The Press
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c. 1450 — Mainz · The Wooden Press
A timber-framed workshop, and at its center a wine press taught a new trade: oak cheeks and head, a great wooden screw, a platen, a sliding bed and coffin, a forme of type locked in its chase. Ink balls charge the forme; a damp sheet is pinned to the tympan; the bar comes over; the screw gives the impression. Against the wall, the type case and the casting bench — punch, matrix, mould — and on the line, pages of the 42-line Bible drying.
1814 — London · Iron & Steam
The night The Times went to press by steam. Koenig and Bauer’s cylinder press turns a flat reciprocating forme under a rotating drum — 1,100 sheets an hour where a hand press managed 250. A Watt-pattern engine breathes in the corner; a ceiling of belts carries its pulse; gaslight makes night work possible.
1885 — New York · Hot Metal
The Linotype: ninety keys arranged etaoin shrdlu, a magazine of brass matrices, wedge spacebands that justify a line mechanically, a crucible of lead at 546°F. Whole lines of type cast fresh, printed, melted down and cast again — type by the line, hot from the pot.
1965 — Anytown, U.S.A. · The Last Shop
A windmill job press runs its final tickets; the type cabinet waits with its drawers of alphabets; a retired Linotype stands under a cloth. Through the partition, offset is already installed — cold, precise, indifferent to craft. Then the last sheet comes off warm, the fuses are pulled, the fluorescents die one by one, and the shop goes quiet, dust in the last light from the window.
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