Linotype Demonstration

[@johnbray3143]

great explanation, only wish it had no intrusive background music

[@michaelbauers8800]

I often feel the same, but this background music was at least at a reasonable volume, and tolerable. I have seen some video with loud, crappy rock music, which forced me to mute the video.

[@modtwentyeight]

You know you are getting old when your livelihood is in a museum. Good times!

[@alextallen8019]

That will be a weird feeling! I'm in manufacturing now and the day I see an Allen Bradley PLC in a museum I'll think of this!

[@PartyOf8Please]

Our family always visited local museums whenever we went on vacations. They were usually a highlight of our trip!

[@Cornelius2u]

My father learned to linotype at the age of 21. He was an operator for 3 major metro newspapers until 1985. With the advent of the computer, he choose to keep working as a lino operator in small, sweat-shop-like places for non-news printing operations until he retired in 1990. I visited him at work at the Chicago Sun in 1969. Loud, industrial, gritty, and dirty. He loved it.

[@lewiemcneely9143]

I was mesmerized just watching. I can see why he stayed. NOTHING like it!

[@RichBinell]

When I was a kid, I was a Cub Scout, and they took us on a field trip to the Boston Globe, and I was mesmerized by the Linotype Room there. I stood transfixed. A lady sitting before one asked me to spell my name, and a minute later handed me a slug with my name backwards. I'm still astonished.

[@kostas8018]

Was that in the 1960s?

[@ShiftingDrifter]

I had a similar experience. The guy showed me the entire process of getting an article from the press department, then typing, setting and bundling the type for the printer molds. What blew my mind most was his rapid-fire pace at setting and proof reading the type upside down! He explained that it was an easier trick than trying to read the reversed text upright. He also had a direct phone line to with the writer staff to clarify any mistakes he discovered or to edit columns to "fit" the articles while making room for advertisements. It truly was a complex occupational skill for its day. One has to watch it in action at high speed to appreciate all that's involved.

[@lewiemcneely9143]

@@ShiftingDrifter AMEN to that. 2-handed lightning!

[@edwardrichardson8254]

A typewriter crossed with a 750 degree F hot plate, a foundry, a mechanized spark plug gap spacer, and a Tetris-like plate setter, and a Chuck-E-Cheese prize game spitting it all out. Steampunk heaven. Literally "hot" off the presses, every page plate for the morning paper is going to be remelted for the evening paper.

[@ax14pz107]

Too bad lead is so toxic. It really was a useful metal.

[@COSMACELF1802]

My dad used to take these machines apart, repair, move them, reassemble them, etc. He knew where every part went and not just for the Linotypes, but for the various versions of the Intertypes too! And Comet's

[@cavecookie1]

My grandpa went to Linotype school in the early 30s in Colorado. He was an old-school small town newspaper publisher, with a tiny, little weekly. His shop was full of amazing machines, but the Linotype was the best...wheels and gears and belts and cam, and MOLTEN LEAD!!! As a kid, I would just watch grandpa work, and he'd let us grandkids "help"; better than TV!

[@lewiemcneely9143]

When I was younger, our county seat had it's own paper and a linotype hid in a back alley. Every time I'd go to town I'd ease back and watch the operator, racked back in a cane-bottomed straight chair, chain smoking and typing like a son-of-a-gun. All the whirring and clunking and lead ingots being slowly dropped into the melter and type slugs whizzing around just astounded me. I'd lean against the door frame in a trance and since it was summer, the door was always open and the afternoon sun always shining inside. Some things you just don't forget!

[@PartyOf8Please]

Sounds such a wonderful way to spend an afternoon! I think I can smell the building and the hot lead and the old feller sitting there ☺️

[@lewiemcneely9143]

@@PartyOf8Please Every time I was in town I'd go watch him. It was simply amazing with everything happening at once. Something you'll never forget!

[@PartyOf8Please]

@@lewiemcneely9143 You’re a lucky man to have lived through it, even luckier to still have such great memories those days spent in that doorway! Hold fast to those days, my friend! 😉

[@lewiemcneely9143]

@@PartyOf8Please I have been BLESSED beyond measure and did a LOT of living! God is good! ALL the time!

[@garykaplan7728]

Happy memories. My dad was a Linotype operator for a small newspaper in southern MN.

[@gratenate4932]

I was running the Linotype machine at age 12 at the Eaton Rapids Journal office! My great-grandfather bought the paper in the early 1920's after it had been opened in 1879. I learned to type on a manual typewriter, too, and hold my H.S. record for men at 100 wpm.

[@sky173]

Awesome. Loved the old line-o-type machine. Brings back memories of my bookbinding days.

[@FKreider]

This is amazing - I have never seen one in operation before and I always wondered how this was done!!

[@mrhorse4298]

Very interesting, but the music is really distracting.

