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Linotype operator
- Thread starter mw0njm.
- Start date
NoddKD
master brummie
Is letterpress printing in use or has that died out?
NoddKD. Briefly a machine minder apprentice.
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Letterpress is taught in some art schools and is used for small items such as wedding invitations and artistic expression. It is an artisan and also a hobby activity. Birmingham is also a centre for research into type and letterpress. https://www.cphc.org.uk/
Here's https://www.inksquasher.com/other-work a Birmingham art printer who specialises in letterpress. Naomi Kent handsets metal and wooden type.
https://www.typoretum.co.uk is a family business.
Let's hope our Art Schools continue!
https://sbf.org.uk The St Bride Foundation offer workshops in letterpress in Fleet St. London.
As for Linotype, I think there's a single newspaper using it in the USA, but no commercially working machines in the UK?
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Dionysius//88
master brummie
As an apprentice in the 60's I got the opportunity of seeing this in practice at the B,ham Post & Mail in the new offices by the Gaumont truly an education to watch
Keith R
master brummie
As kids you could use John Bull sets and play at printing.....
Linotype was Hot Metal setting but when I was apprentice from 1968 the Letterpress Compositors set the copy in cold type.Around this time Lithographic printing was being used in Birmingham.The Newspapers and Magazines went onto Photogravure with huge pates on cylinders for high speed running.
Linotype was Hot Metal setting but when I was apprentice from 1968 the Letterpress Compositors set the copy in cold type.Around this time Lithographic printing was being used in Birmingham.The Newspapers and Magazines went onto Photogravure with huge pates on cylinders for high speed running.
Dionysius//88
master brummie
At the post and mail 1the lino operattors sat there duly typing away with a lump of lead on achain at the back of there machines . They typed for want of a better word tablets of about 3" metal with the type along the edge this was all gathered together on end with typeface up that was built into a single page page inked and then proof read before a section of the same print was created in a heavier piece of lead and placed on a roller to create a page . I was fascinated by it all .
That's an excellent description, Dionysus! My scout master was a printers' engineer and took a small party of us round the print shop. We each got a piece of lead formed into letters to take away. Sadly I thew mine away when I moved house. I seem to remember a kind of moulding made of hardened papier-mâché that was part of a cylinder. A stereotype? We only visited for a couple of hours so I'm uncertain of the details so many years later.
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Brummie a long time ago
master brummie
I dimly remember going to the ideal home exhibition at Bingley Hall about ..... years ago. There was a printing station set up, where there was a bundle of pre printed newspaper front pages, with a gap at the top. The operator would assemble your name into a rack from pre cast lead letters, and then complete the front page printing so you were the headline. Letterpress ?
Andrew.
Andrew.
Richard Dye
master brummie
I always thought that Linotype machine were fascinating and incredible inventions/developments back in the day. Watching Stokkies video I became very upset
because I used to live about 30 miles, straight shot super highway for the museum in Bethlehem PA an$ did not even know it was there! Looking at the museums web site I could have spent many hours there while my wife shopped for fabric!Thank you Stokkie for the video!