| Show THE OFFSET REVOLUTION because the heated plastic was pretty smelly Jean would see the Scanagraver producing things heonce made for us in his plant and hethreaten to stuffpotato into the exhaust pipe joking that the fumes would run us out of the building Neither the Scanagraver nor the Photo Lathe rivalled zinc engravingquality but what they created was quite satisfactory for most newspaper needs At this point in time hot metal typesetting machines both those built by Linotype and by its chief rival Intertype had pretty much reached the maximum speed they could achieve Operating from punched tape and utilizing the newly-developed automatic quadders the fastest -exemplified by LinotypeBlue Streak and Comet models -were producing 12 lines per minute That was four lines or so quicker than standard models whose operators could hang the machine term which meant it could go no faster There was little likelihood of more speed than the tape-operated models provided Because the Linotype keyboard standard for the industry was totally unliketypewriter keyboard it wasnpractical for newspapers to try to cut costs by using less expensive labor in typesetting Less expensive in that day was synonymous with employing women to do what was essentiallymanwork and many plants employed ladies who did that with considerable skill It was rather strange since many knew the typewriter keyboard and few knew the Linotype one that an adapter called the Kellogg Keyboard didngain more widespread use It made it possible fortypist to operatehot metal machine But the manufacturer hardly recovered production costs from its limited sales Difficulty in finding operators trained for the Linotype keyboard actually hastened the switch to offset in some cases One was at the Uintah Basin Standard published by Clarin Ashby We were simply forced into the move perhapsyear or two before we were ready he recalls The deciding factor became Linotype operators The fact thatwas an operator myself seemed to becomeliability rather than an asset 231 Digital image 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah Al rights reserved |
