1970s USA Offset Press, Newspaper

[@druckerman247]

I'll miss that deafening rumble one day

[@54upchuck]

I started working in a newspaper pressroom in 1972 worked on letterpress and offset. Watched everything change with technology, worked my way up to supervisor. I retired in 2020, kind of sad to see the decline off printing, but that's progress.

[@165alice1002]

I also started in 72. stayed with it until the paper was sold.

[@tomballard8877]

Goss metro worked on one for 27 years.

[@TeaSpiracy]

Imagine if you had a time machine and could tell those workers, that someday everyone would have a phone that can give them any information one could need at their fingertips? Crazy how fast things change.

[@ssnoc]

I miss these days .... it was fun and interesting work

[@carlosariasluyando5104]

Aquellos tiempos cuando no había CTP y todo era casi manual y el proceso desde el montaje de cada fotografía,noticias, entraba a la fotomecánica ,de ahi a la insoladora de placas,luego el revelado y finalmente se montaba en la rotativa.

[@budlewis721]

"... far cleaner.." I don't remember that being a thing. I must have missed the clean part.

[@druckerman247]

Yeah. Ink in my arm pits.

[@Informationwolves]

My dad prefers read newspaper that in the phone, doctor told him it’s healthy for his eyes than smartphones!

[@Morash10]

So different than when I ran a press the one I ran was smaller a Harris v 15 we didn’t have automatic roll change all my hand the plate maker my hand also

[@morefiction3264]

Could someone explain how the image goes from the plate to the blanket roller then to the paper? It's kinda glossed over here. What is the blanket roller? It sounds like it's a blanket of ink but that would sound messy.

[@nicksmith3147]

Blanket cylinder has a rubber impressionable blanket mounted on the cylinder. Ink rollers transfer ink to plate cylinder then onto the blanket and then onto the paper

[@user-jt5vm3mi1w]

wowowow

[@hollonbischel5786]

I can still make that paper hat.

[@TeaSpiracy]

And what did they do of a machine broke before press time?

[@paulmenkens5997]

We fixed it! Or if it was serious, had the paper in the next town print the paper, the papers themselves were competitors but the press departments all helped each other out. I ran a pressroom for quite a few years and in that time I printed a lot of other papers, sometimes with only a few minutes notice. Very rarely had to have ours printed out though.

[@robertcaves3797]

the good old days!!!!!

[@hollonbischel5786]

They got it easy now.colorliner journeyman 13 years.1992-2004

[@bbodinefan11]

Gravure is better.

[@zzzzzz8173]

sheetfed

[@RR98guy]

@@zzzzzz8173 Flexo is even better

[@paulmenkens5997]

But way too expensive

[@paulmenkens5997]

There was a movement to print the midsized and large papers by flexo, but it proved way too expensive, mostly for the plates, all the flexo newspaper presses have been scrapped before their time. The print quality was not as good either although the waste was lower. Roto-Gravure is great quality but once again the costs are in the stratosphere and take too long to make plates. Sheetfed is too slow, a web offset press can produce a finished paper in one operation, to do a paper by sheetfed would require an army of people to fold and collate it after printing.

[@bbodinefan11]

@@paulmenkens5997 The roto gravure presses I ran used cylinders not plates.

[@hollonbischel5786]

Flipped burner 6yrs before metro then colorliner.set them nips.