We visit the Penrith Museum of Printing and find out how the Sydney Morning Herald was printed from its beginning in 1831 to now.
Museum president Bob Lockley gives us a tour of the fully operational machinery and tells us about the history of the printing press and the relevance of the printing and typography trades today.
Video examples (of varying quality) of the machines spoken about in this episode:
Printing press ASMR (yes omg it’s a thing!): https://youtu.be/a5UFos_ysz8
Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/roadshow-and-tell/id1666756225
Follow us on Instagram to see photos of stuff mentioned in this episode: @roadshowandtellpodcast
We visit the Penrith Museum of Printing and find out how the Sydney Morning Herald was printed from its beginning in 1831 to now.
Museum president Bob Lockley gives us a tour of the fully operational machinery and tells us about the history of the printing press and the relevance of the printing and typography trades today.
Video examples (of varying quality) of the machines spoken about in this episode:
Printing press ASMR (yes omg it’s a thing!): https://youtu.be/a5UFos_ysz8
Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/roadshow-and-tell/id1666756225
Follow us on Instagram to see photos of stuff mentioned in this episode: @roadshowandtellpodcast
So the news is two days old before you get it.
Kate:Wanted a cook none but a sober person Need apply.
Bob:we need to make this museum last because we are the only operational museum
Kate:Welcome to Roadshow and tell a podcast for people hoping to improve their pub trivia team score. I'm your host, Kate, and I'll visit museums so you can learn things you never knew you wanted to. Today we're visiting Penrith, a suburb in Greater Western Sydney, about 50 minutes from the c CBD and we'll be visiting the Penrith Museum of Printing. In this episode, we'll learn how compositors used to set out newspaper columns, how the Linotype machine revolutionized print production, and how the Sydney Morning Herald was produced before electricity. So today I'm at the Penrith Museum of Printing with Bob Lockley, the president. Welcome, Bob.
Bob:Thank you.
Kate:So Bob, whose land are we on today?
Bob:We're on the Dharug People's land.
Kate:Why Penrith for this museum?
Bob:Well, the, museum started in Penrith and it should be really called Australia's Print Heritage Center, but it's the Penrith Museum of Printing because the gentleman who used to work at the Nepean times managed to score the equipment. We've got some 1857 Sydney Morning Heralds here. And the reason we focus on the story of the Sydney Morning Herald, cause the Sydney Herald slash Sydney Morning Herald is Australia's longest continuous running daily newspaper. okay. So the history of printing starts for us in 1450 when, Johan Gutenberg invented movable type in a larger scale than what was previously done by the Koreans and the Chinese. So he invented metal moveable type, which then spread the word around the world. And Johan Gutenberg was from Manse in Germany. And we've got what we believe to be the first way the printing evolved back in those days by hand setting each letter one word at a time.. And lasted from 1450 right through till 1880 when they invented a linotype machine to automatically set lines of type instead of word at a time that could print set line at a time. And during that time, there was no change in technology for 450 years. And we get a change of technology every three and a half minutes today, but back then we only had a change in technology from 1450 to 1890. 18 80, 1890s.
Kate:So when the printing equipment came to Australia that used the line by line press rather than the letter by letter?
Bob:Mm-hmm.
Kate:And how cubersome was it to create maybe one page of printing?.
Bob:On the old fashioned style of the Gutenberg style, it would've taken eight hours to set a column in a newspaper, but on these new linotype machines called a line of type for that very reason, they would print that same column in 20 minutes. And and I'm specifically talking about the Sydney Morning Herald.
Kate:20 minutes. So they could pretty easily push out a whole paper of about how many pages?
Bob:Well, they printing eight pages at a time b ack in the day from 1831. And when, when the Linotypes came in, in the 1880s, well then they were able to increase the pagination as the population grew.
Kate:What's the history of printing in Australia?
Bob:The history of printing in Australia goes back to, obviously just after Captain Cook landed, and people started producing small newspapers for different areas and importing all the knowledge and equipment from the people from London at England et cetera.
Kate:When they imported the equipment from England, did they also bring over people that were trained to use it?
Bob:Well, I can give you a specific example of one of the pieces of equipment in the building. It's from 1841 and it was transported out here by a boat and with, it would've come, an engineer or somebody, a printer who could run it. And that piece of equipment was started printing the Carcoar Chronicle in 1841 through to 1939 and that piece of equipment is, is in here and operational today. And we demonstrate it all the time, and it's the same press that was used to print the Sydney Herald in 1830.
Kate:And could all the people in the colonies read what was printed?
Bob:Yes, I would say so. And that's what helped educate everybody with the printed word being spread. And it wasn't just newspapers, it was all kinds of manner of printing, like business cards and letterheads and all different types of presses to print different types of product. But most of it was imported from England in the very, very early days. And then over time, more equipment came from other parts of the world to Australia as the colony grew.
Kate:tell me more about the history of the SMH.
