Dear editor,
Enjoyed your column on the changes/demise of printing newspapers. I paid my way through UT Austin working in The Daily Texan composing room, the first couple of years as an apprentice and my last as a journeyman printer.
One thing you left out of the story: Printers and pressmen could easily be confused with auto mechanics of the day because our hands and fingernails were always ink stained. We tried hard to get nice, white hands, but no cleaner totally did the job.
It’s interesting that the skills I learned as a printer still follow me, despite the changes from Ben Franklin’s day to computerization. Good design and packaging principles have not changed.
One thing that did improve with technological improvements: we could run multi-column headlines. The beginning and ending of the Civil War were proclaimed in one-column headlines. Not by choice, but because of technical limitations of that era.
Long live the Linotype, the Rube Goldberg of Rube Goldberg devices. It was designed by a Baltimore watchmaker, Ottmar Mergenthaler, a German immigrant. The first Linotype used commercially was in the composing room of the New York Tribune in 1886.
Alas, Mergenthaler became mentally ill and took his life in 1899 at the age of 45.
Griff Singer,
11279 Taylor Draper Lane, No. 244
Austin, TX 78759
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