Paul and the Printing Press Part 22

When they reached this Eldorado, however, Paul was disappointed.

The manager's office seemed very quiet. A dim light burned and a few men moved in and out of the adjacent rooms. Now and then a telephone jangled, or a reporter, perched on the arm of a chair or on the corner of a desk, took out a yellow sheet of paper and ran his eye over its contents. But there was none of the bustle and rush that the lad had pictured. But before Paul had had time to become really downhearted, the door of an inner office opened and a man came forward to meet them.

"Ah, Wright, I'm glad to see you!" he called, extending his hand.

"I'm glad to see you too, Hawley. I expect we're making you a deal of trouble and that you wish us at the bottom of the Dead Sea."

"Not a bit of it!"

"That's mighty nice of you," laughed Mr. Wright. "I give you my word, I appreciate it. This is my young friend Paul Cameron, the editor-in-chief of the Burmingham _March Hare_."

If Mr. Hawley were ignorant of the _March Hare's_ existence or speculated at all as to what that unique publication might be, he at least gave no sign; instead he took Paul's hand, remarking gravely:

"I am glad to know you, Cameron," upon the receipt of which courtesy Cameron rose fully two inches in his boots and declared with equal fervor:

"I am glad to meet you too, Mr. Hawley."

To have seen them one would have thought they had been boon companions at press club dinners or a.s.sociates in newspaper work all their days.

"I'm going to take you upstairs first," Mr. Hawley said briskly. "We may as well begin at the beginning and show you how type is set. I don't know whether you have ever seen any type-making and typesetting machines or not."

"I haven't seen anything," Paul confessed frankly.

The newspaper man looked both amused and pleased.

"I'm rather glad of that," he remarked, "for it is much more interesting to explain a process to a person to whom it is entirely new. Formerly the method of setting type for the press was a tedious undertaking and one very hard on the eyes; but now this work is all done, or is largely done, by linotype machines that place in correct order the desired letters, grouping them into words and carefully s.p.a.cing and punctuating them. The linotype operator has before him a keyboard and as he presses the keys in succession, the letter or character necessary drops into its proper place in the line that is being made up. These letters are then cast as they stand in a solid, one-line piece. With the lines thus made up, the compositors are relieved of a great proportion of their labor.

Later I will show you how this is done.

"In the composing room there is also the monotype, another ingenious invention, which produces single letters and prepares them for casting. With two such machines you might suppose that the compositor would have little to do. Nevertheless, in spite of each of these labor-saving devices, there are always odd jobs to be done that cannot be performed by either of these agencies; there are short articles, the making up and designing of pages, advertis.e.m.e.nts, and a score of things outside the scope of either linotype or monotype."

Paul listened attentively.

"After the words have been formed and the lines cast by the linotype, the separate lines are arranged by the compositors inside a frame the exact size of the page of the paper to be printed. This frame or form as we call it, is divided into columns and after all the lines of type, the cuts, and advertis.e.m.e.nts to be used are arranged inside it, so that there is no waste s.p.a.ce, a cast is made of the entire form and its contents. This cast is then fitted upon the rollers of the press, inked, and successive impressions made from it. This, in simple language, is what we are going to see and const.i.tutes the printing of a paper."

Paul nodded.

"Of course," continued Mr. Hawley, "we shall see much more than that. We shall, for example, see how cuts and advertis.e.m.e.nts are made; photographs copied and the plates prepared for transfer to the paper; color sheets in process of making; in fact, all the varied departments of staff work. But what I have told you are the underlying principles of the project. I want you to understand them at the outset so that you will not become confused."

"I think I have it pretty straight," smiled Paul.

"Very well, then; we'll get to work."

"Not that I thoroughly understand how all this is done," added the boy quickly. "But I have the main idea and when I see the thing in operation I shall comprehend it more clearly, I am sure. You see, I don't really know much of anything about printing a paper. All I am actually sure of is that often the making up of a page is a big puzzle. I've had enough experience to find that out."

"That is sometimes a puzzle for us, too," smiled Mr. Hawley. "Fitting stuff into the available s.p.a.ce is not always easy. Usually, however, we know just how many words can be allowed a given article and can make up our forms by estimating the mathematical measurement such copy will require. When the type is set in the forms, so accurately cut are the edges, and so closely do the lines fit together, the whole thing can be picked up and held upside down and not a piece of its mosaic fall out.

