HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

The version on Vimeo is much higher quality, it's a scan from the original 16mm film. Cleaner + colors are better too, the Archive.org upload has a yellow/green tint.

Vimeo: https://files.catbox.moe/2jzh3z.png

Archive.org: https://files.catbox.moe/470r44.png

https://vimeo.com/127605643 (you can download the raw source upload with yt-dlp)

⬐ well_actulily

The version on Vimeo has vertical scratches running through most frames, which I find a bit distracting. So I prefer the Archive.org version despite it being less sharp and with the hue shift, but "diff'rent strokes" and all.

⬐ hnuser123456

Alright, who's gonna make the "I have two sources of the same footage with different flaws and I want to combine the best of both" AI?

The documentary of the same name, which chronicles the last ever hot metal typeset edition of the New York Times, is fascinating and I highly recommend it.

It's 30 minutes and you can watch it for free on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/127605643

⬐ lqet

The Linotype machine has become a kind of obsession for me. It is dizzying to think about the impact this machine had on the entire media landscape of the last 130 years. Not only did it allow for regular newspapers that were longer than a few pages, it also dramatically decreased the cost of both newspapers, books and magazines. In a way, an entire century stands on the shoulders of this machine, invented by a single man (Ottmar Mergenthaler) who was obsessed with it to an unhealthy point:

> One of Mergenthaler’s greatest setbacks was that he could not stop inventing. He constantly wanted to improve upon the machine. This made investors angry because they wanted to ship the machines and make money right away, but Mergenthaler kept coming up with new ideas—delaying the shipping process. A publisher of the New York Tribune, named Whitelaw Reid, tried to make money fast off of Mergenthaler’s invention. He began to criticize the Linotype design, in hopes that the stock price would decline so that he could buy more and take complete control of the devices. This put a lot of pressure on Mergenthaler, who was already a perfectionist and worked late into the night. Eventually, Mergenthaler’s health began to suffer and he died of Tuberculosis by age 44. His premature death meant that he never lived to see the success of his Linotype invention [0]

But it is also the technical aspects of the machine that are so fascinating: the bucket sort mechanism for the matrices used a 7-bit code for each character, encoded in the matrix teeth [1]. The machine supported text justification in a completely mechanical way. There are just so many small engineering gems in this machine, and at the end it prints out a cast letter mold. All that in a mechanical machine that fits into the corner of an office.

Mergenthaler was the Gutenberg of the 19th century. Unfortunately, almost nobody knows his name.

[0] https://sites.google.com/a/umich.edu/from-tablet-to-tablet/f...

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Linotype...

⬐ Symbiote

> a mechanical machine that fits into the corner of an office.

Could these machines be used in an office?

I watched the documentary mostly to see how they were used, and it looked much more like an artisan's workshop -- fairly noisy, hot type metal (mostly lead) in the machine, hammering the final page flat.

⬐ cafard

A Mergenthaler company survived into the 1990s. Its L-202 laser typesetting output unit was widespread in the early 1980s, and its L-300 allowed Postscript output.

⬐ jameshart

One of the things I love about linotype text justification is that it’s actually really a solution to a mechanical problem - the machine needs to make a complete line of text every time without leaving gaps at the end of the mold, and squeeze all the character blanks together tightly to prevent lead from squirting out - so driving wedges in between words to squeeze them together is a neat solution to that problem. That it has the side effect of creating that characteristic newspaper column justified aesthetic is a consequence of an engineering decision, not so much a deliberate design choice.

Interesting article on this tech and its possible connection to our ongoing confusion about how many spaces go after a period: http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2014/01/two-spaces-old-typist...

It’s not conclusive, but there is definitely something to this and the linotype’s mechanical justification that I think overall emphasizes how much what we think of as aesthetic judgements about what makes for good typography are actually just things we’ve grown used to from the technical limitations and operational choices made by people using particular technologies in the past.

⬐ tempodox

The same 1978 documentary on YouTube, without a need for logging in:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU

⬐ LeoPanthera

It should be noted that this version has considerably poorer video quality.

⬐ tempodox

Thanks for noting this. I couldn't compare since I have no Vimeo account.

