Printing presses

I worked at the Baltimore Sun ( Tribune Company ) for 3 1/2 years before this job . If I ever see or smell ink again it'll be too soon . We had 48 4 deck Goss Colorliners in the plant and they were messy . :(
 
it'll be too soon

Spoil Sport. It was all fun, I was twelve, Dad was General Manager of weekly. My one job was to fold for mailing the subscription papers. No pay whatever.
 
I visited a newspaper shop about 10 years ago. The speed of paper going through, cut and folded was amazing with those mechanical machines.

On the type face, the closest I got to was with computer, where I learned how true type font was coded in the file. I then read it and decoded it, then rendered it. I was trying to display Vietnamese text when there wasn't much support for it.

The curves of the font are encoded in cubic bezier.
It worked and I was amazed that I got it rendered nicely for big size.

The smaller sizes are harder. There are hints that Apple computer patented. To adjust for fine detail pixel location when very small scale location of the pixels don't follow the math curve.

Then there is anti alias, where multiple pixels near by need to have different gray levels to trick the eyes into thinking of a nice smooth fine line.

One more complicated problem is for the LCD display, they use sub pixel trick which every pixel are three dots of rgb, not on top of each other but next to each other. They use that to enhance the precision of the dots.

Those coupled with the slow speed of getting a single letter rendered, I decided to use fixed size fonts instead. Wow, that was a long time ago already.

Like Steve Jobs said about what he learned at printing press and developed true type font, I learned the small details of type face and my hand writing is much better.
 
Last edited:
This may be a long post - a subject near and dear to my heart, and time on my hands better spent here than agonizing over the virus news that is permeating everything else.

In my earliest years my father managed a movie theater and I suppose I got infected with the smell of printing ink while he was babysitting me at work. Does that seem a strange linkage? Let me explain: This was the early 1950's and in the basement of the theatre resided a Chandler and Price 'snapper' letterpress. Part of my father's job was imprinting advertising handout flyers for upcoming movie attractions with the name of the theatre and the playdates for the coming films. I, of course, had no idea what was going on (what can you expect from a 5 year old?) but between the smell of the oil-based ink and the rhythmic 'clunka clunka clunka thunk' of the press I guess I got an early memory implant that 'stuck'.

Additionally, since a lot of the printing type needed for these advertising pieces was pretty small, dad and I would go to the local newspaper to have some of the type he needed set on one of their machines. Oh my, the wonderful, almost Rube Goldbergian quality of the Merganthaler Linotype machine. A keyboard that released tiny mold matrices into a 'stick' - which then moved to a casting area where hot lead was forced into the type molds, and then the magic of re-distributing the matrices back into their slots for re-use on another line. Pure mechanical magic! Motors and cams and gears - it it any wonder that I ended up doing stuff in a machine shop? Plus they had a Heidelberg 'windmill' press that was perhaps equally entertaining. Who knows?

Fast forward a few years - By that time television had pretty much destroyed the movie industry and dad found other employment to support the family - but the theatre was still operating a couple of days a week - and so as a high-school sophomore I went to work there as the projectionist. Sadly, sometime in the interim - and probably for financial reasons, the C&P printing press in the basement was no more - but a bit of the odor of ink remained if you sniffed carefully.

So, I graduated from high school, went to college - and kept on as the movie projectionist. Finally, after completing school a 'real job' presented itself and I left the theatre behind.

Or did I?

One of my movie theatre co-workers and I had sort of agreed that if the business ever came up for sale, we should buy it; and amazingly enough a couple of years later that opportunity presented itself. So, at the tender age of 26 I found myself half-owner of a movie theatre. It was never really going to be a 'job' - we both were otherwise employed so this was going to be our 'hobby'. But I digress from the printing thread ~

Having those memories of that first press - and occasionally needing 'just a few' business cards or letterheads or postcards or whatever - I started perusing the newspaper classified ads (remember those?) looking for a press. And one eventually showed up, along with some cans of ink, fonts of type and other ancillary items to get everything started.

