“Last Issue in Hot Type” NYT July 2, 1978

thesheltons5
on 21 Jun 13 (12:11)
Updated 21 Jun 13 (12:12)

I stumbled upon this site looking for information on something we purchased at a 2nd hand store in south Florida. It’s a long rectangular shadow box, with the hot press stamps (?) for the New York Times dated July 2, 1978. There is an engragved plaque on the outside that reads “Last Issue in Hot Type”. I’ve done some research and found that this is indeed the last issue of hot type printing date of the NYT before they went to the more computerized printing.Does anyone know how many of these they used? Any value to this? Any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

HavenPress
on 21 Jun 13 (13:24)

Hi! I can’t actually place a value on ypur ……. etaoin shrdlu

HavenPress
on 21 Jun 13 (13:24)

keelan
on 21 Jun 13 (13:41)

There’s a man named Carl Schlesinger, who worked as a Linotype operator at the NYT, and was there that day. He produced a documentary of it that you can purchase from him.

He appeared in Linotype: The Film, you can see the clip on him here:

http://vimeo.com/43420072

See this Briar Press thread for more information:

http://www.briarpress.org/29517

keelan
on 21 Jun 13 (13:48)

I should say, you should call Carl and ask him about this shadow box. He will very likely know where they came from, and may have even been involved in their production.

Also, those ‘stamps’ are most likely Linotype slugs. You asked how many of these were used — if you’re referring to the slugs, probably millions over the span of time that they used that technology, but after each issue went to press, they were melted down to produce the next issue. When they produced that last issue with that technology, there was no need to melt them down.