Bob:Okay. They started out as the Sydney Herald in 1831 and two gentlemen from England came to Sydney and they imported a Colombian printing press very similar to the one we've got in this building on display that printed the Carcoar Chronicle. Now the Sydney Herald was printed on this Columbian printing press for 22 years. It started out as a weekly publication. For the first nine years of its time, it became a commercial success and became the Sydney Morning Herald in 1840. And in 1841 it was bought by the Fairfax family who owned it from 1841 through till about three years ago when Channel Nine bought it. So back in 1831 when the Sydney Herald started, they were printing 750 copies a week for a population of 70,000 people in Australia, Melbourne wasn't even heard of then.
Kate:And what sort of stuff would be in the newspaper at that time?
Bob:It's mostly classified, I think. It is.
Kate:Mostly classified?
Bob:Yeah. Yeah.
Kate:Well, that's what made print run, wasn't it, classifieds.
Bob:Actually, the answer to the question was that Sydney Morning Herald back in the was mostly a classified section with no display ads, no photographs, and no phone numbers. The ads on the front pages of the paper you'll read will be a request for a skill set. And please go to George Street, Sydney, number 25 for an interview.
Kate:And these people would pay for the ads?
Bob:Yes, they would've, yes. They would've paid for the ads and they would've paid for the paper. Six pence, in fact.
Kate:A six pence. Wow. So even from the early days, it really was classified powering the newspaper printing?
Bob:Definitely financially, definitely.
Kate:So the printing presses then on a good day, would average about two copies per minute with two people working it. Then they'd have to wait for the ink to dry, turn it over and print the other pages because it was a broad sheet. So how long did it take to do this print run of 750 copies of the SMH
Bob:Taken'em probably two days. So the news is two days old before you get it. That's why newspapers are in trouble today because we get the news on our phone every three and a half minutes. But the Sydney Morning Herald, or the Telegraph last night would've been printed off the presses at 11 o'clock. So anything after 11 o'clock doesn't make the presses cause they gotta distribute the newspapers all around the country. So it's a big job to get'em out on time. So people say, Why would we wanna read newspapers? We don't wanna read yesterday's news.. So we're teaching you how they used to read and print yesterday's news.
Kate:It's more than just keen typographers and members of the public that are interested in this museum. Film crews love the Printing Museum for its authentic equipment and rustic set.
Bob:We've had quite a few movies made here. Wild boys have used this site for part of their shows, especially the peter Rabbits one and two have taken pieces of equipment and used it in their shoots. Ladies in Black was shot here with Shane Jacobson operating our linotype machine at the Sydney Morning Herald in 1958 when he was setting the results for the High School certificates for the Ladies in Black.
Kate:I remember that scene.
Bob:And Bruce Beresford, who was the director, had Shane Jacobson's role as a proofreader.. But when he came in here and saw the uh, linotype machines, he changed his role immediately to a type setter. So our guys had to teach Shane Jacobson how to operate this machine. And in the show on his job is a linotype operator at the Sydney Morning Herald. And that scene, was shot in here on these very machines. And some of our members are in the shoot.
Kate:And how did he go operating the linotype machine?
Bob:He was bloody hopeless.
Kate:Let's not get him back then.
Bob:No, no, no. He, he was brilliant. He did well, It looked like he was very proficient at what he did. Oh, that's part of being an actor, I suppose, So we're becoming very popular of late for that kind of memorabilia movies, shoots, plays or anything to do with the past. So people wanting to create the history using the exact equipment, it's all here and available.
Kate:How many fonts have you got, Bob?
Bob:That's a great question. How many fonts have we got? We've probably got a hundred different fonts here. And each font is in a different printing case. So unlike your computer at home, if you wish to set a line at home, you just choose your font, press the button and go for your life. But here, if you wanna change a font from eight point times Roman to 12 point times Roman, you've gotta close the case, then go down two cases and pull out the next case, and then start setting from that case. Then if you wanna put a line of italic in, you gotta go to another case to get the italics. If you wanna make it bold, you gotta go to a different case to get the bold if you want it to be. It was condensed or expanded. Once again, you've gotta go to a different case. We've got Courants we've got Times Roman we've got
Kate:down list of fonts.
Bob:got all kind of manner of fonts here, too numerous to mention.
Kate:And what's your favorite font?
Bob:Probably Coronet. Ones that they used to use to print wedding invitations on.
Kate:So it's really curly...
Bob:really curly and nice and, there's serif fonts and sans serif fonts,. So it's a great array of fonts to keep. I mean, fonts range from four point, which is smaller than classifies, which are usually about six points in the old talk. And today we, we run up to about 72 point in lead types. Then we have to go to wooden type to get the large letters. So we've got a great array of wooden letters here as well, which is what we use for our poster courses. And everybody loves to come up here being creative, especially graphic artists who have no clue about what they're doing up here, but enjoy it immensely..
Kate:What's your connection to printing?