⬐ stolenmerch

They very briefly mention deaf printers using sign language. I had no idea being a printer was common for deaf people.

https://www.dailymoth.com/blog/the-washington-post-recognize...

⬐ LeoPanthera

I think it was a practical decision. The room was so loud that even if you could hear normally you wouldn't be able to hear someone talking anyway.

⬐ kingcharles

Oh lord, the computerized solution still results in dozens of men having to cut out the computer print-outs with an xacto and glue them onto the pages by hand. WTF. All the technology they had in those roomfuls of computers and no-one had yet written the software to lay out the page too.

⬐ LeoPanthera

OK but it's 1978. The processing power just wasn't there yet for actual page layout.

⬐ ulrikrasmussen

I did not think about the fact that lines were set in molten lead before! Did typesetters experience health issues from this?

⬐ jameshart

Yes - I’d heard of ‘hot metal printing’ for years before I actually saw a linotype in action and realized how literal it was. A linotype machine literally molds lead slugs into a ‘line o’ type’ then stacks them up to make a printable plate. It’s hot when it comes out because it was molten a moment earlier.

And by lining up those plates next to one another you get columns. Newspaper layouts just naturally fall out of the capabilities of the technology.

So much of what we take for granted in computer typography has direct lineage to mechanical linotype concepts - all web developers should have an understanding of how linotypes worked because the machine’s function defines the form of so much of what we expect of typographical layout.

⬐ gpvos

I'm getting "Video is not rated. Log in to watch."

⬐ lurtbancaster

Use yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases

    yt-dlp https://vimeo.com/127605643

The film is also available on the Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/FarewellEtaoinShrdlu

Cheers :)

⬐ echoradio

I discovered a couple personally fascinating things stemming this documentary.

According to the film, the last paper published with hot type was July 2 — my grandfather’s birthday. He was an avid reader of the New York Times and loved doing the Sunday crosswords — in ink!

In sharing the fun coincidence about the date of the last typeset paper with my mom, I learned one of my grandfather’s uncles worked at the New York Times doing the exact typesetting seen in the documentary. He retired in 1968, though, so never saw the transition shown in the film. It gives pause to think of the front-page headlines he may have been involved in preparing (i.e. Pearl Harbor, JFK, etc.).

I’ve worked on the web for 25 years. I wonder what my (great-great) uncle would think of digital publishing. :)

I recommend everyone watch Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu. It's a fascinating documentary filmed on the last day the New York Times using hot metal type, galleys, printer's stones, etc.

https://vimeo.com/127605643

"A film created by Carl Schlesinger and David Loeb Weiss documenting the last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times. This film shows the entire newspaper production process from hot-metal typesetting to creating stereo moulds to high-speed press operation. At the end of the film, the new typesetting and photographic production process is shown in contrast to the old ways."

Pretty interesting to see the then-new computer typesetting technology and how primitive it was compared to computers today.

You might like Farewell - 1978 https://vimeo.com/127605643

> A film created by Carl Schlesinger and David Loeb Weiss documenting the last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times. This film shows the entire newspaper production process from hot-metal typesetting to creating stereo moulds to high-speed press operation. At the end of the film, the new typesetting and photographic production process is shown in contrast to the old ways.

> You can take the same rules about hollywood union rules forcing lighting technicians and camera crew to have roles, even though the big expensive and hot lights they used to safeguard are long since gone.

I don't know. That reasoning sounds a bit like saying you don't need software engineers anymore because your application runs on a microcomputer, not a mainframe. I'm sure there's more to a lighting technician's role than "hold lights because they're hot."

> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could save by moving to LED lights and cutting the mandatory crew requirement and run small films at affordable prices.

Bosses don't like unions, and if you take the perspective of a boss, you probably won't like them either. What else is new?

> Everybody thinks they're the actor in the hollywood comparison, and they're not. They're more likely the tech guy holding an outdated lamp under union rules.

It beats getting dumped onto the street and pivoting suddenly into burger flipping. The point of unions is to protect its workers, not minimize employer costs. If a job is becoming truly obsolete, then the union could force the employer to retrain their workers (like what happened in this video: https://vimeo.com/127605643) or buy time for a more gradual transition.

