Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, May 18, 1924, Page 5

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_ F* taken from the Latin word volumen, Ps SUNDAY, MAY 18, 1924. Washington Hand “The © Art phrase adopted possibly half a century ago as ap- plying particuiariy to the printing. trade. 1 am unable to state whether the phrase was meant to imply that printing fs the art of preserving thoughts, records and lit ond tributions, or whether the ter “art” indicated the elaborate and artistic composition af much of the printing of that day. It probably implied both. During the past twenty-five years printing, like some of the other pro- fessions, has been commercialized * sre a Sra etree teense much of its former glamour and re- duce it to the same sorbid business level of any other strictly money- making venture. Prior to that time what was called job printing (now termed commercial printing), was ornate to an extreme degree; circu- lars, letterheads, envelopes and oth- er forms being embel!ished with flourishes, ornaments and other in- tricacies and often in tints and com- binations of colors, All composition, not only in job work and advertis- ing, but "in newspaper reading mat- ter, Was strictly handwork and the first class job printer of that period must needs be not merely a me- chanic, but something of an artist as well. Hunctyation marks were as scrupuously observed in ordinary job printing then as they would be now in-only the most exacting literary production. The rule tocay is to omit them wherever possible to do so without obscuring the meaning, and in commercial printing a comma or a period, 1s almost never emp!oyed ‘where indicated at the end of a line of type. Prior to five hundred years ago and extending back to an unknown period before the time of Christ the printers were called scribes and did their work with quili and brush. Or- iginally nothing more than copy- ists’ of the law, their importance gradually increased until it was their business to prepare public proclama- tions, Interpretations of the Mws and the peticies of their rulers, anc act as interpreters of the bible. Phus they were not only printers, but be- came the lawyers and ministers of the gospel as well, men of brains and of education, which !atter ac- complishment was not so common then as now‘and frequently they journeyed to toher countries, gather- ing knowledge cf statecraft and amassing worldly information which added to their prestige and enhanc- ed their power at home. In appesrance, books of antiquity were wholly unlike those of today. The Egyptians used papyrus’ for their writing material, as did also the Greeks. 'The supply of papyrus reeds being limited, skins-were fin- ally used. Skins of nearly a'l ant- mals_and of fish anG vellum from calfskin were generally preferred. Before the invention of mechanicai printing, books were copied by hand and, until the Christian era, took the 4 form of scrolls. Our work volume is meaning a roll. These scrolls were not kept on she'ves, but placed in closets prepared for them. It was’ after the Christian era that square books grew in favor. At first, tablets of wood, smoothed, were used for written comrhunica- tion. Later, two boards. hinged to- gether wtih rings, and with waxed surfaces were used, the message be- ing traced in the wax and ironed out after being read, so as to he usec, again, Skins were finally sub- stituted for the boards, feveral Pages could be bound together, thus marking’ the origin of the books of the present day. The art of the illuminator was col- laberated with that of the scribe in many Instances, though usually the scribes were themselves illum!- nators of ability, Floral and follal decorations were used, and every creeping, crawling, flying or walk- ing form of life, real and imaginary. Almost alwayn’ tif title page was profusely flluminated, and frequent- ly the beginnings of the various chapters. In speaking of the title page of one such work, the historian says: “The mind {s filled with amaze- ment as one views the extraordl- nary combinations of extravagant human and repti’e forms, intricate arabesque traceries and geometrical designs, all woven together in a maze of almost incredible interlac- ings, which fascinate an¢ charm the eye. Serpents and other reptile forms, but to what species they be- long it would be difficult to conjec- ture; birds with their necks and legs elongated and interlaced; hu- man figures with arms and legs twisted and knotted in coils, while their bodies are intertwined with those of birds—all yielding to the capricious. requirements ¥¢ the de- signer—are made to do duty as parts of this marvelous composition of ornampnt.” Fitty thousand volumes of manus- cript ate in the British Museum, to- gether ‘with 75,000 charters, and rolls and 2,006 papyri. The evolution of printing from earliest times is com- plete}y illustrated. Two departments /of manuscripts are maintained; one Pertaining to the Occident, tho other to the Orient. Among Greek Parchments is a notable copy of Plato's Phaeson, written in the third century before Christ and one of the edrilest Greek manuscripts now ex- isting, ‘The papyrus of Aristotle's Conetitution of Athens is there also —t Principal Librarian’ having given its translation to the world. Two leaves of vellum whereon are eribed a portion of an oration by mosthenes may be seen. Among Latin manuscripts are highly prized coples of Cicero and Juvenal, and the only existing manuscript of Beo- wulf, written in about the year one thousand, The art-of printing by mechanical ‘ _ Primitive Paper Equipment. Press and, Other means dates ack something tke 500 years, the impressions. first belng made from cuttines on biocks ‘of ‘Wood, the letters being in the script (writing) form of that day. The first printing from movable type . (in- dividual letters of the alphabet cut each on a block of wood) making it Possible to form any word, or group of words, by combining the requisite: letters, is accredited to Johannes