Bob:Well, my connection to the printing, I started as a compositor, who was the person who would've started setting by hand back in 1966, but I didn't do a great deal of that cause the linotype machines. And I went through a place called Cumberland Newspapers for 18 years, then into rural press for the next 20 years, and then the last 10 years with Fairfax from 2007 to 2017 as CEO of Print and Distribution and then I found an interest in this museum and restoring and saving, or trying to preserve the past method of printing for the future generations as time moved on. So I became involved in this about eight years ago. The museum itself started in 2001, so it's been going for 22 years and was able to help organize some funds for them to grow and extend the building. And we we're very fortunate that we're on the grounds of the Paceway at Penrith because we get accommodation for free. But we had to purchase the building and run it as a, as a self-funding operation full of volunteers started by one fellow, who used to work as a linotype operator for the Nepean times. And when the Nepean times closed in 1962, after opening in 1880 or 82 he managed to score two pieces of equipment and start a museum in 2001, and we've grown from that to where we are today. So our, our motto is Preserving the past for the future. And and my aim is with this group here is to find somewhere with larger premises and make sure we can preserve the knowledge and the equipment. Cause the bigger deal about this museum is we are the only live operating print museum in the southern hemisphere of this size, as opposed to most museums of any kind, which are usually static. And you just go and look at various pieces of equipment or what's on show in a glass cabinet. None of that here. It's all operated by tradesman. Everybody can participate in setting lines like they did back in the Gutenberg day. Or we can set their lines for them on these machines, or we show them how to print on hand operated machines and foot operated machines. And then finally we got power. So if you think about it for a minute, there was no phone numbers in the Sydney Herald cause the telephone wasn't invented till 1876 and there was no pictures because there was no camera till 1880. So it was a pretty interesting time for newspapers back then. So we wanna try and keep this museum going for as long as we can. We're about 50 members and nearly all the people here are from the trade, and they're quite enthusiastic about showing the equipment, how it works to people. And the people who come here are quite amazed. Most people, as you would imagine, would think that it was, Oh, who wants to go to a print museum and look at stuff? But that's not the case here.
Kate:What are the challenges facing the running of the museum?
Bob:The biggest challenge we've got in general is having enough people coming through who are younger to learn the process here. It's not hard to teach them how all this equipment works, but it's getting people who come in and want to do the courses to learn the machine and then stay with us. There are quite a few boutique letter press printing operations in Australia but every time they come here and learn about our equipment, they usually go off and start a boutique business. However, we've run courses here now for composing courses or learning how to, to set type and print. We do actual printing courses on top of that.. Then we do poster courses and we get a lot of young people who come in to do these courses and do it really well. And they are young and they are showing a big interest in us. And as recently as last Friday, we had two young people come in, graphic artists who did poster courses and were very creative and learnt a lot about how it used to be and loved it. So our aim is to keep that going, attract younger members to learn the skill because to be fair, in about 10 or 15 years, we won't be doing it.. Somebody needs to come in and, and, and shine the torch, if you like, on this part of the trade. And our biggest fear is we'd hate to see it just scrapped and all this equipment either put in a basement somewhere or off to SIM's metal, which is what happens with most of it.
Kate:Oh, that would be terrible. That's very sad to think about. What was the effect of covid on the museum and visitorship?
Bob:The last two years have been really difficult. We had a whole lot of covid procedures to try and stay open, but people were naturally quite scared. So we lost a couple of years, although we did still have quite a few tours booked in, but everybody had to take covid precautions. But it certainly impacted us on revenue. We didn't get as many visitors and we didn't get as many tours as what we normally get.
Kate:What does the future look like for the museum?
Bob:The future of the museum is in a bit of, difficulty at the moment because Infrastructure New South Wales are trying to buy the Paceway, which is the site on which the museum sits. And they wanna build a new football stadium. Now, the Paceway's been here for 177 years and the Paceway owns the land, which is about 11 acres, and then there are six businesses on this site, including the museum, the other five are commercial enterprises. They've looked after us for all that time, which we greatly appreciate. We've gotta find a home with them somewhere or somewhere else to go, probably within the next six to 12 months. Otherwise, we'll be forced to close. Our biggest fear in closing is that we won't get the members back cause they're not exactly young people. And secondly, we lose that skill set. We'll be joining the rest of the lost trades skills that is happening to most industries of old. So we are looking very, very hard at the time now to raise as much money as we can so we can then look like a good opportunity for someone to come in and take us on. And then I've approached Stuart Ayres and many other ministers about help. And so far we haven't quite got there, but we are working with the Paceway and the Paceway would want us to come with them, but we'd have to have fund, our own building.. So we need to get a grant to fund this museum going forward.
Kate:So if you are or know anybody who is a wealthy philanthropist and has a large unoccupied building in Western Sydney, please get in touch with Bob.
Bob:And as I said before, we need to make this museum last because we are the only operational museum. Static museums is something we don't wanna be.
Kate:Why should people come and visit the Museum of Printing?
Bob:You wanna come and visit this museum just to see exactly how it was done, and you can play an active role in what's happening. For instance, we'll set your name and print it right in front of your eyes. We'll do all kinds of things that you don't normally see and you'll see it live. You'll be able to touch and feel and have a go if you want to. You'll be able to look at guys actually printing pedal operated machines and printing, not newspapers, but all and sundry of commercial type work if they wish to. And if they look at the photographs around the walls in here, you'll see that all the compositors and the printers were all well dressed. Gentleman of an area you would've thought would've been all like a coal mine. But it's not. It was a highly respected trade back in the day. And they were all wearing white shirts and ties, and obviously dust coats or aprons to protect themselves, but it was a well thought of trade back in the day. So people wanna come and learn how it was done and all about it. And especially children who've never heard of anything about how it was done in the past. All they know is Google. It's it's quite a history lesson for the kids and a lot of the kids are quite fascinated when they come in here. And especially recently when the Penrith show was on, we had over 700 people through the doors here. Looking at all the equipment with their parents, and it was terrific. So we had a great deal of people showing an interest and Wow, we didn't even know you were here. And that's our other biggest problem. We didn't even know you were here. Well, we got a good presence on a website, but it's not one of those museums where you think, Oh, I must rush out and have a look.
