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THE OFFSET REVOLUTION "because the heated plastic was pretty smelly. Jean would see the Scanagraver producing things he'd once made for us in his plant and he'd threaten to stuff a potato into the exhaust pipe, joking that the fumes would run us out of the building." Neither the Scanagraver nor the Photo Lathe rivalled zinc engraving's quality, 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 Linotype's Blue 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, a 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 unlike a typewriter keyboard, it wasn't practical 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 essentially a man's work -- 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 didn't gain more widespread use. It made it possible for a typist to operate a hot 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, perhaps a year or two before we were ready," he recalls. "The deciding factor became Linotype operators. The fact that I was an operator myself seemed to become a liability rather than an asset. 231 |