That press and miscellaneous was stored in the seller's basement - and I lost several friends after I got them to help me move it. You think moving a lathe out of a basement is a challenge? Hah!

Once I got the press relocated back into the space allotted for it at the theatre, I taught myself letterpress. Slow learning in the days before Internet and YouTube, but it happened. There's something very satisfying about hand-setting type, getting it locked up in the chase, securing it into the press and actually creating a final product out of 'nothing'. Yeah, the same as machining something useful out of a lump of metal - very therapeutic.

About this time I accidentally acquired a girlfriend. These things just happen. Eventually, as the relationship progressed (you don't want to spring stuff like this too early, they may run off screaming into the night) I mentioned that I owned a printing press. Turns out her father once worked for a printing company. Well, now!

So, we visited my press room. Oh dear, the look on her face - I would have received a more positive result had I gifted her with a paper sackful of fresh, steamy dog logs. Her idea of a 'printing press' was one of those modern, sleek, streamlined machines that hummed along producing finished product without human intervention - probably like the ones at her father's place of employment.

Strangely enough, this didn't turn out to be the 'deal killer' it first seemed. Perhaps in spite of my printing peccadillo we kept up a relationship. Whatever.

As our relationship puttered along and I had shown her the results of some of my printing projects, eventually she suggested 'another chance to see the printing press'. And so we did. This time she was actually interested - and so I helped her learn letterpress. Let me tell ya, she was a 'natural'. Artistically talented and with mechanical aptitude. My reaction: Wow! What a woman!

And as things came to pass, she started her own letterpress business as a sideline, using the press in the theatre basement.

That sounds like it should be the end of the story, but there's more -

The events related above happened in the mid 1970's. This was a terrible time for commercial letterpress printers (the industry was rapidly transitioning to offset) but an amazing time for us letterpress hobbyists. After that first press acquisition I kept looking at the classifieds and haunting the Portland area printing equipment suppliers. The lady and I expanded our library of type fonts, added additional equipment and eventually ended up with a very nicely accoutered full letterpress shop - including two Linotype machines and a Heidelberg windmill press.

As things evolved we transitioned her business into offset printing with photo-typesetting and now are a fully digital printing company. We even make our own rubber stamps. Most of the letterpress equipment and supplies are still on tap and ready for use. In her spare time she infrequently teaches an 'Introduction to Letterpress' class that lets us keep our fingers in the ink and the traditions alive. .

Oh, by the way - I'm not a printer - never claimed to be - but those first early exposures to the craft have had a life-long effect.

Wow, what a ride!
 
What an awesome story! Thanks for taking us along for the ride.

-frank
 
This may be a long post - a subject near and dear to my heart, and time on my hands better spent here than agonizing over the virus news that is permeating everything else.

In my earliest years my father managed a movie theater and I suppose I got infected with the smell of printing ink while he was babysitting me at work. Does that seem a strange linkage? Let me explain: This was the early 1950's and in the basement of the theatre resided a Chandler and Price 'snapper' letterpress. Part of my father's job was imprinting advertising handout flyers for upcoming movie attractions with the name of the theatre and the playdates for the coming films. I, of course, had no idea what was going on (what can you expect from a 5 year old?) but between the smell of the oil-based ink and the rhythmic 'clunka clunka clunka thunk' of the press I guess I got an early memory implant that 'stuck'.

Additionally, since a lot of the printing type needed for these advertising pieces was pretty small, dad and I would go to the local newspaper to have some of the type he needed set on one of their machines. Oh my, the wonderful, almost Rube Goldbergian quality of the Merganthaler Linotype machine. A keyboard that released tiny mold matrices into a 'stick' - which then moved to a casting area where hot lead was forced into the type molds, and then the magic of re-distributing the matrices back into their slots for re-use on another line. Pure mechanical magic! Motors and cams and gears - it it any wonder that I ended up doing stuff in a machine shop? Plus they had a Heidelberg 'windmill' press that was perhaps equally entertaining. Who knows?