Heck, if workers trusted they weren't going to get screwed by labor saving technology, they might not resist it as much.

⬐ friendlybus

It was once a useful role and now is not. Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that?

Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point.

My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned.

The pareto principle and distribution of wealth isn't going to change, some unions are going to be paid off for how much discontent is felt. Which has some virtue, and not enough virtue.

⬐ ardy42

> Sure people can retrain and reapply for jobs, do we need unions for that?

Because they could make it easier for those workers. It's not like the business that laid them off is going to do a good job of that, if it's not compelled to, and retraining can be expensive and perhaps unaffordably so for someone who just lost their job.

>>> Last year corridor crew did a video where niko broke down how much money he could save by moving to LED lights and cutting the mandatory crew requirement and run small films at affordable prices.

>> Bosses don't like unions, and if you take the perspective of a boss, you probably won't like them either. What else is new?

> Saying bosses dont like unions therefore dismissal of discussion is missing the point.

No it isn't. I'm sure there prosecutors that have plenty of complaints about defense attorneys. Maybe some guilty people do get off free because of them, but we don't oppose defense attorneys because they make things hard for prosecutors. Unions serve opposing interests to bosses, so bosses' gripes should not be the main focus.

> My view is too much of unionizing is underpinned by coveting other people's success and wanting to feel good after being burned.

My view is that unionization is underpinned by the fundamental imbalance between unorganized workers and organized business.

⬐ friendlybus

The point is dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand or minimizing it down to complaints means you are missing when valid points are being made.

You are not showing a desire to discuss specific, measurable, realistic and timely issues. You and most unionists here have a view of a utopian union that is above criticism and does not need examination.

Which supports my view that this is about feelings and not about the problems people proclaim to want to solve.

What problem of unorganized workers? Healthcare? Retraining? Okay lets campaign for healthcare and lower college fees. Lets pick up the debt jubilee ticket some economists are calling for. Lets make government pay for code bootcamps and have corporations underwrite months of health insurance out of work.

No none of that will work because it does not give totalitarian control of workers to unions. Nor will it allay feelings of jealousy.

⬐ ardy42

> The point is dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand or minimizing it down to complaints means you are missing when valid points are being made.

I'm not "dismissing anybody/somebody/everybodies' view out of hand," but observing that you can't make everyone happy all the time. Bosses will be unhappy with unions, because oftentimes unions go against their interests and reduce the power differential when they deal with individual employees. However, there's more than just the bosses' interest at play, so it's a mistake to focus on that.

This may not be a win-win situation, and it may be just for shareholders and business owners to lose a little.

> You are not showing a desire to discuss specific, measurable, realistic and timely issues. You and most unionists here have a view of a utopian union that is above criticism and does not need examination.

No, that's not true. I don't have a utopian view of unions, but rather an objection to their out-of-hand rejection based on a couple of cliched complaints about specific instances of the type. That's also a double standard, since if we'd applied a similar standard to corporations, that concept would have been rejected long ago. I think innovation in the area of unionization is possible and welcome, but I don't have all the answers.

At this point, were at the step of merely trying to get the idea of unions put back onto the table. It is not reasonable to insist that an idea (in this case tech worker unions) be fully worked out before the first step toward it is made.

> What problem of unorganized workers?

To be blunt about it: capital is organized. When a worker deals with it, they're almost always dealing with some kind of institution, not an individual, which means they're almost always in a greatly weaker position, with all that implies. Why is it such a problem for workers to have institutions of their own to create some balance?

> No none of that will work because it does not give totalitarian control of workers to unions. Nor will it allay feelings of jealousy.

Attributing desires for worker organization to "jealousy" is a far worse dismissal than anything I did in my comments.

⬐ friendlybus

A power imbalance isn't a problem to be solved defacto. We're not stalin-esque egalitarians.

What would you want power for. What problem are you trying to solve. If you say individual vs collective, institute or corp for a third time without introducing an issue to be tackled, there is nothing to talk about.

Attribute the desires to anything other than power and the jealousy tag falls away.

Corporations did not start as they are, they were tiny teams of people off to do one task. How can I say any different about the implications of a new org structure like unions.