[@anne-droid7739]

Thank you so much! This clears up some details in Fredric Brown's "Etaoin Shrdlu" that I've been wondering about since 1975. =)

[@andrewdavis7198]

etaoin - shrdlu - cmfwyp - vbgkqj - xz.,:;

[@brentanoschool]

Lane Tech - Chicago -had our daily paper and printed our own year book '73 - had 3 rooms linotypes - composing room , light tables - and offset press room

[@VaxxedStories]

He forgot to mention that the magazine up top was for one specific font and had to be swapped out to change the font or switch to italics. Those magazines were very heavy and had to be lifted up to install at the top of the machine, after removing the existing one. A storage rack of perhaps a dozen magazines would be located near the Linotype.

[@judithmatthews6766]

Started my apprenticeship on Linotypes in 1973 in New Zealand. Changed to computers in 1977, but still did part time on Linos.

[@SpoopySquid]

These machines look so satisfying to use

[@jackrambit9637]

Saw this in action at the museum! A wonderful machine in a wonderful place

[@rowmagnvs]

Amazing > In 1876, a German clock maker, Ottmar Mergenthaler, who had emigrated to the United States in 1872,[2] was approached by James O. Clephane and his associate Charles T. Moore, who sought a quicker way of publishing legal briefs.[3] By 1884, he conceived the idea of assembling metallic letter molds, called matrices, and casting molten metal into them, all within a single machine.[2]

[@tonyarc9455]

Hey my dad worked on linotype and would like to educate folks! Alas he is in the ICU. He took a bad fall and he fractured his skull. BUT he wants to teach folks about it. He might die but its life-long ambition. Can you invite him on your show? It would EVERYTHING to him :(

[@mikeherbert6249]

I just saw this today I hope your father is doing well. Have contacts with someone who has both Linotypes and Intertype machines. I’m sure they would love to talk to your father. Hope all is well!

[@tbullock79]

Jesus Christ. I can't imagine the maintenance on this thing.

[@CurtaCrazy]

Yes, lots of it!

[@PopShoppekid]

At Daily Racing Form of Canada in Toronto when I started there in the stats and editorial depts in 1978 we still printed hot metal with many of those linotype machines churning out our set type but in spring 1981, no more. Went to a more modern cold type computerized production. Yes it was an end of an era after the 1980 season.

[@gianpietrospezzati4333]

Ho avuto la fortuna di lavorarci su questa macchina...a livello di meccanica impressionante. Il cambio magazzini dei vari caratteri e corpi...nostalgia

[@dawnkravagna3200]

Thank you for this demonstration. Cannot really understand how the machine worked from a textbook description.

[@michaelbauers8800]

I have set stuff by hand, I can see how this would be much faster. Never seen one in person, but heard of them for years.

[@SuPeRNinJaRed]

In case no one has mentioned it yet... ETAOIN SHRDLU WAS HERE

[@KarenChungIvy]

Great introduction - thank you! (From a printer's daughter! 😊)

[@MargaretPinard]

Makes me wonder how often an operator would have to check if a magazine was out of a letter...?

[@CurtaCrazy]

The matrix letters were returned to the magazine by the long elevator arm and automatically sorted mechanically by coded teeth to return to the correct channels for reuse. This was called he system of “ circulating matrices”. It was a key feature of the Linotype. The Lino was highly automated to get the most effective fast typesetting.

[@MargaretPinard]

@@CurtaCrazy Wow, thanks!

[@COSMACELF1802]

My dad used to operate these machines and compose in French. They use more e's than any other letter and with 1 line in the assembler, 1 line casting and 1 line returning through the decoder, he would run out of e's. So, when he was on a roll, he would add his own e's manually from a stack, then before he let the last line return, he would dump them out before the magazine over filled.

[@MargaretPinard]

@@COSMACELF1802 Very cool!

[@RichBinell]

Last I knew, there was one still operating at a rubber stamp making company in Santa Clara, CA.

[@COSMACELF1802]

The real cool thing that's not shown here, is how the space bands work. These space bands are tapered and when the line is sent for casting, they are pressed to put equal spaces between all the words. Oh wait, did the Linotypes have those? or was it just something new for the Intertypes?

[@kenschwentker4446]

Yes Lino-types used the space bands you described. I was a pressman at a job shop for over 30 years. In 1980, when i started there, they had two Lino-types operating all day, and the men kindly showed me how they worked.

[@Howoldareweanywayyipes]

Dad was doing this in grand rapids michigan before the grand rapids press came to be... mom brought me downtown and dad would type my name in lead... pretty cool stuff.

[@MegaJohnhammond]

it takes a week to produce 8 pages? if you worked at a newspaper, you'd be fired before lunchtime

[@MelancoliaI]

The biggest leap forward in printing history since Gutenberg.

[@crazedlink]

I was watching that twilight zone episode Printer’s Devil and was curious about this.

[@awfvkwbvawfvkwbv]

لي كل السعادة والفرح اني كنت عامل ماهر على هذه الماكنة طيلة ٢٥ عاما ..

[@kruvi123]

Really cool

[@paulpatterson4983]

Wouldn't the lead wear down quickly after printing?

[@CurtaCrazy]

Not too quickly, the lead contains antimony for hardness and tin for fluidity (to cast a better face).