Gutenberg, at Strassburg, Germany, in 1438, : = A black paste mixture was applied to-the letters by means of saturated padded balls onthe end of wooden sticks io be used for a handle, and termed ink balls, the sheet of papy- rus, vellum, parchment, or other material'to be printed was then cafe- fully spread over the type and pres- he batomae A various means by. The first printing press was of the form of a wooden bench supporting © frame work with a beam across the center above, through which a wooden: screw, operating much like @ carpenters’ bench screw of today, could be turned up and down, Sus- pended horizontahy to the lower end of this screw by a movable joint. was a board the size of ,the top of the bench below it. After ink, papyrus and an impression pad had been carefully placed on the letters by hand the screw was slowly turned until the board was brought to bear with sufficient pressure to transfer the ink from the face and in the form of. the letters to the material designed to receive the impression. Rollers made of a composition of glue and molasses succeeded the balls, the presses were gradually im- Proved and constructed of metal, until in the days of my youth what was known as the Washington hand Press, or Army press, was in gen- eral use for issuing most of the news? Papers throughout the country, and the Gordon jobber, a hand-feed, toot Power press was used for commer- cial printing, The Washington press had a move- able bed on which the forms of type were placed. .A boy known as. the Printer’s “devil” stood at a distribu- ting stone (a marble slab on one side of the press, where he dexerously manipulated the ink on the slab with the composition roller, distri- buting it evenly over the ‘stone and roller, and with the roller over the face of the type. While he was doing this the *pressman, (who was Usually editor and printer as well) was placing a blank sheet of news- Paper on the tympan. ‘This tympan, which was a ‘piece of heavy canvas stretched on a light steel frame and padded on the under side with a blanket, had attached to it a still lighter steel frame, not covered; call- ed, called a “frisket.” ‘This trisket Was frisked down on the tympan so as to hold the sheet of paper fn place while the tympan. was skilfully slammed down. so as to bring the Daper to bearon the type. The. bed bearing ‘the type forms, paper and tympan_ was then rolled on a track under the heavy platen which, by pulling a lever, was brought to bear in such manner as to transfer an impression of the type to the Paper. There was quite a knack to the mere Act of pulling that lever on the old Washington press, as any old-time Printer will testify, After the im. bression was made the bed of the|| press was rolled from under the platen, the hinged tympan and fris- ket were raised at one extended mo. tion and the paper removed, after which the “devil’ inked the form fgnin and the entire operation was repeated. There’ were eleven separ. ate and distinct things to be done in this process, yet it was Possible to print from two to four Papers of two pages each per minute. There 1s a record of 250 an hour. With Some of the modern presses itis now pened “st print, éut, fold and count 333 eight-page paper: 200,000 an hour, | matte, oF There were not only “devils” in the print shops of. those days, but there were “hell boxes,” and as it Was considered essential that every real printer should be ® past master in the art of profanity, it often had the atmosphere of purgatory in fact The “hell box’ was a receptacle into which was discarded all type letters, in various sizes and designs, which had become damaged and unfit for use. The modern print shop has no uso for a “hell box,” as all scrap type motal ts melted and re-melted over and over again ‘for use in the linotype machine, Tn addition to "devils" and “hell boxes” the early day printer was fre- quently having “pie.” Paradoxical as it may seem; that was worse than elther of the former, It often hap- pened that after having Dainstaking- ly assembled all the hundreds of Separate letters entering into a given composition, in the handling of tt it would sometimes spill and the letters become jumbled into a meaningless mass. That’ was called “ple” and meant the limit of disaster in a printing office. It some times hap- pened, as once befell me, that an en- tre form of the newspaper, adver- Using and all, would be “pls” just when ready for the Press. No one nota printer can form any concep- tion of what such a disaster meant to the publisher in, those primitive days, Before the days of the linotype, Which casts words in solid lines by merely operating the keys in the manner that you operate a type. Writer, the old-time printer had to assemble his words and lines a letter at a time, fn an irén holder called a “stick,” selecting the a from the box, the b from the b box, the o from the © box and so on’ through the alphabet, taking care to place thee fs the stick so that they would not only be right end up, bi ag P, but right The letters, which were cast froma lead alloy called type metal, were not only cast {fi reverso, but by the printer were always viewed top ulde down, For example, R ; who goes through the schso1 of country weekly journalism, is not only the better man for the ex- perience, but he never forgets a single detail of the business, and always has a strong predelection for it even after reforming from It. Graduates. from country printing offices who have gone out and made their mark in other lines of endeavor, never fail to re- turn at every opportunity, as they say, “just to-get a sniff of print- ers’ ink.” The fascination that. is a part of the business is never entirely extinguished. For that reason Mr, W. S. Kimball after thirty years is able to present the Literary Club of this city with a pen picture of the old days of printing and publishing that was a rare treat to that or- ‘ganization at a recent meeting. Mr. Kimball's article is repro- Ger tnis head. the transfer is a q. as the ordinary individual