Kate:Okay, enough chatting. Bob's going to take us on a tour and show us how some of these machines work.
Bob:Not only will I show you how they work, I'll make you operate them.
Kate:We start the tour by looking at an 1857 edition of the Sydney Morning Herald at the front entrance.
Bob:This is the daily, right? So you just read a couple of, remember I told you there's no phone numbers or No, nothing.
Kate:Look at this one wanted by a respectable young lady lately from England, A situation as housekeeper.
Bob:You're right. And how do you get the person
Kate:from the post office in Glebe?
Bob:Yeah. And then you gotta go here, care of Spring Street. Like not even in Sydney. can never believe that. Like wanted a good what's say good straw hand.
Kate:a good straw hand! Mrs. Bowering, Paramatta Street,
Bob:So that's it. So note, there's no pictures, right? and there's no display ads. You know, there's eight pages, all money. Rivers are gold. This is where the rivers a gold term from the remember Fairfax actually had the rivers of gold. You heard that saying?
Kate:So earlier in our chat, Bob and I worked out that we had both worked at Fairfax for a period of time. Rivers of gold was indeed a phrase I had heard. It refers to the bulky, classified section of the newspaper. It was a very lucrative business that enabled Fairfax to power its independent journalism until the internet really took off. Then platforms like Gumtree, eBay and Seek disrupted the need for paid classified.
Bob:Back in the probably about 2005, 2007. Like the rivers a gold. They're just flowing money. You know? All the whole back of the book was classified, wasn't it? Yeah. And now the whole start of the book was classified as not one story in here.
Kate:So there's no actual news in the newspaper?
Bob:Public meetings. Oh, I guess you'd call that news but they're public notices so that's, page seven and page eight. Then your next one. So they had eight pages only back in 1857. And then this is all set, one letter at a time, line by line. Right. So you can imagine how long it take you, it'll take you probably longer than eight hours to do that, they'd have three people working on that.
Kate:And they would've had 50 people setting it to get it done.
Bob:and there's this little trick to knowing, somebody told me that when you look at a line, sometimes you'll see more space between the words at the end of the line. They had to put a bit of extra space in it. it's lead, This big to make it fit and justify. Whereas when they built this new machine, it had different kind of space bands between the words that would justify them equally. Whereas on this thing, you had to do it all by hand. So 1831, this started as a weekly, then it became a daily at 1840, and this is 1857. No phone numbers, no pictures
Kate:wanted a cook none but a sober person Need apply. Crown Inn, George Street South.
Bob:There's a whole lot of that. You think, oh my God, you wouldn't get away at that today. I
Kate:know Wanted a partner in a lucrative business to an active young man with capital say 50 pounds. It's a first rate opportunity, which may not occur again. for particulars apply 18 Market Street.
Bob:See, not even Sydney. Just Market Street. Just Market
Kate:Street.
Bob:You see how they've got like a capital here, like a drop, drop cap. Well, when they're setting this, these lines here, whichever ad they're doing, they've gotta start with the drop cap out of this case, right? And then get the go down to the lower, the six point out this case, right? So I'll just explain this to you. In inside, you're gonna see this one here with all capitals in it. right? And this one here with all lowercase, hence uppercase, lowercase. Right. So that's where we, that's where case came from. From That's where your uppercase came from. That's the terminology that's, and that's common today. And that's lowercase. And then that's how they first started doing the printing. With 1450s, et cetera. And then somebody in America decided we've gotta build another one. They called it a Californian case. Which was all in the one, they had the capitals here and all the rest of the stuff was in here. So they redesigned the case. And you'll notice that all the holes are different sizes. Because you don't need many J's, Q's or Z's, you need lots of a E I o U, you know? That's why they're all different size holes. Because every time you, set a line when you're finished, and the job's printed, well then you've gotta give it to the apprentice. He's gotta come back and put all the letters back in the right hole. Now if you don't put him in the right spot, that's not good for the next person who has to come along and set. Cuz you can't throw'em away cuz they couldn't afford it, right? And in the cases inside the P'S there and the Q's there, right? So when you're putting a B C P Q, putting them back in one letter at a time, you put the p in the queue in the wrong. That comes a saying, watch your p's and q's! And then people say it's all points type, right? So that's 10 point, 12 point, 13 point whatever. do you measure in imperial or metric? I say no, you don't measure in either. You were measuring points and picas and ems and ens. Ems, ens and picas Right? 12 points in a pica, y yada, yada. and they say, why is that? And I say, well, you've gotta have a universal print size. Cause Americans are all doing all this stuff in Imperial. Europeans are all doing it in metric. So that's why they have a printers measure. Otherwise it'll be a disaster, wouldn't it? It
Kate:Ems, ens, picas and points does it sound familiar? Shout out to all the programmers out there who know that we still use the same universal units of measurements of ems in CSS and print designers still use ems, picas and points.
