That article takes me back to when I worked at the Tampa Tribune as a teenager in the 1940s. Everything was letterpress there; four or more Linotypes and many steel tables where the slugs of type were assembled into pages. The pages then went through a press which imprinted the type onto a (gutta-percha?) sheet which was then fitted into a a moulding setup where melted lead was poured forming a half round copy of a page that was then mounted on a roller in the press and automatically coated with ink during the press run. The press was a huge, nearly two story machine with catwalks around the upper areas. I remember the time when a pressman got his hand caught between rollers and lost his arm up to the elbow. THe blood and tissue was quickly cleaned up and the paper was no more than thirty minutes late on the streets. Trickery, practical jokes, and drunkeness were common in the newsroom where I worked. As a teenager straight from a small farming town in Indiana, I endured most of them. For example, one day a composing room employee asked me if I'd ever seen "type lice". When I looked down between the type slugs on a (galley?) of type, he slammed it shut and I got a face full of ink and water. One time the farm editor, who rode a bicycle to work, got drunk and accused the makeup editor of hiding it. The makeup editor took off his glasses and they went at each other in the middle of the newsroom. With the farm editor drunk and the makeup editor effectively blind without his glasses, I don't think either one got in a solid blow to the other in spite of many roundhouse swings before the fight was broken up. Turned out that the farm editors wife had driven him to work that night and his bicycle was at home. In many ways, those were happier times than todays fast paced era.
Gerry
From: "Dan Penoff" <d...@penoff.com>
Who is it that's into old printing presses? They will enjoy this article: http://printmag.com/Article/Death-of-a-Pressman Dan _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com For new and used parts go to www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2221 / Virus Database: 2437/5265 - Release Date: 09/12/12
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