Elmwood Man recalls Linotype use in earlier days of newspapering By Mary Skalak (Plattsmouth Journal, January 1985) Harvey Backemeyer of Elmwood remembers the Leader Echo newspaper business in Elmwood, as that was his first job after high school. Learning the business in the 1920’s, Harvey set type by hand and later operated the linotype. Motioning with his hands to explain how the metal case at the top of the linotype machine released the brass letter molds, he said it seemed just yesterday that he and George Blessing, Sr., worked together. Using the terms of the trade, he explained that a slug was a solid line of type with raised letters on its face. A number of operations produced this slug automatically. Harvey chuckled as he remembered how George Blessing, Sr., coaxed people over to see the “printer’s lice.” He put water between two slugs and told the observer to look closely. Then he forced the two slugs together, and the curious one got a squirit of water in the eye. Operating the linotype, Harvey sat before a keyboard with 90 keys. When he touched a letter key, it released a brass mold from a metal case called a magazine at the top of the machine. The brass mold or matrix was then carried to its proper place in the line on a moving belt. Spaces between words were formed by spacebands placed by pressing a special key. After the line of molds was formed, molten metal was forced into the faces of the mold, which then hardened into a slug and raised letters on its face. The linotype then slid the slug in a shallow tray called a galley. After printing, a real time saving aspect of the machine was that it automatically returned the brass molds to their places, thus eliminating the need for distributing by hand, which he had always had to do when typesetting by hand. Printing the news kept workers very busy to go along with a mystery writer or two whose antics caused so much interest that Elmwood residents would line up at the post office before it opened on newspaper day to find out what the next secret message would be. But that is another story.—Dora Engelking’s story saved for next week’s paper.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 01:11:29 +0000
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