Bob:this is where all the different type cases are and, and how you set the job up back in the early days.
Kate:Bob's showing me how to set up a page using the Californian job case and a composing stick. The case is a wooden box with different sized compartments for each letter or character. It includes spaces of different width as well.
Bob:So you get your copy. Not typed because you haven't got typewriters yet. So someone's handwritten the copy and they want to write a story for the newspaper. So you've got all these guys with a, with a setting stick like this. The compositors were the people who had to work out how many words per line and how many lines per page and all that. So you, you'd have to go over here, you set this to whatever size line you wanted, you know, so most column newspapers are nine ems wide. So you set that to the nine ems wide. You stand beside a rack like this of what size type you want, and there's all your letters, right? And they're not marked.
Kate:Each tray has letters that aren't marked and apprentices are taught at a young age to memorize which cases are which.
Bob:and he wants to change type now or change font. So you gotta go a different draw. 30, 36 point Century School book, 42 point old style condensed. So there's all these cases, all different fonts, all different fonts. So one case italic, one could be bold, one could be expanded, one could be condensed. All different typefaces. All that stuff up the back there. That's what they call furniture. Cuz after we build the page, you've gotta space it out to get it ready to print. And if you come over here, this one here, that's four point,
Kate:that's tiny.
Bob:So you, you grab hold of that and hold it. Um, that. So you gotta sit at one of these cases and set this size, type. that's what those composites are doing back in, back in the day
Kate:Bob then shows me what looks like a stamp with individual letters set out in it, each letter by letter. Within it, my untrained eye can spot at least three different typefaces-Roman, italics, and caps. It took Steve, another volunteer, about half an hour to create this. How, how long did it take? That's half an hour. And what does it say?
Bob:You read it
Kate:To read the stamp, I need to read back to front and upside down. But, the flowery typefaces with decorative ascenders and descenders make it really hard to distinguish the shape of each letter.
Bob:Now read it. Just start from the left and go across That way
Kate:It will lead you. Dreams. No.
Bob:Go. Go.
Kate:Down, down, mate. Yep. It will leadyou the Down down, no. Stuck on the left. Down the bog road. Road. Road. Two of, of happiness. Yeah. We don't wanna go down the bog. stuck in the mud.
Bob:So you can imagine doing that. Do you, do you wanna set? And her name? I will set her name for her.
Kate:Oh, awesome.
Steve:Ready for this is the old Fashion case. The big letters up on tops Uhhuh down.
Kate:Upper Cape. Yeah. Right. So miniscule and magiscule?
Steve:Okay. So what is your name?
Kate:Kate. K a t e.
Steve:Oh, see that's easy.
Bob:No wait minute. What about Maryanne make him work hard for his money.
Steve:I can do that.
Kate:Do you charge by the letter?
Bob:Yeah, absolutely. So you're watching go K A T E. Why is a J in the U in a different spot, Graham?
Kate:That's because in ancient times there was no Letter U, they actually used the letter V. You might have seen some statues of Julius Caesar, where it's spelled J V l i v s as the V was used as the U. Interestingly, the letter J was used as a decorative variant of the letter I by the ancient Romans. In 1524, a bloke called, Who was an Italian renaissance grammarian, made the J part of the alphabet. He then became known as the father of the letter J. And, the ampersand character. How do we get that? Well, the letters e and t were written together to mean"and". When scribes used cursive, they'd connect the two letters into one symbol. And if you look hard at the ampersand, you can sort of visualize those two letters today. So that's a long-winded story on why the last three letters in the type case, that's the wooden box that stores the movable type are j, u, and ampersand it's because they weren't added until after the fact.
Bob:And that's why they were later.
Kate:So how long was the compositor's apprenticeship for them?
Bob:Five years. Oh, six years in the early days, Then I went, then I went to four. Four. You did four, didn't you? I learned, I learned mine in four. You, you were smarter than the other blokes. So this is all our wooden type. So you can imagine what fun you'd have doing like a poster course, sitting all poster up in these wooden, they're beautiful typefaces And all this lead is just amazing, you know? So, he's made up his little job there, right? And then he's gonna put on there, he's gonna proof it, and then if he's got any corrections, he's gotta go there and take that little letter out and put the other letter in. Or if he's missed a word, he's gotta turn the line right over or the whole line. we've got, we've got racks and racks and racks of this. And people love it, you know? So the point I'm trying to make is, there's a lot of history here. You can't let go. It's just too much.
Kate:There's a book from poster courses of flourishy, motivational posters. One says, I did a letter press workshop, and I made this poster.
Bob:So all these guys made all these things over the years here.
Kate:Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself.
Ralph:So they, we tell'em to come up with a, idea, some people do lyrics from a song. Something they just make up or something from a book, and they come here and put it together.
Kate:So that was the old style of type setting that used a composing stick where you manually composed words out of individual letters and punctuation marks stored in a shallow subdivided trays, or"cases" as we just learned.
