Most M THE OSHAWA DAILY. TIMES, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1928 . ONE MACHINE DOES WORK OF MANY PRINTERS Make Possible Setting Out Large Modern Paper In Short Time BATTERY OF SEVEN Times Has # Number: of Latest Model Intertypes --Twelve Operators Twenty-five years ago, with the same number of men employed as today, it would have required at least two: weeks to produce the regular edition of the Oshawa Daily Times. Today it was turned The out, insofar as the mechanical end is concerned, in from eight to tem hours. Story of 50 Years That is the story of the printing industry in the last half-cemtury, the period during which it has made its greatest progress. Twen- ty-five years hence the printer may be accomplishing things which would be considered miraculous at present. a p The art of printing, of course, was not young 50 years ago. It is difficult to state at what period of time the germ of the art of epg. i not exist; Some orm of were at the most remote periods of antiquity. One of the earliest methods was carving pictures and characters on skins, barks of 'trees, shoulder bones of sheep, shells and stones. ans produced clay or brick oks. The Egyptians Yprinted" on papyrus, the immer bark of a rush that grew by the Nile, The Greeks and Romans us- ed printing to make coins, China introduced, in the eleventh cen- tury, the idea of printing on parchments. _The monks of the Middle Ages developed a system of beautifully printing manuscripts by a special pen. Blocks VU Block printing was the next step--the impressing of plates made out of a single block of wood upon which was engraved in relief the matter proposed to print. That would be a "wood-cut" in our day. By the end of the fourteenth cem- tury they were making playing cards by this method. By the middle of the next century the printers were saving their blocks to reproduce matter if required at a later date. Printing, as it is known today --involving the use of moveable type--camé into being in 1452. Authorities differ as to where the honor of the discovery should go, but it appears now to rest with Johannes Gutenberg of the Ger- man city of Mentz. He decided, that since the 26 letters of the alphabet were to be used aver and over again, it would be 'simpler to have an individual block for each letter. Originally he strung his letters on a string, like beads, and then bound them together with brass. Blackening the relief let- ters with ink, he pressed his sheet of paper against them. Later he invented a frame to hold the blocks ANOTHER VIEW OF THE TYPESETTING MACHINE DEPARTMENT The Times has seven modern typesetting machines and five are in operation at night, a staff of twelve operators being employed on these machines. Te --_-- TTT TI, in place--the fore-runmer of the present "form™. An idea of the work involved. even with this advanced system, can be gained from the fact that 'Gutenberg employed six men for six years to produce 100 Bibles. William Caxton was the first Englishman to earn fame for his contributions to the art of print- ing. The story of his discovery cf the press every schoolboy kmows. France, Italy and Belgium and Holland all added something to the pioneer work. However, enough of the old days of printing, Radics! Char 2 Methods of printing changed rad- ically in the closing years of the 19th century when the linotype came into general use. Thousands of printers still at work learned their trade in the days whan every single line of type was set by hand, Letter hy letter it was picked from the "case'--tiny type for the news column and larger letters for the ads. day's work for a compositor if he set a column of newspaper type in a day. But the advent of machine com- position changed all that, It speeded up the industry a hundred- fold, not in a day or a year, of course, but in the last three ov four decades, Today, for instance, there ia virtually no hand-setting in the modern newspaper office, Every bit of type, from the "six-point" (smallest used in newspaper .col- umns) to 120-point (2 inches high), is set by machine. The linotype turns out the smaller type up to 42-point, and the Lud- low sets headings up to 120-point. Compared to the single column of the fastest compositor 25 years ago, the average machine operator today can turn out 10 columns of type. That of course, is "straight matter"--news, and not advertise- ments or tabular composition. The improvement in the type- setting machines, since they were first introduced, has heen phen- omenal. On the old monoline, for instance, the operator had to space each line by hand. Ten space bars went with each ma- chine and the operators were ac- customed to taking them home at the end of the day to prevent them heing stolen. 1t required the operator to feed the 'mats' hy hand and turn & crank to produce each line. Tha first "lino", *Old Canadian No. One," same next. Then followed a rush of inventions, increasing the speed and improving the ac: curacy of the machines until to- day /the Intertype will turn out iseven simgle-column lines to the minite, set anything from 5-point I 1t was a goad | are very seldom on the sick list. THE VERY LATEST IN MODERN TYPESETTING EQUIPMENT Battery of Intertype machines in Times office, which, though operating night and day and necessarily requiring very fine adjustment, The Intertype machine is a source of wonder to visitors, as well as of satisfaction and some little pri de to The Times management and staff, odern Typesetting Machinery Is All But Human | by hand, each letter being formed to 42-point type and in lines up to 42 picas (7 inches in width-. Intertype Is Modern Machine The actual type-setting ma- chine is not the only machinery used. Rules, borders and leads and sligs--for spacing out the news columns--are cast by mu- chine. They are cut by electrically driven saws. Not only can the modern news- paper be set and made up quickly, but it can he disposed of in even shorter order. In the old days tha rules and leads were of brass and all must be saved and used over and over again, like the hand-aet type. But now the whole page can be pushed fom the form into the "hell-hox" and he back in the ER ---------- 0000 OT metal pot five minutes afer the page is no long r required. No Calamity More time still is saved by ths type-setting devices should a galley of type or an hd he "pied"--spill- ed. Once that was enough to drive a printer to suicide; now it's only a matter of a few minutes work to replace it, Speed, naturally, is most sought, after in the modern newspaper. Trains are to be caught, deliveries to be made on time and 'scoops' on opposition papers are to bh scored. The composing room 1 where the minutes are saved. That's where the inventions, mak- ing the art of printing what it is today, are most appreciated. OVERAGES BENEFIT 10 FARM RESEARCH Diversion of Surpluses to Provide Funds for In- vestigations Ottawa, July 7--The promotion of farm research which was promised during the recent discussion in Par- liament, is being amplified in the an- nouncement that the Government will apply the "overages," or in other words, the surpluses from the Gov- ernment grain elevators, to research in the interests of farmers. Many hundred thousand dollars accrue from this- source when it is found that the grain on hand exceeds what was supposedly delivered, Near the close of the session, a discussion, introduced by G. C. Coote, M.P,, for MacLeod, and shared in by several others, emphasized the need of extensive research, particu- larly to combat rust in wheat, which assumes menacing proportions. 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