Most of all that is familiar to me.
By the time I was in college, the laser phototypositor was a huge
machine that would spit out exposed film into a cartridge, which
then was loaded into a developing machien and out came plate-ready
film.
But then when I became a printer I took a step back into the past:
I was a letterpress operator; and we didn't have anything as fancy
as a linotype. I set my copy by hand, one lead letter at a time, or
with a Ludlow automatic slug machine: I would gather about 18 picas
of matrices together in a compositing stick, put that into the
machine, and it would cast a very short slug for me.
once the page was all composed and locked up, I would load the
typeframe into the gigantic challenge press. When running, it would
make 1 impression every .75 seconds or so. In the time it was open
I would reach in, pull out the just-printed piece with my right
hand, while at the same time positioning a fresh sheet with my
left, and getting both hands out of the way before the 3/4 ton
press closed.
I still have all my fingers. But I was only at it for a year.
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