Bob:Now, so what happens after that? that era last from 1450 to the 1880s. 1890s, right. Then somebody at the New York Post said, we've gotta find a better way of setting.
Kate:Now this is the linotype machine that Bob talked about before, and it reduced the time needed to set a newspaper column from six to eight hours to just 20 minutes. So though the Linotype machine came about in about 1880, this particular machine is a 1950s model and it's called an inter type. Any audio description of what this linotype machine looks like will be absolutely paltry in comparison to its real life version, simply because it's so complex. It basically looks like a machine from a Studio Ghibli movie with so many separate parts, whirring and clicking and moving in different rhythms all to make it work.
Bob:There's your keyboard, all your capitals there, it's all your numbers, punctuation, and your lower case there, right? So you put your copy in here, someone's handwritten, your copy, and you're a newspaper comp and, copy comes in here so you start setting. So that's, that's how this thing works. There's your space. You do your word space. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy cow, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then you get to the end of your line. So there, and you can see it comes down through there, simple as that's a belt shoot some all down at the right.
Kate:In physical terms, it's like a desk that you sit at with a typewriter as the desk base and a very high back to the desk that kind of resembles a church organ. Each letter in the typewriter part is attached to a slide of individual letters above the desk. The typewriter part is a 90 character keyboard, and when you quite loudly hit each letter, it kind of drops an individual mold of that letter-called a mat- into another section of the machine called an escapement. And as you hit each letter, it composes a whole line of text in the escapement. That line is called a slug.
Bob:Then it punches, it pops outta line with the letters on the line. And to do that, instead of using those lead letters over there, now we have brass letters. See, each one of these is a brass letter. And that's got two things on it. You've got Roman and italic, right? So this machine will let you push this up to make it Roman. Or italic. And then you use these spaces and they, they sort of slide up and down. So when the line's sitting in here, it'll make your lines all equal
Kate:So once you create a slug or a line of type, the compositor will tell the machine that the line is complete and it moves it to a casting section by a series of levers. The casting process heats the slug and melts it all together, so that the finished product is a molded metal line of type, ready to be added to a column!
Bob:there's a hunk of lead on that chain, it goes into that molten lead there. So the molten lead round there comes out of there straight away, and then you've got your finished line set and already set. But it's bloody hot, you know?
Kate:They must go through so many of them.
Bob:Yeah. Yeah, you do. So what happens here is over there, when you finish your line, it's printed and all that sort of stuff. Then you put your lines back in the box. But here, when we finish printing the newspaper or whatever job, if the job's not gonna be a repeat, you'll put all this back in the melting pot. It's a hundred percent recycled but if you're keeping it, you might keep this for a hundred years, cuz you might pull it out and put, run it again in the newspaper. you An ad usually ads they tie up and put in a rack, go back and get the, you know, the Dunlop tyre ad, and put it back in the page, So you can imagine how much expertise would've been in getting those four right at the right time. And the bloke who invented this thing was a the watchmaker, And then the guy, the guys are so good. Mm-hmm. When they're setting this stuff, they were piece operators. So they got paid by how much they set, and you had to set it right. So just say this all goes over. So it's a newspaper. This all gets picked up by an apprentice or somebody. When he finishes, the story, taken over to somewhere else. Put ink on it. Puts a bit of wet paper on it, pats it down, sends the copy and the proof to the readers. The readers read it, copy the mistakes in. It comes back to the operator who sent it or comes back to any operator. He sets a new line, wraps it up in a bit of paper, takes it back to the comp room over on the, bench then, and he takes the old line out and puts the new line in. Right. And that's linotype. So that's 136 of these Sydney, Morning Herald 24 7.
Kate:From getting the news two days later, now you can get the news and the classified every single day, but alas, the linotype machine didn't do everything, there is a separate machine that does the headings called the Ludlow.
Bob:This is the machine that does the headings, These only go up to about 12.8 and they've got four different cases in there. So you just change cases by winding it up. Then you just change cases. That's how simple that is. This machine sets the headings because you can only go up to about 14 points there. Yeah. So you've set your name in here by doing the same thing. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Yeah. One letter at a time and then you pop it in here and you press press, press it down, press the button, and it spits out a line of type
Kate:do not touch.
Bob:Yeah. So that's how you set all the headings on this machine.
Kate:In addition to the 136 Linotype machines, they would've had 20 heading machines at the smh. Now that we've set newspaper columns and added a heading, how do we make it into a printed page? Then you add some borders by cutting lead pieces into the shape of the border that you want. Then you assemble the page with other blocks of reusable things like logos
Bob:And this is the Columbian press I told you about. So this is an 1841 Columbian press built in England, but American design due to the eagle. So this bloke, put all fancy stuff on it to, you know, get his moniker on it, if you like.
Kate:The Columbian press is a very elaborate cast iron press. It uses a flatbed, so there's sort of two flat metal plates operated by levers. The eagle itself on the top of the machine is said to weigh 23 kilograms and actually acts as a counterweight to raise one of the metal plates after printing.
Bob:And this is how they have to do paper, right? So we show everybody all this. So under, here's a, there's a 16 page booklet, right? All handset. All handset over there.