Good video; this one is well worth a watch too, about the move away from traditional typesetting:

https://vimeo.com/127605643

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16904770

The link submitted then (https://vimeo.com/127605643) was to a slightly different version of the film on Vimeo as part of the "Linotype: The Film" collection:

https://vimeo.com/134626010

I didn't know I can get so emotional about printing presses until I watched "Farewell - ETAOIN SHRDLU" documentary. It is about the last NYTimes newspaper run on these magnificent machines.

https://vimeo.com/127605643

⬐ sb057

If you like that, be sure to watch Linotype: The Film, the makers of which digitized that documentary.

⬐ henvic

Just started watching and seems very interesting!

⬐ neilv

Boston Globe's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuImfDYWvck

I feel like this article should be paired with a watching of "Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu" (1978):

https://vimeo.com/127605643

A quote from the film:

Printer: "I find it very sad. Very sad. I've learned the new stuff. The new processes and all. But I've been a printer now for 26 years. I've been in this place for 20 years. Six years apprenticeship, 20 years journeyman, and these are words that aren't just tossed around. They've always meant something to us printers.

I hate to see it. It's inevitable that we're going to go into computers. All the knowledge I've acquired over these 26 years is all locked up in a little box now called a computer. And I think probably most jobs are going to end up the same way."

Questioner: "Do you think computers are a good idea in general?"

Printer: "Oh, there's no doubt about it. They're going to benefit everybody eventually. How long it will take, I don't know."

Also:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/1966-2016-the-las...

⬐ ea016

I also really enjoyed the beautiful "Meet the Machinists Who Keep the New York Times Running":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGHStfuLdyY

Great short film on the end of the Linotype at the New York times in 1978: https://vimeo.com/127605643

Edit: you can see Linotypes in action at the International Printing Museum in Carson, CA (south of Los Angeles).

⬐ raldi

What always amazes me about this video is how on-board the workforce was with the change -- it was an era of stronger unions, which ensured they'd all keep their jobs for life and be trained to use the new tools, so of course they embraced the new way of doing things.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1974/07/29/797...

⬐ timr

This (interesting) article was posted downthread, and makes it clear that the change wasn't accepted by the union. The good times never were:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/1966-2016-the-las...

"Staggered by their losses during a 114-day strike led by New York Typographical Union No. 6, from late 1962 to early 1963, the city’s publishers resolved to begin automating their composing rooms as quickly as possible. Just as quickly, the union shops, or “chapels,” began pushing back."

"But it would not be until July 1974 that Big Six and The Times and Daily News reached a landmark agreement. Their new contract freed the publishers to introduce automation, while effectively guaranteeing lifetime job security to 1,785 situation-holders and full-time substitutes, 810 of whom were at The Times"

⬐ raldi

Huh? That quote says the union negotiated a deal that did exactly what I said it did. The subject of the piece continued to work at the Times for another 38 years, until his voluntary retirement.

⬐ timr

The first quote says they resisted it. The second says it took them over a decade to reach an agreement. And if you don't believe the quotes, you can read the article, which emphasizes the same thing.

⬐ MichaelMoser123

During their work with Linotype they got into close contact with lead, this often leads to lead poisoning. I guess they would have retired relatively early. For all the nostalgia people tend to forget that this stuff was a health hazard.

https://rarecachebroadcast.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/linotype...

⬐ None

None

⬐ fabianhjr

Raldi said that innovation is easier when it is not in conflict with peoples' livelihood; not that innovation shouldn't happen. (Eg, when changing printing methods won't put most workers on the street)

⬐ None

None

⬐ jbuzbee

My father ran a small-town newspaper and tells me that the printers unions were very strong. When he finally did away with the linotype machines, the operators were guaranteed lifetime employment. When my father finally retired decades later, he still had some of the original linotype operators doing what he called make-work jobs. Many of these operators were never able to pick up the new required skills, but he had to find something for them to do because of the union contract. Not a good situation for anyone.

⬐ rtpg

I mean it sounds like an alright situation in a country without any form of proper safety net.

It's definitely not ideal, but it's something.

⬐ pg_bot

The United States has a perfectly capable social safety net.[0]

It makes no sense to employ people unproductively. If you believe that your work should have meaning, this would be the ultimate insult.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_the_United_...

