Printing Presses

I use shredded paper as bedding for my livestock in particular my pig. It takes quite a lot of paper to keep a pig happy; much more than an average household can produce. To have enough paper to shred I get the old newspapers and magazines from convenience stores and a newspaper office. Often, I like to read the old newspapers from other towns but sometimes my stack of my want-to-reads gets quite large and I find myself reading “news” that is over a year old.

Reading a year old, Kansas paper I found a front page article talking about that paper donating a Model 8 Linotype typesetting machine to the local museum. The machine was so big they needed to take a wall out of the old printing room to remove it in one piece. After reading the article, I called The Superior Express and asked Bill about the donation. I found out The Express has donated a Linotype typesetter as well as numerous other newspaper items to the museum in Superior. Bill gave me a quick overview of the printing presses, and, also mentioned an extensive collection in a neighboring town.

As I started thinking about the printing process, I remembered a toy I had received one Christmas. After doing some research and memory recall, I discerned it must have been a “Swift Set Rotary Printing Press.” It had a set of bins to put the letters, punctuation marks and symbols in. These items were made of rubber and slid into little metal “rails” to form sentences. Once a sentence was assembled, those “rails” were attached to a metal drum by “tires” on both ends. The drum was then rotated by a hand crank, moving the “rails” through an ink bath and then around to press the sentences onto a piece of paper being fed under the drum. Unfortunately, I was too young to really appreciate this toy. I always ran out of letters to make a paragraph, or out of ink, or out of paper, etc. I think my father received more enjoyment from the toy than I did. Obviously, however, I did learn from it because I remember it all these decades later. In fact, I am sure I could operate one and would have fun with it if I had one now.

The Linotype and rotary press are only two of multiple types of printing equipment. With the ease of using a computer, it is hard to imagine people sitting at machines, setting type to transfer the journalist’s words onto multiple sheets of paper. I like to explore history whenever I get a chance. These explorations not only give me an appreciation for today’s conveniences, but they also often come in handy when conveniences fail and I need to do things the “old-fashioned” way.