Fast forward a few years - By that time television had pretty much destroyed the movie industry and dad found other employment to support the family - but the theatre was still operating a couple of days a week - and so as a high-school sophomore I went to work there as the projectionist. Sadly, sometime in the interim - and probably for financial reasons, the C&P printing press in the basement was no more - but a bit of the odor of ink remained if you sniffed carefully.

So, I graduated from high school, went to college - and kept on as the movie projectionist. Finally, after completing school a 'real job' presented itself and I left the theatre behind.

Or did I?

One of my movie theatre co-workers and I had sort of agreed that if the business ever came up for sale, we should buy it; and amazingly enough a couple of years later that opportunity presented itself. So, at the tender age of 26 I found myself half-owner of a movie theatre. It was never really going to be a 'job' - we both were otherwise employed so this was going to be our 'hobby'. But I digress from the printing thread ~

Having those memories of that first press - and occasionally needing 'just a few' business cards or letterheads or postcards or whatever - I started perusing the newspaper classified ads (remember those?) looking for a press. And one eventually showed up, along with some cans of ink, fonts of type and other ancillary items to get everything started.

That press and miscellaneous was stored in the seller's basement - and I lost several friends after I got them to help me move it. You think moving a lathe out of a basement is a challenge? Hah!

Once I got the press relocated back into the space allotted for it at the theatre, I taught myself letterpress. Slow learning in the days before Internet and YouTube, but it happened. There's something very satisfying about hand-setting type, getting it locked up in the chase, securing it into the press and actually creating a final product out of 'nothing'. Yeah, the same as machining something useful out of a lump of metal - very therapeutic.

About this time I accidentally acquired a girlfriend. These things just happen. Eventually, as the relationship progressed (you don't want to spring stuff like this too early, they may run off screaming into the night) I mentioned that I owned a printing press. Turns out her father once worked for a printing company. Well, now!

So, we visited my press room. Oh dear, the look on her face - I would have received a more positive result had I gifted her with a paper sackful of fresh, steamy dog logs. Her idea of a 'printing press' was one of those modern, sleek, streamlined machines that hummed along producing finished product without human intervention - probably like the ones at her father's place of employment.

Strangely enough, this didn't turn out to be the 'deal killer' it first seemed. Perhaps in spite of my printing peccadillo we kept up a relationship. Whatever.

As our relationship puttered along and I had shown her the results of some of my printing projects, eventually she suggested 'another chance to see the printing press'. And so we did. This time she was actually interested - and so I helped her learn letterpress. Let me tell ya, she was a 'natural'. Artistically talented and with mechanical aptitude. My reaction: Wow! What a woman!

And as things came to pass, she started her own letterpress business as a sideline, using the press in the theatre basement.

That sounds like it should be the end of the story, but there's more -

The events related above happened in the mid 1970's. This was a terrible time for commercial letterpress printers (the industry was rapidly transitioning to offset) but an amazing time for us letterpress hobbyists. After that first press acquisition I kept looking at the classifieds and haunting the Portland area printing equipment suppliers. The lady and I expanded our library of type fonts, added additional equipment and eventually ended up with a very nicely accoutered full letterpress shop - including two Linotype machines and a Heidelberg windmill press.

As things evolved we transitioned her business into offset printing with photo-typesetting and now are a fully digital printing company. We even make our own rubber stamps. Most of the letterpress equipment and supplies are still on tap and ready for use. In her spare time she infrequently teaches an 'Introduction to Letterpress' class that lets us keep our fingers in the ink and the traditions alive. .

Oh, by the way - I'm not a printer - never claimed to be - but those first early exposures to the craft have had a life-long effect.

Wow, what a ride!

What Frank said, a fabulous story. I’m always so amazed by people’s stories.
Thank you for sharing!
D


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Back
Top