked reliably. The Linotype was designed by one of the greats of mechanical design, Ottmar Mergenthaler.

Howard Krum designed the Teletype. People had been trying to build printing telegraphs for half a century, with limited success. Krum got it right, and the basic mechanism didn't change from 1926 to 1958. A Teletype decodes serial data entirely by mechanical means, and Krum figured out how to make that work reliably.

William Burroughs built the first good adding machine, in 1884. There had been adding and multiplying machines for over a century, but his had reliability. When you pulled the handle, you were putting energy into a spring, and the release of the spring, slowed by a dashpot, powered the mechanism consistently. Earlier machines could get wrong answers if operated too fast. He also came up with the mechanism which causes adding machines and calculators to jam rather than produce wrong answers as they wear out. There's a bail that drops into a slot in the number wheels at the end of a cycle. If the number wheels haven't made it to a valid position, as can happen with a worn-out machine, the slots and bail won't line up, the bail won't drop, and the machine locks up.

Henry Maudslay built the first good lathe in 1787. It's in the Kensington Science Museum in London, where I've seen it, and it looks like a lathe from the 20th century. He got the design and feature set right, and that basic design persisted for centuries.

Few people are really good at this. It takes not only 3D design ability, but insight into how to design so that machines wear well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcp60z0E3ls

Aloha2• 9 years ago

Often the wear-well factor came thru iteration rather than out of the box - AT&T was famous for doing this, because it did its own remanufacturing and recycling in house - it had literal feedback on how its equipment wore in service - beyond the indirect feedback it got from the field forces doing the repairs.

digi_owl4• 9 years ago

Makes me wonder if we lost something with the transition to computers...

raverbashing2• 9 years ago

Lead vapours in enclosed spaces

Seems a good tradeoff to me

pipio21• 9 years ago

Ohhh yeah, we lost a lot of things: We lost all those noises that Teletype did that drove anyone crazy.

Without the Linotype we lost all the toxic fumes that killed people, and the accidents with molten lead being expelled and burning people.

We lost the exclusivity factor of only a few companies being able to spend the enormous price those things had and the many people that were needed to repair the machines, write, physically send and receive messages.

gkya2• 9 years ago

Mechanical machines are really satisfying, for their tactileness and simplicity. I have a typewriter, watching real impressions appear on real paper is way more fulfilling, and the organicness of the interaction is not even nearly matched in any computer program I used: you're always detached from the circuitry, where with mechanical devices you're a part of it. But the advantages of computerised production far outweigh those of mechanical devices, so I only type on my typewriter every once in a while as a recreative activity.

KGIII4• 9 years ago

The ability for one person to understand the totality of the process.

ingve• 9 years ago

If you want to learn more about this, "Graphic Means" [0] is an excellent documentary about pre-digital graphic design production that also covers the Linotype era.

[0] http://www.graphicmeans.com/

anodari• 9 years ago

I grew up inside a small print shop of my parents where we got to have 3 linotypes. I never learned to work on a linotype, but at certain time, my job was to melt lead lines to be reused as bars.

bouvin2• 9 years ago

A great post indeed—this is what Youtube is excellent for! I especially enjoyed how justification was accomplished using wedge-shaped spacers.

KGIII4• 9 years ago

I agree, YouTube is great for this stuff. I watch documentaries, almost to the exclusion of everything else.

So, I am almost sorry for this...

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsETq9h35dgQq8...

You weren't doing anything better.

bouvin2• 9 years ago

I'm already subscribed ;)

baldfat• 9 years ago

I just lost an hour. Thanks that was really interesting. The New York Times video in the thread was exactly what I was wondering about. How the switch happened.

crispyambulance• 9 years ago

FYI, you can see an actual linotype in operation in the Baltimore Museum of Industry. Fantastic machine.

(http://www.thebmi.org/exhibitions-collections/permanent-exhi...)

cafard2• 9 years ago

The old Washington Post building on 15th St. NW used to have a Linotype in a window by the front door.

HN might also be interested in the Monotype, which made an early use of paper tape.

thisacctforreal• 9 years ago

As mentioned in the video, the teletype add-on described at the end replays tapes at 20,000 words per hour, or 333wpm for a more familiar unit.

I adore the way the mattresses include rail-readable metadata for being sorted again :)

bokey2• 9 years ago

Great video; thanks for sharing!

Linotype Typesetting (1960) [video]

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