⬐ Jun8

At 14:40: "All the knowledge I've acquired over these 26 years is all locked in a little box called the computer. And, I think, probably most jobs will end up the same way."

⬐ rimliu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOM5_V5jLAs (this talk also mentions linotype).

⬐ tysone

The Times's resident historian, David Dunlap, wrote about this wonderful film in 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/11/13/1978-farewe...

⬐ _nato_

As someone who spent the weekend figuring out `flexbox' to align copy around a webpage, after years of floating divs and pulling my hair out, I can appreciate this video. Creative destruction is an awe-inspiring, yet wistful force of nature.

⬐ smpetrey

Truly

⬐ wil421

I think it’s great to see why web is the way it is. These people were the web devs of their days desiging lead based layouts. Imagine having to roll back a change mid print.

⬐ rmason

Guess because I've reached a certain age I remember things like rotary dial phones, vacuum tubes and linotype machines. Until quite recently here in Michigan we still had one weekly paper with handset type.

The last linotype operator retired from the New York Times after fifty years in 2016:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/02/insider/1966-2016-the-las...

⬐ None

None

⬐ GeekyBear

There is an interesting period video that explained the mechanical inter-workings of a Linotype machine available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRHOPmGUtPA

⬐ Animats

A more detailed one is [1].

The amazing thing about Linotypes is how little they changed through their century long life. One would have expected a few generations of the hardware - machines becoming more compact and simpler. But no. There were various models, but the basic form didn't change.

[1] https://archive.org/details/0066_Typesetting_Linotype_02_25_...

⬐ dredmorbius

A great many systems and designs reach stability relatively early on. Particularly for mechanical systems.

Computers are something of an exceeption so far as scale goes, what with Moore's law, though other principles are vastly more durable.

(x86 architecture, Unix, core memory, von Neumann / Turing machines, Boolean logic.)

In mechanical systems, it's often some particular breakthrough somewhere which makes for changes. In the case of printing, the period from about 1780 -1920 was profound: from wooden "wine press" designs of perhaps 60-120 impressions/hr to electrically-powered, steel-framed, web-fed, linotype-set, offset-press based systems running 1,000,000 impressions/hr.

⬐ lolc

My favourite is how they could set spaces that were springs that would adjust to the width of the column.

⬐ RichardCA

I was fortunate enough to have a school field trip to the NY Times in the 70's. If you were a nerdy kid the word "shrdlu" showed up a few times, mostly in PBS documentaries about AI, as it was at the time. If you grew up in the tri-state area, everything important was on Channel 13. Except for Star Trek which had moved into syndication by that time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAJz4YKUwqw

⬐ robotresearcher

SHRDLU was a natural language interface program by Terry Winograd at MIT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU

⬐ InclinedPlane

On the one hand, it's fascinating to see how (overly) complicated the process of printing used to be. On the other hand, it looks much simpler now because we gloss over all the complexity in the silicon. Back then there were thousands of components, today there are billions and they all operate at millions or billions of actions per second. But it all happens inside tiny little packages about the size of a sugar cube.

⬐ Analemma_

This is extremely cool, although it's a little unnerving to see people working with so much lead with bare hands, especially considering a lot of them had the job for decades. Was lead poisoning an occupational hazard among typesetters?

⬐ kyoob

I got to take a tour of a little "Newseum" in the New York Times building that displayed some of the lead lines and brass matrices. One person on the tour asked if printers got sick from handling lead and our guide said, "Oh, yes!"

People are surprised how industrial the process used to be, and how tough and unregulated industrial jobs were back in the 70's and the decades prior. Our guide told us that in the old NY Times building (the one shown in this film) there was a hospital on the 13th floor for people who got burned or (his word) mangled during the hot type process. The New York Times had doctors on staff for printers who got hurt badly enough that an ambulance ride uptown would take too long.

A couple of the workers in the movie are wearing paper hats. That's to keep ink that's floating around in the air out of their hair. No masks! But at least their hair would be clean.

⬐ biggieshellz

More unnerving to me is seeing people around all that noise without hearing protection. They mention in the video that many of the printers were deaf -- I wouldn't be surprised if those that weren't to start, ended up that way!