from the printed sheet. letters back into their had been printed. These are not arranged the others in the lower. away with, the composition and re-cast into other letters by pressing the keys. nonpareil, brevier, bourgeois, mer, long primer and pica, names were strictly indicative of “points. her of “makin, forms in the up,” ‘chase, locking tail. E THE LITERARY CLUB in order that a transfer may be cor- rect, it js necessary that the letter be cast in reverse. This {s well il- lustrated by taking the lower case q. As cast, it is a perfect p, but Even after a lapse of more than thirty years I can step into a printing office today and read from the type in the form, bottom up and backward, as readily reads Much time and labor used to be required in distributing the various respective boxes in the case, after the paper _cases, which are still in use for job type, in alphabetical order, but so that the letters used oftenest are closer to the hand and in larger boxes than the others. The boxes strc foiimed by thin partitions in a shallow wooden tray . The capi- tal letters’are in an upper case and Where the notype is used, distributing is done being simply dumped into the melting pot words and I could go into the matter of the sizes and the styles of type the old pri- which of sizes and all of which has become obsolete under the medorn system I could tell of the man- the and getting them on the press in the early days, but a paper prepared for this club will not permit of such extended de- The publisher of a country news- paper of forty years ago, in addi- tion to being editor and general news gatherer, was required to be a print- er_and pressman as well, ready and Early Newspapers Had More Influence, He Declares. capable of doing anything from washing the ink rollers to turning out an elaborate piece of job work. Those were the “days of real sport” in the newspaper game, when the country editor needed to wield a trenchant pen and be possessed of a vocabulary of descriptive and oft- times original adjectives and invoc- tives with which to lay his competi- tor low. The country paper which did not fi! its columns with yards of abuse of competitors, or of can- didates for office on the opposition political ticket, was tame and un- interesting, Probably that practice was the precursor of the “yellow journalism” of today. There wero few daily newspapers and majl communications were slow; there were hardly more than half a dozen well-known magazines tn the United States and people used to dwell more upon the contents of thelr locdl weekly paper, discussing and digesting its contents and poli- cles, so that it exerted a much great- er influence in the moulding of pub- Ne opinion and in contributing to the success of its chosen candidates at the polls than do the papers of today, ‘The average editor of those days was anything—I might say every- thing—else than a business man. His was the glorious calling, with the vision of an author, though he was a publisher as well. Advertising was not used by the merchant as an investment, as it is now, but he carried a small space as a tribute to his friendship, or fear, of the editor, as the case might be. The advertise- ment probably simply announced his name and business and was never changed. Probably,most of his farm- er subscribers paid the price of their yearly subscription in produce, if they paid it at all, bringing in any- thing they happened to have a sur- plus of and no market for, such as water melons, pumpkins, or any- thing they could not_ feed to the hogs. The merchant paid for his East Terraces is located in the eastern part of the city A—B—C ELECTRIC WASHER REE ! at the CASPER ELECTRIC Co. 121 £. First Phone 1993J ; 2 Che Casper Sunday Cribune PRINTING ART REVIEWED BY W.S. KIMBALL INADDRESS BEFO Editor Tells of Days’ of advertising and job printing by Watching to ses that family did not run up too large a charge. account. of the editor's family all worked at the trade and about the only real money he ever saw was from the publication of !egai notices and some at a time. on the surface. dsconsin, Dept. M OUPYRIGHT 1929 PITT a Would your floors stand this test? IHE chances are that your home will never be inundated. every wet shoe that leaves its mark on the floors, every drop of liquid that is spilled on them produces the same effect in a minor way. Pitcairn WATER SPAR is your protection. Youcan see visible proof in our window—a Watersparred panel submerged in water for months Water can have no effect Waterspar is water- proof. The hardy finish will not crack, will not turn white nor peel. Besides Waterspar transparent there are eighteen different beautiful colors of Waterspar colored varnishes and enamels. You can use then youre self, Pittsburgh Proof Products. Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company Proof Products 252 SOUTH CENTER Paint and Glass Supply Co., Distributors Bend ten cents for a copy of “What to de ond How to de ie fo Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. a oA guide to beter do But Milwaukee, of the Job work. He was so ethical- ly professional that he scorned mere Material wealth, and to attempt to obtain his support by a suggestion of “easy money” was more likely to alienate him than otherwise. Right or’wrong, he at least had the physi- cal and moral courage to stand un- swervingly by his hone: convic- tions, and !t may he that a realiza- ton of that fact was what gave the. newspapers of that period greater in- fluence with the individual reader. He fought his own battles and called a spade 4 space, mentioning the names of those to whom he referred, and when the trate reader came in to “clean up” on him he took his licking,or came off victorious. peli. 0 9 saci bd ds the editor's Usually members Woods Filling Station, car wash- ing and greasing. Phone 1920W. East Yellowstone Highway and A. Courtesy— Cold, impersonal banking service is as defi- nitely a thing of the past as the quill pen. 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