I’m taking a class this semester about commercial book design and publishing, and I was lucky enough to get an ancient professor who’s been doing this long before PCs existed. Because of this I learn things I never would’ve learned from anyone younger (some things helpful, some useless, but always entertaining). Yesterday he brought us to another class to watch an equally old professor operate an early 20th century version of the Gutenberg press. During his spiel he talked about linotype machines in great detail. However, he had no visual aids to hold our attention, so we, being art students, essentially did nothing more than drool and stare off into space as he verbally tried to reconstruct so convoluted a contraption.
Today I used the technologically superior power of the internet to find some videos about the linotype, and it’s even crazier than I expected it to be. A linotype machine was basically a typewriter for large-scale printing; instead of one’s typing directly onto a piece of paper, a linotype machine actually assembles and arranges the type itself that will be used to print text. It’s a type-setting machine that wanted to expedite the simple (but tedious) process of hand-setting type for print. Since it was invented before widespread use of electricity, it ran entirely on demon power and black magic.
It’s gigantic, stupid complicated, and, as one may have guessed, breaks down like crazy. The professor said that in a room full of linotype machines, a mechanic sat between every two stenographers, and was usually fixing some part of a machine constantly throughout the day. This being said, the linotype’s greatness lies in its creation of more jobs: whereas one person used to simply set type for a press all day, now you had teams of stenographers and mechanics performing essentially the same process.
So, Mr. Ottmar Mergenthaler, creator of the linotype machine, I salute you for making such a mesmerizingly elaborate machine to perform what once was a rudimentary chore. In commemoration of your achievement, I shall erect a monument of 2 embedded internet videos:
Linotype @ around 10 minutes:
