@rher Ah hell, I forget what it's called - but the wood block he's hammering is supposed to even out the type so that it's all the exact same height. That way, every letter shows up, otherwise you get smears if its too tall, or faded/missing type if it's too short. Now, what's in there is something called "Linotype" (literally "Line o Type"), and IIRC it was specifically developed for the newspaper business. It goes a long way in making the newspaper actually profitable. Its a keyboard that allows you to make molds of type, which you would then pour molten lead inside, making the actual pieces of type you would use to put together the newspaper. Once finished with that edition, you would melt down the lead to be reused. Before the linotype machine, that was done with individual pieces of type, by hand, letter by letter, ("typesetting") which took a maddening amount of time. This meant that (at least in small American frontier towns) the newspaper by itself couldn't turn a profit, so you would print other things (pamphlets, business cards, etc.)
Hell there are probably thousands of unused linotype machines that are either in junkyards, or have been turned to scrap by this point. Kinda sad.
Rheristies
Blouie
Racist_Columbo
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the