Rotometals

No, they have banks of pages in linotype. So if there is only a 1 or 2 line change in a chapter, easy to change, and great print. But if they have to change a whole chapter then they use other than the Linotype. But the Linotype produces the same pages for years with very good quality. And these are expensive books. They may have changed now, but in 1990, they said it was much cheaper and better with the linotype. The use offset printing.

Hmm. We're not communicating. d8-) However, it's a side issue, so I won't belabor it.

My guess is that you're talking about hand-setting type, not Linotype. Linotype machines are BIG, expensive suckers used for setting large masses of type quickly -- pages and pages. It has a keyboard and it mechanically drops type into slots, making a hell of a racket.

Hand-setting is done in "sticks," something I did in high school, when I worked one summer for an old-fashioned printer called Princeton Photoprocess. It produces the same end result as Linotype, but it's more appropriate for smaller jobs, up to a few hundred words. No equipment is needed -- it's all labor, but it's trivial for just a line or two of type.

In any case, any Linotype metal that's available today must be from someone's ancient hoard, or freshly alloyed to the old Linotype standard alloy. That's more likely.

"Ed Huntress" wrote in news:4b58ea5a$0$5008$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:

My cousin runs a one-man print shop on Cape Cod that specializes in odd jobs that other printers won't (or can't) handle. Things like sequentially numbered tickets. He still has a Linotype machine, but he seldom has a job that makes it worth firing up. He's trying to retire, but hasn't found any takers.

Doug White

very interesting and goes against my preconceptions that hard lead bullets lead the barrel less.

Selling a Linotype machine today is about like trying to sell a numerically controlled lathe that uses pneumatic logic. d8-)

The Linotype machine casts the column of type. Yes they hand set the type into a large frame. They said it was cheaper than redoing the page and remaking the whole printing web (I think that is what it is called). I designed the disk controllers for the Vax computer systems they used. And as to mechanical, Linotype machines are fantastic. The difference in width of each character plate allowing the machine to sort the chacter back into the proper slot.

They certainly are masterful mechanical devices. That difference in letter width, and the kerning (letterspacing) adjustments are amazing. To me, they're like giant Curta Calculators -- a zenith of mechanical art, just before it became obsolete.

There used to be thousands of them around. We had six of the Linotype-Hell Model 6's at a secondary office of McGraw-Hill when I was hired there (1973). But before I actually started, a month later, they had been moved into the warehouse, replaced by a new Wang typesetting system that ran on a minicomputer with around 15 terminals.

In New York, where they published 20 of our 26 magazines, they must have had dozens of them. I transferred there a few years later and they were all gone, replaced by a fancy computer typesetting system. Today, I could do the same work with a dozen decent typists working at PCs.

However, they don't even bother with typists anymore. Writers write on PCs; editors edit the file; the artists lay out the page and the files go straight to the printer. But they don't print out the pages, except for proofreading. They don't even make film. They go straight to printing plates from the computer files.

And it's all pretty cheap.

This company printed a new tax guide for Accountants and lawyers every year.

90% of the book was the same, so they said it was cheaper with the linotype. They had used some of the same frames for years with no changes.

You can see them again on your next trip south.

Kevin Gallimore

I have a friend still trying to get rid of a goodly pile of linotype and monotype material - contact me if interested (remember, don't reply here, get my email off my web page, wbnoble.com

Yes!

Emailed!!

Gunner

The current Democratic party has lost its ideological basis for existence.

- It is NOT fiscally responsible.

- It is NOT ethically honorable.

- It has started wars based on lies.

- It does not support the well-being of americans - only billionaires.

- It has suppresed constitutional guaranteed liberties.

- It has foisted a liar as president upon America.

- It has violated US national sovereignty in trade treaties.

- It has refused to enforce the national borders.

...It no longer has valid reasons to exist. Lorad474

"Ed Huntress" wrote in news:4b58f6b5$0$4975$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:

He's trying to sell the whole business, and the Linotype machine is just a part of the deal. Unless he can find a museum that wants it, it's probably going to get scrapped. There's LOT of metal in one of those things. Most of his gear is museum stuff anyway.

Doug White

Like old machine tools, Linotypes and other old printing equipment have a hobby/museum following. A publishing consultant I worked with years ago travelled all over the world collecting sets of antique type, and he had a little flat-bed press that he used to make replicas of old printing, hand-setting the type. Apparently he was part of an international hobby group that was very serious about it.

However, there were a LOT of Linotype machines around, and lots of them are sitting in warehouses now, or they've been scrapped. The new technologies swept through the industry like a tsunami -- something like the way that wire EDM stood the diemaking business on its head, and at about the same time: the mid-'70s. Finding a buyer for that old printing equipment must be tough.

It's not something that artists would pick up, the way they bought up lithographers' stones or engraving equipment when they became obsolete.

and ask them how they dispose of their waste, you

lead. They can be used to 1800FPS without gas checks

on the Brinnel scale and Linotype is about 28/29,

and do not deflect off window glass like lead bullets

Actually, yes - Go into any good rubber stamp shop that still does lots of work, and you'll find a motley assortment of Linotype, Monotype and Ludlow (Headline sized type - DEWEY BEATS TRUMAN) machines and every font that the owner can find.

When you make the Bakelite matrice for the stamp the heat distorts the type metal, so regular movable type goes to heck in a few uses. Linotype is perfect - you use it once to make a matrice (maybe twice if you blow the first one) and you can make a hundred stamps from that one matrice.

Then you throw the used and heat distorted Linotype slug back into the melt furnace pot for reuse.

If you only make one or a few of a certain stamp, ask the shop if you can have the matrice too just in case. When the stamp wears out, you can send the matrice back to get an exact duplicate.

And the photo-resist style plastic stamps flat out don't hold up to severe service like the old stuff.

-->--

Back around 1972 or so, I could have learned how to be a linotype operator. My school system had one and had a course on it. I took typing instead. I figured computers were in my future and typing would be a head start. Plan worked for me for many years.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

That was a good move. You would have learned the skill just in time to give demonstrations at your local museum.

I knew quite a few typesetters, even the digital kind, who found themselves out of work with absolutely no prospects. There were waves of them: around

1975, and again around 1985. The last one I knew of worked around 1993.

Of course, that happened to many printing- and publishing-industry jobs over the same period.

There's one in the Baltimore Museum of Industry (geez, R.C.M content). A retired guy who demonstrates it worked on it in a newspaper, and told me that they replaced them in the 70s.

Yep, someone else posted a note about that one in the Baltimore museum. I'm tempted to stop in there.

And, yes, most of them disappeared in the '70s. I mentioned here before that I went to work for McGraw-Hill Publications Co. in '74. I had been hired a couple of months earlier and they had six Linotype machines operating in a secondary office. When I started work they had all been moved to the warehouse, replaced by a Wang computerized phototype ("cold type") system. That was for promotions and mail solicitations for 26 magazines and newsletters. The publications themselves were typeset on a much fancier computerized typesetting system, which replaced another, larger bunch of Linotypes at about the same time, or slightly earlier. They also handled the typesetting for McGraw-Hill books.

Those Linotypes and the multi-million-dollar phototype systems can now be replaced with a desktop PC and a high-quality laser printer. In fact, though, the whole system has gone away in most publishing houses. The writers write on computers; the editors edit on computers; the art directors compose pages on computers; and the output is reproduced directly onto the printing plates. Along the way they'll print out some proofs for proofreading, color-checking, etc.

From reading newspapers, I suspect that the last proof reader retired about ten years ago. Gerry :-)} London, Canada