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Linotype Day
Take away a Linotype slug with you name on it.
The Linotype machine revolutionized typesetting moving the craft from laborious hand-setting to swiftly mechanically setting.
The Linotype machine has about 10,000 parts many of them moving, and when they do there is a cacophony of sights and sounds as the individual brass matrices plink as they slide down the chute to form words before hot meta, at 600 degrees, is squirted into the matrices and freshly cast slugs, still warm, slide from the machine – a line-of-type. Then the individual matrices are returned to their slots with soothing tinkle, tinkle, tinkle sounds as they are automatically distributed to their homes based on a unique series of notches. A sight to behold, music to the ears.
Thomas Edison declared it the “8th Wonder of the World” when it was created over 125 years ago. It enabled the faster and less expensive creation of newspapers and books.
You can see it in operation at the Museum of Printing on Saturday, July 22 from 10 am to 3 pm.
And not only take away a slug with your name on it but print that slug on a certificate to note the occasion using a proof press.
Frank Romano, the author of the History of the Linotype Company will give a lecture on the Linotype machine at 10:30 am and repeat it at 12:30 and 2:30 pm.
The Museum is at 15 Thornton Ave, Haverhill, Massachusetts.
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