⬐ None

None

⬐ jbuzbee

My father ran a newspaper and he said that the state school for the deaf trained linotype operators. It was a good job for them because the high noise-level wouldn't be an issue.

⬐ jcranmer

Lead isn't quite the danger that people think it is--a lump of solid lead that you hold with your hands isn't going to hurt you. The problem is when you ingest lead flakes or dissolved lead (lead compounds tend to be weakly soluble, but this is pH-dependent--that's what caused problems in Flint).

The real danger in the newsroom is in the hot metal press, because you've got hot metal (likely causing some problematic airborne lead) running around at high speeds. The composing proofs themselves are going to be very minor in comparison to the linotype and printing machines, which are going to be occupational safety hazards for sure.

⬐ ttul

This was my first thought. Although, they were also exposed to enormously high levels of lead just walking around outside because of leaded gasoline.

⬐ opencl

Solid lead is not really a problem if you wash your hands before eating after handling it because it doesn't absorb through the skin. Whether or not these people actually did that, I have no idea. But to this day there's still plenty of solid lead stuff that hasn't been banned: fishing weights, bullets, etc. The main causes of lead poisoning back in the day were all from inhalation: soldering results in inhaling lead fumes, machining/sanding lead resulted in inhaling lead dust, exhaust from cars using leaded gas (this was the big one that affected basically everyone), etc.

⬐ biggieshellz

The amount of lead fumes you'll inhale from soldering is minimal -- the temperature at which the work is done is almost always below the temperature at which the lead will vaporize. See https://diamondenv.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/lead-exposure-du... -- low-temperature melting of lead (below 500 degrees Celsius) "is not liable to result in significant exposure to lead".

⬐ azinman2

There is no safe amount of lead.

⬐ jjt-yn_t

We had one linotype man in the shop. Several times yearly I'd be tasked on the back open air dock to melt down the lead type in a cauldron of sorts as his assistant. No ones job in that shop was without low pay occupational hazards... save, by necessity probably, the owners...

⬐ smacktoward

Lead bullets are actually slowly starting to get banned. California is phasing in a ban on their use in hunting, for instance (see https://www.wildlife.ca.gov/Hunting/Nonlead-Ammunition), and the Obama Administration's Interior Department issued a ban on their use in federal wildlife refuges. That latter one was later repealed by the Trump Administration (see http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322058-interior...), but given the hazards lead poses to the environment that's unlikely to be the last word we ever hear on the subject.

Beyond hunting, the military is moving in the same direction; the Army has switched to using lead-free bullets as its standard rifle ammunition (https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2014/5/21/testing-...), for example.

⬐ mseebach

But surely that's due to environmental pollution, not any (human) health concerns?

⬐ jcranmer

Yes, environmental, not human, concerns are the primary reason for banning lead bullets.

⬐ wyldfire

> The main causes of lead poisoning back in the day were all from inhalation

In addition to those mechanisms, I think another popular one is cigarette smoking. If you were handling lead, it could get absorbed into the cigarette and inhaled that way.

⬐ gregsadetsky

Thank you, great video!

This 30 minute movie from 1960 explaining mechanical typesetting is absolutely fascinating if you're curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzilaRwoMus

⬐ oflannabhra

Anyone interested in Linotype would greatly enjoy Linotype: The Film [0], a full length documentary that interviews several of the people that made this film.

[0] - https://vimeo.com/15032988

⬐ jiveturkey

Link is to a trailer, not the actual film. The actual film is at https://shop.linotypefilm.com/ and is $20 for blu-ray or $8 on itunes or $8 on amazon video.

I loved the movie Helvetica, I'm sure I'll love Linotype!

⬐ dwighttk

Look at the computers that replaced them and then imagine how often those have been replaced since then. Of course they did get less expensive pretty quickly (and I'm sure that even though the guy who invented the linotype could sit down at that machine and use it, that doesn't mean those are the same machines from when the NYT started using linotype, which was my initial silly assumption)

⬐ jrockway

I'm somewhat fascinated by the technical aspects of the videography here. Solid chunks of color "shimmer" as though random noise was added by a digital sensor. Then there are lines, presumably on the original film, that appear light green instead of white. I can't think of anything to account for either of these effects.

