Hello, hope you’re surviving 2025. So far! Happy New Year, if it isn’t too late, anyway.
LINOTYPE: The film – In Search of the Eighth Wonder of the World (2020)
Don’t know if you ever worked with these Linotype machines but we used them in my early days at New Society magazine, not that I ever so much as touched one (Everybody Out!).
Nicely made film though.
All the best, Tony
Philip Marriage adds: Hi Tony, And a Happy New Year to you too! It’s taken a few days for me to find the time to catch up with this film on the Linotype machine. I’ve watched a number of YouTube videos on printing etc and this is one of the most comprehensive – and over an hour long! I think it was Dennis Greeno who put me on to Mark Twain’s own typesetting machine – another fascinating YouTube video. It was also interesting for me to see Matthew Carter’s contribution near the end. He was the third Typographic Advisor to HMSO, from 1980-4, (taking over from Ruari McLean) and visited the Norwich studio regularly. His father was of course Harry Carter, HMSO’s first Head of Graphic Design in 1946.
I never came close to operating a Linotype machine even though HMSO’s presses were full of them. All that molten lead meant I kept a wide berth. Most Compositor apprentices aspired to become Monotype operators, considered the most skilled member of the printing process. However at HMSO, the Linotype operators were the most highly paid members of staff because they were on piece-work, particularly at St Stephen’s Parliamentary Press, paid according to the number of characters they tapped out and setting Hansard every night was as much – if not more – than setting a daily newspaper. As a young apprentice I remember everything had to be done to ensure the Linotype operators had all they needed to keep tapping, and they in turn ensured the apprentices were generously rewarded.
You might be interested in these other YouTube videos which I’ve found to be amongst the best on printing, made by the International Printing Museum, at Carson, California and presented by Mark Barbour.
I’ve watched most of the YouTube videos on The Gutenberg Bible and all demonstrate how to set, impose and print a single page – holding up a single page facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible for example when of course books are made up of sewn sections so four pages (two each side of the sheet) was the minimum. The Gutenberg Bible was actually printed in 20-page sections so he had to have enough type for 20 pages at least – or alternatively have stacks of half-printed four-page sections in his Print Room. Which of these is a debate for another time . . .
Richard Nelson adds: Happy 2025! Serving my apprenticeship at Jarrold Printers in Norwich, I did get trained on an Intertype machine – a Linotype by another name. For the most part we did small ads for holiday guides and the electoral role, everything else was Monotype. The keyboard was not QWERTY. The keys were triggers for releasing the character matrixes and were positioned to facilitate the shortest physical route for the most frequently used characters both into the line being assembled and back into the case from the distribution bar. These were funny old contraptions and the two we had were very old and needed frequent attention from the operator. Newspaper machines usually had just one mould width corresponding with the paper’s column size. Ours were variable, if I remember correctly from 6 to 42 ems. Each change to the mould width required a matching change to the ejector blade. Forgetting to do this would be recoverable if the blade was too small for the new line width, but as one apprentice proved (not me) the result was catastrophic if a wide ejector blade was left in place when the mould width was reduced.
My almost near-death experience was when I had just hung a new bar of metal over the melting pot. Resuming my seat I was aware of the most horrible grinding noises from the back of my machine. As I got up to inspect the pot, my journeyman knocked me to the floor with a flying tackle, an instant before the pot erupted and flung molten lead that exploded upward and stuck on the ceiling. I will always remember the name of Charlie Birch with deep gratitude. We had just had some new metal bars delivered from the basement. They were cold and the condensation from the new bar went down with the lead into the pot and became super-heated steam that exploded and emptied the pot completely, exposing the element in the bottom. I learned to let any new bars acclimatise. Years later when I left Jarrold’s for HMSO that area of the factory had been changed into a film assembly room. If you knew where to look the contents of my lead pot was still stuck to the ceiling like miniature white-painted lead stalactites.
See how memories are triggered? Sorry if I bored you.
George Hammond adds: Following up on Richards dramatic exploding metal story I will add my pennyworth.
I, as an apprentice was responsible for producing the ingots for the Monotype caster and super caster at the printing company where I was an apprentice. Quite a mucky, and in the winter days, a cold job. The building set aside for this work was half derelict with glassless windows and set well away from the admin, press and composing areas. It housed a round furnace-style cauldron heated from underneath with gas and with a tall chimney to take away it was hoped, the noxious gases. The used type and other printing metals to be recast – into Cadbury Milk Bar style ingots – were emptied into the cauldron and heated to about 1000 degree Fahrenheit at which point a lump of flux was added to “clean” the metal and burn off the impurities. The scum was then taken off before what was termed a “reviver” was added. This was in the form of a small concentrated ingot of antimony, lead and tin to make good any losses of these metals during the metal casting of type and this recasting process to make the ingots.
The metal now being ready was poured using ladles into the ingot dies. If they were cold there would be similar eruptions, though not as severe, as Richard spoke of. Health & Safety was never considered. The job was done about once every other week. Our casters were fed the ingots, or part of them, by hand.
I also learnt how to operate the caster and enjoyed the noise it made when at speed. We typeset a number of bibles and testaments and when setting 8pt, with quite short measures the hook which drew out the finished line of text never stopped going backwards and forwards and always in synchrony with the bar that lifted to allow the line to be pushed forward onto the waiting galley, as the next line was beginning to be set.
Looking back on that now did we ever believe typesetting could be done any other way and by someone sat in front of something like a television screen!
Those were the days. Does anyone know where one might visit to see a Monotype caster working?
Dennis Greeno adds: Hi George, You are very unlikely to see a caster in operation in this country – ’elf and safety. The Norwich Printing Museum has one that works but was last ‘fired up’ towards the end of the museum’s time at Jarrolds, some 5 years ago. Even then it took so long for the molten metal to heat up there was only a slight wobble in the metal before it had to be turned off as it was opening time. It can be turned over a bit by hand.
However, I suggest you look at another YouTube video: Monotype & Linotype in operation.
John Hughes adds: George, What good memories we’ve all got, but I’m not sure what happened last week.
I left school in 1963, I had just turned fifteen and was apprenticed to a small printer in Hednesford near where I grew up. Total staff 9. Loads of type cases and two second hand Linotype machines. It was like walking into a Victorian Tardis though sixty odd years ago it was pretty much par for the course. My very first job was courtesy of the foreman who picked up a magazine and emptied the matrixes all over the slab with a ‘request’ to give them a good clean. I must have done a good job because he gave me two more and all the space bars to do the next day.
I didn’t realise George, but just like you it was my job to cast the ingots, using the same process as you. Every two weeks for five years. The gas cauldron had an Asbestos, yes Asbestos lid and chimney, asbestos gloves and apron. As you say Dennis, Mr elf and safety would have a fit now. Ironically our Linotypes did all the setting, 12/14 Times and Gill headings (how do I remember this?), for Health & Safety posters we used to print for local authorities, farms and engineering companies.
I can still hear all that clattering now.
Oh yes now I remember what happened last week, or was it the week before?, I went to The Murderers but they were closed for redecoration.