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Stress-free book publishing (10 minute video)
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ChrisGreaves
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Stress-free book publishing (10 minute video)
There's nothing heavier than an empty water bottle
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BobH
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Re: Stress-free book publishing (10 minute video)
MAN!
That took me back a few years. My dad was a printer. In fact, he operated the Mergenthaler Lin-O-Type machine - the one shown making the metal lines of type. Watching that video brought back memories of the sounds of a print shop in full operation and even more surprisingly, the smells of the ink, paper, glue, and machine oil involved in the different processes.
That was a good film, but it left out a lot of details. For example, the place where the type was placed in the frame, leveled and locked was called the compositors stone because the table top was a very flat piece of granite. On the presses, flame was sometimes used to flash dry the ink before the uncut sheets were stacked. This prevented smudging, ghosting, and smearing. It was quite a sight for a boy of 10 to watch the presses when a sheet of flame would shoot across the freshly printed sheets. I was always amazed that it didn't set the paper afire.
The processes you saw in that film caught printing processes in the era of the 20th Century from approximately World War I through the 1950's. As the '60s progressed, printing operations turned away from typesetting and sheet presses to photo-typesetting and continuous roll paper printing with offset presses. Nowadays there is no typesetting involved. Instead, all is done electronically.
Thanks for the trip back 60+ years, Chris. Great memories of the printing business that evoked fond memories of my dad!
That took me back a few years. My dad was a printer. In fact, he operated the Mergenthaler Lin-O-Type machine - the one shown making the metal lines of type. Watching that video brought back memories of the sounds of a print shop in full operation and even more surprisingly, the smells of the ink, paper, glue, and machine oil involved in the different processes.
That was a good film, but it left out a lot of details. For example, the place where the type was placed in the frame, leveled and locked was called the compositors stone because the table top was a very flat piece of granite. On the presses, flame was sometimes used to flash dry the ink before the uncut sheets were stacked. This prevented smudging, ghosting, and smearing. It was quite a sight for a boy of 10 to watch the presses when a sheet of flame would shoot across the freshly printed sheets. I was always amazed that it didn't set the paper afire.
The processes you saw in that film caught printing processes in the era of the 20th Century from approximately World War I through the 1950's. As the '60s progressed, printing operations turned away from typesetting and sheet presses to photo-typesetting and continuous roll paper printing with offset presses. Nowadays there is no typesetting involved. Instead, all is done electronically.
Thanks for the trip back 60+ years, Chris. Great memories of the printing business that evoked fond memories of my dad!
Bob's yer Uncle
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Bigaldoc
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Re: Stress-free book publishing (10 minute video)
Boy, that was also a dangerous business too! As a 17-18 year old kid I worked for a local newspaper and almost cut off the end of one finger at the end of a flatbed press where the paper was being printed, folded and trimmed. I tried to grab an errant sheet of newsprint coming into the folder and got my hand caught in a chain sprocket.