 Photo from a fellow CWTI attendee | I knew that one of the places I had to visit at Colonial Williamsburg was the printer's shop. There was a lot to learn from the demonstration. As I have taught, the upper case letters were the letters kept in the upper part of the printer's case, while the lower case letters were sorted into the lower part. We still use these terms today to teach capital and lower-case letters. As I type onto a keyboard and watch my paragraphs instantly flash onto the computer monitor, it makes me appreciate the work it took to set type, one letter at a time by hand. The tedious work would continue as the broadside was inked and printed, once page at a time on the aptly-titled press before being hung overhead for drying. |
Being an old "newspaper man" myself, I suppose there is always going to be some ink in my blood. Forty years ago, I published my own crude, weekly newspaper, the Tuttlite. This paper served the citizens of my then-hometown of Tuttle, Oklahoma. I remember breaking the news and scooping the more-established publication in town, and according to the competing editor, had I continued to publish, he would have gone out of business in the town. He later hired me to do freelance work for his paper, but that never worked out for me.
| The Tuttlite was a very distant cousin to the broadsides being produced in colonial days. Even forty years ago, I had the advantages of using a typewriter and gluing everything together for photographing and plating at the printer. Even the process of the 1980s was archaic compared to today's newspapering. Seeing some of the original processes really puts the timeline into perspective. | |