That is no small stunt to accomplish. It means that every edge and corner of the metal type is absolutely true and exact. If it were not, the form would not lock up, or fit together. The letters, too, are all on the same level and the lines parallel. Geometrically, it is a perfect surface."

"Some picture puzzle!" Mr. Wright observed merrily.

"One better than a jigsaw puzzle," said Mr. Hawley. "Our pieces are smaller."

The three visitors stepped from the elevator and paused at the door of a crowded room, where many men were at work.

"These are the composing rooms," explained Mr. Hawley. "Here the copy sent us by reporters and editors is set up for the press. Along the walls you will see tiers of drawers in which type of various kinds and sizes is kept. The style or design of letter is called the 'face', and there are a great many sorts of faces, as you will notice by the labels on the drawers. There is Cheltenham, Ionic, Gothic--a mult.i.tude of others. There are, in addition, almost as many sizes of letters as there are faces, the letters running from large to a very small, or agate size which is used for footnotes."

He opened a drawer and Paul glanced inside it.

"But the letters do not seem to be arranged with any system at all,"

exclaimed the boy in surprise. "I don't see how the men can ever find what they want. I should think--"

He broke off, embarra.s.sed.

"You should think what?" asked Mr. Hawley good-humoredly.

"Why, it just seems to me that if the letters were arranged in alphabetical order it would be a great deal easier to get them when one was in a hurry."

"It would seem so on the face of it," agreed Mr. Hawley, pleased by the lad's intelligence. "Printers, however, never arrange type that way.

Instead, they put in the spot nearest at hand the letters they will use oftenest. It saves time. The men soon become accustomed to the position of these and can put their hands on them quickly and without the least trouble. The largest compartments in the drawers are given over to the letters most commonly in use, such as vowels and frequently recurring consonants. The letter Z you will notice has only a small s.p.a.ce allowed it; X, too, is not much in demand."

"I see."

"Take one of these letters out and examine it."

Paul did so.

It was a thin bar of what appeared to be lead and was an inch long. On the end of it a single letter was cast.

"Besides these cases of letters, we have drawers of marks and signs arranged according to the same system, those most often in use being at the front of the drawer."

"It must have taken forever to hunt up the right letters and spell out the words before linotypes were invented," mused Paul.

"Yes, any amount of time was wasted that way," said Mr. Hawley. "The strain on the eyes was, too, something appalling. It is quite another matter to sit at a keyboard and with the pressure of a key a.s.semble the proper matrices, as the type molds are called, and arrange in desired order correctly s.p.a.ced and punctuated lines of type. Come over here and see how the work is done."

Crossing the floor, they stood before a machine where an operator was busy fingering a keyboard as if it were a typewriter. As he touched each key, it released a letter, and at the back of the machine Paul could see the silvery gleam as the miniature bar of metal dropped down and slipped into its place in the lengthening series of words. As soon as the row increased to line length, it moved along and a new line of words was a.s.sembled. The process was fascinating and the boy watched it spellbound.

"That's corking!" he at last burst out.

"It is a marvelous invention, certainly," responded Mr. Hawley, delighted by the enthusiasm of the _March Hare's_ editor.

"What metal is used for casting type?" inquired Paul suddenly. "It looks like lead."

"It is not pure lead," Mr. Hawley answered. "That metal has been found to be much too soft; it soon wears down and loses its outline and its sharp edges. So an alloy of antimony is mixed with the lead and a composition is made that is harder and more durable."

"It must be quite a stunt to get the mixture just right," remarked Paul.

Again the newspaper man smiled with pleasure. It was a satisfaction to have so intelligent an audience.

"You have put your finger on a very important feature of the newspaper business," he rejoined. "The man who prepares the metal solution and keeps it at just the proper degree of temperature for casting is the person to whom the printer owes no small measure of his success. When we go downstairs, we shall see how the forms that are set here are cast in two large metal sections that fit on the two halves of the cylindrical rollers of the press. A mold of the form is first made from a peculiar kind of cardboard, a sort of _papier-mache_, and by forcing hot metal into this mold a cast, or stereotype, of the page is taken. It is from this metal stereotype that the paper is printed. After the two sections are fastened securely upon the cylinders and inked by machinery, the great webs of paper at either end of the press unroll, and as they move over the rapidly turning wheels, your daily newspaper is printed for you."

"Are we going to see it done?" asked Paul eagerly.