"Przemek Klosowski" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 21:15:59 -0500, Ed Huntress wrote:

I doubt if there is a working Linotype machine in most states in the
country. I don't know of a single magazine that uses it for anything;
the last newspaper I knew of that used it was over 20 years ago.

There's one in the Baltimore Museum of Industry (geez, R.C.M content).
A retired guy who demonstrates it worked on it in a newspaper, and told
me that they replaced them in the 70s.

Yep, someone else posted a note about that one in the Baltimore museum. I'm
tempted to stop in there.

And, yes, most of them disappeared in the '70s. I mentioned here before that
I went to work for McGraw-Hill Publications Co. in '74. I had been hired a
couple of months earlier and they had six Linotype machines operating in a
secondary office. When I started work they had all been moved to the
warehouse, replaced by a Wang computerized phototype ("cold type") system.
That was for promotions and mail solicitations for 26 magazines and
newsletters. The publications themselves were typeset on a much fancier
computerized typesetting system, which replaced another, larger bunch of
Linotypes at about the same time, or slightly earlier. They also handled the
typesetting for McGraw-Hill books.

Those Linotypes and the multi-million-dollar phototype systems can now be
replaced with a desktop PC and a high-quality laser printer. In fact,
though, the whole system has gone away in most publishing houses. The
writers write on computers; the editors edit on computers; the art directors
compose pages on computers; and the output is reproduced directly onto the
printing plates. Along the way they'll print out some proofs for
proofreading, color-checking, etc.

--
Ed Huntress