⬐ dylan604

Film scratches are not all equal. Some scratches would go all the way through the emulsion resulting in solid white or black lines depending on if it was a print or a negative. However, if the scratch as not that deep, then the scratch would have a color tint depending on its depth.

Maybe this is what you are seeing? If you provide a time reference to a specific example, I can take a look to see if that matches what I'm describing. I used to work in film post in transferring and restoration. The restoration software is pretty magical. The scanning software/hardware has also come a long way, but the really nice equipment is still $150k-$250k(US) depending on the options.

⬐ jrockway

2:37 is one. There are others that are green in dark areas and pink in light areas, however. That's what's so weird about it.

I will think more but scratching the emulsion only partially sounds like a really good explanation to me. Where the image is dark, though, there should be very little dye left in the emulsion, so I'm not 100% convinced. Still thinking about it though :)

⬐ dylan604

I wonder how many Quark users would dream of going back to the manual ways? Quark is still my number one of "least favorite to use programs". I could just never think the way Quark wanted me to thing. I took to PageMaker in a heartbeat, but just never got Quark.

⬐ ahemphill

Quark 4 was definitely full of quirks and there were plenty of things it just couldn't do. It featured decent keyboard shortcuts, though, which I once relied on daily for newspaper layout — and which proved quite difficult to teach to my successor as, ultimately, I knew them only by feel!

⬐ supernova87a

Sigh, almost makes you wish for the days when it really cost something to publish words, and not every moron with a wifi connection could tweet to the world one more banal opinion adding to the noise saturating everyone's attention spans.

⬐ fzzzy

This is a very interesting observation. The decrease in the difficulty of publishing vastly increased the noise. I think I understood that this was happening but hadn’t consciously made the connection.

⬐ sharpercoder

"Headlines are still set by hand."

I now understand where the word "typesetting" comes from.

⬐ hudibras

I had a similar thought when they were talking about reading the "galley proofs" and finding errors which were then corrected before the final edition: "Aha! 'Proofreading!'"

⬐ windwake12

Alot of font terms comes from that time, like leading and kerning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning

⬐ oflannabhra

Interestingly, the term "font" itself came from the fact that typefaces were cast.

"Font" originally described a size, weight, and face. It no longer includes a concept of size, because digital typesetting allows sizes to be changed so easily. What we refer to as a "font" today was originally referred to as a "typeface," that is, the general style of the lettering.

⬐ 0xCMP

This explains too how sometimes you see a list of every combination of every "font" in a list and other times you see every font and can configure them.

Likely some confusion around this in the documentation and in programmers who implement these features.

⬐ tome

Wow, I saw one of these at the Bristol Industrial Museum. A very impressive piece of kit.

⬐ EdSharkey

Are there any PDF's available of this last manual typeset edition of the NYT for viewing online?

⬐ elemenopy

Apparently[1] it was the July 1, 1978 edition: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1978/07/01/iss... (NYT subscription reqd)

1. https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/11/13/1978-farewe...

⬐ syncsynchalt

It's actually July 2nd 1978, which was produced the night of July 1st.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1978/07/02/iss...

⬐ kw71

After about the 11 minute mark the footage shows them working on the front page of the July 1 issue. Looks like they didn't shoot it all in one evening.

⬐ azinman2

Curious to know how the photos got turned into casts. Does anyone know?

⬐ grzm

Photoengraving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoengraving

⬐ tempodox

This is a great docu, too bad there is no download button in vimeo.

⬐ xmmrm

https://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/

⬐ oflannabhra

I restored a small scale letterpress several years ago.

That gave way to learning about hot metal typesetting, manual typesetting, and other essentially abandoned technologies and skills.

I also got to volunteer at a local university library [0] that has a fully functional print shop to learn the necessary skills to manually typeset. Needing several parts, I got to visit a collector who had amassed a warehouse of type, typesetting materials, presses, and parts. Here are some photos [1] [2] [3]

Linotype, and this video, represent the pinnacle of mechanical automation for printing. It took over 500 years to go from Gutenberg to the recording of this video, but only a couple of years to go from the invention of the microchip to digital typesetting. What a great reminder of the transforming power of computers!