Kate:The booklet is a small, A6 size booklet titled The Penrith Museum of Printing. By handset Bob means that somebody assembled the letters by hand as shown before. Because we want the 16 page booklet to be front to back and right side up, there's a little bit of brain work to do to make sure this happens.
Bob:So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Then you print it, then you turn it and you what they call work and turn it. So you work it, then you turn it, and then you print on the other side of the paper, and then you end up with this So page five. So it'll be on the back of that. It'll be your four or six, 11, 12. So then you've gotta fold it up. So you gotta have'em in the right order to fold. This is called imposition, right? And this, this still applies today. So you end up with that, and then we put hand staples in it and you gotta chop the top, the front and the bottom with a couple of staples. now you've got your little 16 page booklet.
Kate:That's a lot of effort for a 16 page book.
Bob:You might print 10,000 of'em, but you imagine doing it, doing it on here. So how this works is so this is all set over there, right the compositor and he puts it in this steel frame. And all these things are little, little things to stretch it out so it doesn't all fall the bits. Cause if you've got individual letters and you pick it up, that'll drop out.
Kate:And this is why newspaper copy had to be justified a hundred percent so that the letters wouldn't fall out.
Bob:So you get your inking rolls here, you ink it all up, then you lay a bit of paper on top. Then you pop this thing down. We've inked it, we put our paper on. We roll are under. Then I've gotta turn it over and do the page two or the, sorry, front and back
Kate:times eight times 750.
Bob:Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Wow. And then you pick that up and then you'll have all your image on there. Right. So that's the, that's how they did it in 1840, all by hand. This thing is from 1864, and it was used by Angus and Coote in Sydney, So that's how they did it before you had electricity. So you printed off a flatbed like that for newspapers for a hundred years. Then they had to get a bit smarter and a bit faster cause they had these things, right? So in 1860s before these were invented, they invented faster machines.
Kate:Bob shows me some of what are called job machines. Machines used to print smaller jobs like letters, business cards and pamphlets, not newspapers. There's one called an Arab and a Chandler and Price, and I would highly recommend watching videos of how these work on YouTube.
Bob:Now this one is the Wharfedale which the Nepean Times started. and this thing it runs about 1500 copies an hour. Hey Ralph, if you wanna do a demo. Yeah. Well, you want me to do it See, I knew I'd get him Start her up and get into it. Now,
Kate:the Wharfedale press is huge, maybe four meters long and a meter high. It has a flatbed and a big cylinder. The flatbed, which is called a form, holds the paper and moves backwards and forwards while the rotating cylinder makes the impression on the paper. It looks incredibly complex to manage and has so many literal moving parts when in operation and they all make different noises, you'll soon hear them. It's so rhythmic, I wouldn't be surprised if the Wharfedale press is added to asm sleep sound apps.
Bob:So this thing here, you watch this it's a beauty, so you've got a hand feed at one sheet at a time. Whoops. He's, he's got a belt court.
Kate:Are you an expert at this one, Bob?
Bob:No, no. I'm, I'm learning So in here, see the forme in there?
Kate:Yep.
Bob:So that's The Age, right? That's The Age newspaper, now let me tell you, what year do you reckon we were still using Lead? That's the last lead front page of the age. Oh. Produced like that?
Kate:The eighties?
Bob:83.
Kate:83?
Bob:Yeah. You wouldn't think so, would you? You think all photo composing and all that sort of stuff. So the rollers go across. There's ink up in there. Well, what's it, Ralph? This, this roller is not in that, is that right? Is that the space on that angle? Okay.
Ralph:Oh, you always put'em on an angle, right? It helps to break the ink up
Bob:right on. Okay.
Ralph:That's another trick that you learn every day. See?
Bob:there's a joy about working here. we don't work here, Ralph, we play here. So you're printing the front and back at the same time. So instead of doing what I just showed you over there, Sydney, Morning, Herald. Now we're doing that and this, we've gotta hand feed the sheets in, which we'll do in a second. Stick a bit of paper in Ralph. so we cut that sheet size to the size of whatever size of book is you gotta print.
Ralph:Yep. These a broad sheet newspaper
Bob:Fix it up back there on the other side. You put the next sheet in, back it up. You're getting 15,000 hour. 15,
Kate:1500. Sorry. 1500. 1500. So pretend that's a blank sheet, right? Yep. We're gonna put
Bob:that in now. It goes through blank now printing and now it comes out the top rolled over. Then you pull the sheet out and check it to make sure it's done properly.
Kate:How long does it take the ink to dry usually?
Bob:Oh, it's like a normal newspaper. Couple hours. So that's, that's, that's a good example of that's what started the museum.
Kate:So what happened to the Nepean Times?
Bob:Just, just folded. Just folded. Like a lot of newspapers. They all just fold.
Kate:Yes. Newspapers tend to fold.
Bob:This would be pretty, spot on what you'd see in any country commercial print shop. In the 18, 19 hundreds. Yeah through it in about 1940 probably before they made these things So there's your Colombian, that's that one over there. But then they said, okay, instead of feeding it by a sheet, let's put a roll in, a newsprint in there. Cause let's be a bit smarter. This is 1888, right. So let's put a roll in and run it through all here, through all the rollers, and then let's print both sides of the paper at the same time. So how can you do that on a big, flat hunk of metal like this? Right. that's what they were printing off, right?
