LAST REMNANTS OF BYGONE ERA IN TYPESETTING

       (Originally published in the Colorado Editor, in-house journal of Colorado Press Association.)

On my list of endangered species are newspaper publishers who still use molten metal to typeset their product. I believe there are only two of these left in Colorado: Dean Coombs at the Saguache Crescent, and Eugene Thomas at the South Y-W Star in Kirk. They are the last remnants of an era in which it was common for each publisher to own a printing press with the means of supplying metal type to it, a time when heavy equipment dominated both the composing and printing phases of producing a newspaper.

Central to the hot-metal method of forming a line of type and casting it on a type-high base (called a slug) for strike-on printing is a machine called the Linotype. This marvelous contraption took the labor and slowness out of having to handpick each metal character from a partitioned wooden tray (type case) to compose lines of type for printing, only to have to meticulously return each character to its proper bin afterwards for reuse. The Linotype made it possible to cast a line of characters and automatically return each tiny character-mold (brass matrix) to its original channel in a storage magazine for reuse, doing the work of at least five people setting type by hand.

Marketed in 1886, the Linotype was heralded as the greatest advancement in printing since Gutenberg’s movable type in 1450. Its inventor, Baltimore resident Ottmar Mergenthaler, reportedly went berserk figuring it out. Certainly, many of us who have operated one of these iron monsters could easily understand why. Featuring a built-in crucible that melts the lead-antimony alloy used in typesetting, the Linotype had myriad steel rollers, drive-wheels, molds, knives, cams, elevators, levers, springs, belts, fragile brass matrices and a uniquely styled keyboard, all mounted on a cast-iron base. Standing even feet tall and weighing a ton, the Linotype is testimony to the pioneering editors who lugged these machines across prairie and mountain to spread the news. They were the unsung Pulitzer heroes.

 
Many believed that a Linotype had its own personality: it could balk at any time, but more aptly at press-time. It could hum right along, turning out galley after galley of type, only to ruin things by spitting hot metal and grinding to a halt. That’s one area where Linotypes held advantage over computers -- a person could usually get the Linotype going again by using a heavy “ball peen” and screwdriver to remove the spewed metal.

Why do publishers such as Coombs and Thomas hang onto this old-fashioned method of producing a newspaper? Part of the explanation might be that, like printer’s ink, “it gets into your bloodstream.” And you don’t mind because you enjoy the physical as well as the mental challenge it offers, plus the freedom of self-sufficiency.

Computers teamed-up with lithography to end the reign of the Linotype. Will the Web page do in the web press and newspapers?

(Retired and living in Longmont after 50 years of publishing small-town newspapers in Colorado, Percy Conarroe is a past-president and honorary lifetime member of the Colorado Press Association.)