There seems to be quite a bit of interest out there in the Typosphere about old-style printing and publishing - the terminology, the technology and the history (so pleased that printers were expected to know a little about the history of their craft). For the benefit of those interested in this lost art, I have scanned in most of the pages of The Australian Printers' Handbook of 1950, compiled by E.C. Bennett, as I think it contains a lot of very useful information. I have left out the section on Impositions, so if anyone particularly wants that part, please let me know:
A wealth of information. The book brings back memories of my printing classes.
ReplyDeleteooh, yes - Impositions please :D
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of weird - even though I grew up in the print industry, I never knew much of the history. For instance, I didn't know up till this year that Offset presses really only began in the 1940's and that more printing was done on Letterpress than offset until the 1970's. All I knew was that the industry was a maelstrom of changing processes the entire time I worked in it, with people throwing away 100-year-old machinery in the early 80's to people throwing away 10-year-old machinery in the 90's.
I actually have that slug with the Lord's Prayer on it. My father gave it to me when I was a child (about 50 years ago), and I still have it. Somewhere around here...
ReplyDeleteI like the antechinus!
ReplyDelete