[@teucer4]

Antimony and tin for ease of alloying with lead.

[@duffman18]

Paul Patterson no they wouldn't even have the chance to break down. Linotype machines do not work like typewriters do, with the letters always being there ready to be used. No, with a linotype machine, it heats up all the lead until it's molten again and die casts it into new molds of letters and characters across an entire line at a time, instead of having it be made up of tons of individual letter molds that are just pushed together. Then you use it to print the line of text onto thousands of pieces of paper, and then you take that lead mold and put it back into the pot where you heat up the lead again. And then you set up the linotype machine for the next line of text, and when it's ready, pour the molten lead into it and then use the newly created line of text to print onto the paper next, by dipping the line made of lead into ink and then pushing it onto the paper. So yeah, literally every time a linotype machine is used, they create brand new casts to print with. Every time, for every new line. So no, they wouldn't ever wear our, because they're immediately melted down again anyway, so they are added back to the pot long before they could ever gain any wear and tear. The purpose of doing it this way is that it's much cheaper and easier and quicker than traditional printing. Traditional printing _DID_ work more like a typewriter works, with all the letters and characters already there waiting to be used, and you had to individually by hand organise every single letter and character into the correct order to print a whole word, and it just took forever. With a linotype machine, you just had to type the line you want printed onto the linotype machine's keyboard, and then it'd sort it all out for you, it'd put every letter and character in order, and die cast it for you. So all you had to do was type and then wait a minute and then start printing. It was so much quicker than traditional printing that it very quickly became the only form of printing. The linotype machines were expensive, but could last indefinitely if taken care of properly, and so actually over time they were more frugal than traditional printing presses (because on the traditional ones you did have to replace letter casts from time to time as they wore out, but linotype machines never had that problem because they create new casts for you every single time you use the machine). And they didn't require years and years of training to learn how to use them like traditional printing presses did. This meant a lot of people lost their jobs as printers. But it was fantastic for the free press, who are necessary for any functioning democracy. It became ludicrously cheap to print and sell newspapers because of the linotype machine, and so that meant that nearly anyone could get into journalism if they wanted to, and then the free market decided which newspapers were good enough to keep and which papers should go out of business. And half the time the people who own and run one of the good newspapers, would never have had even close to the kind of opportunity to run and own a newspaper if it hadn't been for linotype machines making the whole thing so much quicker and cheaper. This levelled the playing field a lot, so to speak. And that meant that average people had better access to the news than ever before. Because the newspapers dropped in price as it was so much cheaper to print with linotype machines. So many more people could now afford the daily newspaper. And books too, were now significantly cheaper than they'd ever been before because of linotype machines. More people got into reading as a hobby than had ever been into it before (plus way more young people became authors as a career than they had done previously, because so many more publishers had sprung into existence because of the low cost of linotype machines). And even books by people who'd written them before the linotype machines got invented, got a big boost in sales because now these books that were already deemed to be "classics" were now ludicrously cheap to buy, everyone could own a copy if they wanted. So this is when people like Charles Dickens and Jane Austen really became the powerhouses of literature that they are now, even though they wrote the books before the linotype machine was available. And of course authors like Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain became authors at exactly the perfect time, so they could benefit from having their books be available to way way way more people than ever before in literature, because printing had become so cheap

[@moralesgomez9107]

Yo tengo una máquina de linotype quisiera repararla 😞

[@JohnnyFlynn-z7v]

Were lines re-used if they were headings or something that was the same each issue? Or was the whole page redone everyday regardless of any repetition?

[@jeffbecker8716]

What if you make a mistake? How do you go back and fix typos?

[@nationalmuseumofindustrial1200]

The lead could be dropped right back in, melted, and reused!

[@modtwentyeight]

Or if you catch it in the elevator, just swap out the matrices.

[@rosswheatley8329]

I'm here because I watched the Twilight Zone episode Printer's Devil and had no idea what a linotype is.

[@studentoftheword6115]

What if you make a typing mistake? What did they do then?

[@modtwentyeight]

Or if you catch it in the elevator, just swap out the matrices. I typed the above before I saw your question...

[@chrislouth7714]

If the mistake is picked up in proofreading the whole line needs to be reset, and if the corrected text overruns the line then subsequent lines also need to be reset till the text catches up, sometimes the rest of the paragraph.

[@CurtaCrazy]

Been there, done that! But I loved running these hot-metal beasts! 🥰 🤪

[@teucer4]

Generally they would lose their erection in this case.

[@briantriplett5974]

skeeter lives

[@User0000000000000004]

my god. the music. please will this trend die already? it ruins so much content.

[@LiemNguyen-qr6bq]

What about showing a Monotype Machine and keyboard that was far superior for quality Bookwork and for skilled Compositors to create magazine ads etc. Compositors who learned their trade with Linotype seldom could work in Printing Companies that had Monotype Machines, that needed a whole new skill set.

[@bytheway1031]

🎂Ottmar Mergenthaler 05-11-2022

[@dkennell998]

Annoying music, awesome demo