Rotometals

Thanks, Ned. That was very interesting. I remember as a kid, going to the back door of the local newspaper and watching the linotype machines work. Boy was that NOISY! I also used to gather up pieces of type and take them home and play with them. It never ceases to amaze me how someone could sit down and design machines like that.

Jim

One of our local reporters managed to brake the breaks on his car, or something along that line. I suggested to him that spill chucker was not his frond. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

There used to be a restaurant in Hamilton Ontario, in the former newspaper building. they had a lot of the old equipment on display, including linotype machines. I don't know whether it is still there or even remember the name from 30 years back. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:17:14 -0500, the infamous Gerald Miller scrawled the following:

Nor were any of his English teachers, Gerry.

-- It is in his pleasure that a man really lives; it is from his leisure that he constructs the true fabric of self. -- Agnes Repplier

There are a couple of excellent videos showing the operation of Linotype machines at:

Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for those!

Regards Mark Rand RTFM

Wow, what a great film. I'll have to download the mp4 and watch it again. I have an interest in this stuff beyond the obvious mechanical appeal.

I had a friend in high school who was determined to enter the printer's apprentice program at the Boston Herald, despite our best efforts to talk him out of it. It was obvious to even a bunch of HS seniors in 1970 that it was a dead end.

My father was a dot etcher in offset printing for 40 years. Not long after he retired I was building automation for manufacturing the consumables for one of the first direct-to-press offset systems.