Kate:So you can't print around a cylinder with the flatbeds as it doesn't bend. What they did is they made a paper mache of the page and called it a flong, it's like a mold.
Bob:Then they put that mold in a curved cylinder thing Uhhuh and made that plate just there. That thing there. You wanna try and lift that up? So there was one of these for every day? Yep.
Kate:One of these. Oh my God. That'll do you.
Bob:So that's one tabloid, one broad sheet page.
Kate:Yeah. Right.
Bob:And you put one side of the cylinder. And then one on the other side of the cylinder. And then you're print two pages a time. but he's still catching'em by hand. So then they said, okay, well let's make a folder, which is this thing here. So it goes through here. And these things have may just come out and this thing now has got the roll and newsprint, and now it's coming through the machine and print. 16 pages probably then slitting the slitting, this roll here in half up here, then folding it and spitting out a finished paper. Right? That's how much it changed then.
Kate:It's a steam powered rotary printing press, which enabled the mass production of newspapers through a continuous press. The press operated at up to 2000 revolutions per hour, and each revolution produced four page images giving the press a throughput of 8,000 pages per hour. How it worked is that basically there are two cylinders that turn in opposite directions. One roll has a curved printing plate attached to the surface, and the other cylinder works to press the paper to the inked plates. The rolls have a big enough circumference that they can have two or more plates, so that with each revolution, the cylinder prints two or more copies of the same page.
Bob:So when one roll runs out, the next roll speeds up to the speed of the press. It's got a pace pattern on it. Something forces the incoming sheet on the outgoing sheet cuts it off and it runs straight up through here without stopping Comes all the way through here and it comes out as a finished book at the end. Now we're doing 30,000 copies an hour.
Kate:So those 1938 copies of the SMH we spoke about before? They would've been done on a machine like that, and the printing presses were in Broadway in Sydney. That's right- jones Street, where the shopping center is now. They would've had 136 linotype machines and nine printing presses that are four stories high.
Bob:And when I was a kid I used to go and, insert papers on Friday night for a hundred bucks a night. We used to think it was Christmas
Kate:But wait, that's only black and white ink. How did we get the crisp full color newspapers that we know today?
Bob:So they said, oh, let's put another unit on top. And we'll put red ink in it
Kate:And after they experimented with Red Ink, they invented new printing presses that had C M Y K in it, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
Bob:Paper go straight up through the middle. Get the timing right. You get 16 pages of full color.
Kate:Wow. So getting colour was feeding the paper up vertically in
Bob:In newspapers. So that's how it went from letterpress printing from 1450, all through that, up to this to 1996.
Kate:And how did they do it after 1996?
Bob:Instead of printing on that plate that I just showed you, round one, they went to Offset, which is this plate. and we go straight from computer to plate now.
Kate:Today, most newspaper printers are powered by computers, using the same offset printing technique. It starts with a computerized desktop publishing version of the whole edition of a newspaper, which is transferred to an etching station, which then produces aluminium positive plates of each page. These plates are inked and mounted on a specialized press in such a way that they transfer the image to a set of rubber rollers, which in turn transfer the image of each page onto the paper. The process is called offset because the aluminium plates do not actually touch the paper going through the press. They transfer the image onto the rubber rollers instead. Although the presses are really big and noisy, the rollers are remarkably gentle on the newsprint and can feed the newsprint through its rolls without tearing. These complex machines are called web presses because they use streaming paper instead of individual sheets. The web presses are very expensive and can reach seven stories tall. Today's presses also combine all of the steps of printing, cutting, and assembling a newspaper into one unit. So the final output is a newspaper in correct sequence. And the stats? A modern offset press can churn 70,000 copies an hour onto conveyor belts. So Bob, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.
Bob:My pleasure. Absolutely delighted to be here.
Kate:The Museum of Printing is open every Sunday and entry is$5. Tours are run for groups of all shapes and sizes, and last about two and a half hours, which includes a punchy history of printing and a demonstration of the operational linotype machines. I'm told probus groups love the museum tours, and to organize one, you can get in touch with the museum. The museum in its current premise is on one flat level and is wheelchair accessible. There is ample car parking and chairs are offered for group tours. So Boomers, I hope you never have to Google"how to print" again, as this episode should have given you a pretty good idea on how to print. I think it's so amazing that we've gone from printing letter by letter to line by line, and then front and back pages at the same time, and so on and so on. We haven't even delved into the power of the printed word, but just the technology behind it I think is so fascinating. Thanks for listening to Roadshow and Tell. If you enjoyed this deep dive into a specialty museum, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We're a new podcast. So if you wanna help support us, please share it with a friend and leave a rating and review. If you are involved with or know of a regional or specialty museum that should be featured, please get in touch at roadshowandtell@gmail.com. I'm your host, Kate. Roadshow and Tell was edited and produced on the lands of the Gadigal people. I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the various lands on which you may be listening from, and the lands that the museums featured in this podcast reside on. I also acknowledge any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people listening to this podcast. I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of Australia.