With a few exceptions, most foundry type and Linotype mats seem to have been acquired in the 1950s.
These rested on long rolling tables in a room also containing a Linotype and a Miehle Vertical.
And there was the time I had to swipe Linotype vice-locking screws from a preacher, the time I destroyed a Little Giant (a lousy press, in my opinion), the job consisting only of numbering machines and perf rule (for a gentleman who always paid in nice crisp currency), the young go-fer who tried to siphon nitric acid by sucking on a hunk of hose, the camera man who fired up a joint not realizing the darkroom fan vented into the pressroom, the day my comp man brought the wrong brownies to lunch, the alcoholic operator who broke the Linotype mold wheel by showing how he could retract the wheel with a touch of the clutch--a trick known to all the old Lino artists.
By the 1970s, most Linotypes had been relegated to back rooms, and sheet-fed presses were used only for small jobs or were abandoned altogether.
The lead ingots used by Linotypes weigh roughly 22 pounds each and are commonly referred to as "pigs." The ingot is suspended by a hook and chain over a melting pot.
Utterly fascinated by the ancient equipment, Jim memorized the 90-character keyboard of the Linotype, a typesetting machine.
In 1977 Phil moved to Chester as a linotype operator on the Chester Chronicle, which he really enjoyed.
But that Christmas he saw an advert for a linotype operator's job on the Timaru Herald in New Zealand.
Called the greatest advance in printing in the centuries since Gutenberg's movable type, the Linotype replaced manual assembly of type into text and the tedious return of each leaden letter to its proper place in a type case.
Reid was president of the company that made the Linotype. Its headquarters was the Tribune Building -- a technology test-bed, with the first Hoe press in its basement, Hoe's first machine to make curved stereotype plates and, later, one of the larger Goss Straightline presses, which enabled economical high-volume printing.
In fact, the Linotype's invention in 1884 coincided with that of the first Goss newspaper press and launch of this magazine's predecessor, the journalist.
The lead dust that led to the renovations was a hazard faced at some time by all newspapers that date back to the hot-type era, especially when space that formerly housed
Linotype typesetters and stereotype plate casters is redeployed.