[0] - http://www.uky.edu/Libraries/KLP/tour/

[1] - https://www.instagram.com/p/KSZCKGiPrAy_zXgJslBGhi6rRHkpSu1d...

[2] - https://www.instagram.com/p/KSZnFWCPrUTwdRHmwz6hrf_hQzmuWnD5...

[3] - https://www.instagram.com/p/KSaKYciPrhndq1LVqk1S-iQBvX60FNPD...

⬐ raldi

Your Instagram links aren't working.

⬐ oflannabhra

Sorry, here they are on Imgur - https://imgur.com/a/Gh7PYp0

⬐ smolsky

Right, it looks like the tech progress has been exponential.

What do you intend to replace it with? PDFs?

If there's to be a universal "digital paper", it would need a lot of planning and agreement. With the amount of churn of stuff in technology these days I don't see anything stable enough to "replace paper" anytime soon.

Thinking about this problem reminds me of the transition from linotype machines at the New York Times, to fully computerised systems in 1978.

The computer systems are shown at the end of the wonderful documentary 'Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu' https://vimeo.com/127605643#t=24m55s

The amount of thought and preparation put into those systems, and the thought and preparation put into the change from ink-and-metal to pixels-and-bytes seems remarkable. Perhaps the (lack of) co-ordination between hardware and software today is to blame? Many industries have their IT problems handled with software-only solutions, generally with little thought for what the solution will look like 10--or even 5--years down the road.

I would love to hear from people in industries like medical software, and flight software; where thought and preparation is--hopefully--given some budget and priority.

⬐ mjsweet

What I found interesting about the move from hot type to cold type is just how transferable jobs were. From packing lead together to pasting up paper... many of the same skills are needed to ensure each page is laid out correctly. 14 lines per minute to 1000 lines per minute. Quite a drastic increase and no doubt meant alot less jobs were needed to produce a finished paper.

I've posted this excellent short film about the last night of hot metal printing at the New York Times a few times here, but it never got any traction:

https://vimeo.com/127605643

⬐ susam

Indeed an excellent film. Thanks for sharing. I have re-posted this URL as a story of its own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15806072.

How to do you "retrain" to get abstract "skills in areas like critical thinking and problem-solving"? When I think "retraining" I think training to perform a different kind of routine job in a different domain or industry. For example, decades ago, the NYT retrained its Linotype operators to a similar computer data entry job[1].

[1] https://vimeo.com/127605643 or https://archive.org/details/FarewellEtaoinShrdlu or https://www.nytimes.com/video/insider/100000004687429/farewe...

⬐ dbg31415

This was really interesting. I sort of spaced out and left the auto-play videos on... watched like 2 hours about type setting machines and typography. Cool.

These machines were elegant dinosaurs. Really freakin' cool to think we had the capacity to build automation even without computers.

One segment talked about how to reduce the vibrations caused by motors and the solution was to make it heavier. Some of these machines weighed 20+ tons... they had huge weights built in to reduce vibrations.

"Yeah I have a solution for that, let's make it heavier," said no-one in the last 40 years.

Also, 1978 was before my birth... but... I assumed these sorts of machines were like from the 1920s... didn't know they were used all the way until almost the 80s.

Can't imagine any piece of software or system I build, or even work with, being around in 100 years... I bet there are still a few things I did 10 years ago around... but any major production code... maybe 2-5 years between overhauls?

But there was no problem in inserting graphics and, with offset printing, photos into the page decades before charts became common.

Here's a page from 1933: http://imgur.com/Mkzihb6

But, before computers, the charts had to prepared by hand.

Also (unrelated to charts) the movable type was replaced with "hot type" starting in 1886. Newspapers typesetters used a keyboard and the typesetting machine automatically assembled the type molds and poured molten lead into them, producing a slug for each line of type (hence Linotype).

https://www.google.com/search?q=hot+type+slugs&tbm=isch

The machines are pretty amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wHiddZOfa8

Here's a video about the last NY Times issue that was set using linotypes (in 1978): https://vimeo.com/127605643