“The Daily Plainsman”
Linotype in Industrial Museum, Baltimore, MD
The Plainsman was my town’s newspaper when I was growing up…it still is. The newspaper’s name was different then, the “Huronite” but changed to The Huron Daily Plainsman. Not sure why. Economics, no doubt. My grandfather Ed Halvorsen worked there for several decades as a Linotype operator. I don’t remember the entire printing process…it was a long time ago. They’d mostly let me walk around whenever an adult could watch me. To an elementary student, the newspaper’s processes were magic and I loved the place, although, it could be a bit intimidating…loud machinery, intense people always on a deadline, the smell of ink and paper and molten lead, the sense of mission. Oh, and the words, they were everywhere. The language, the style, the content.
My grandfather married when he was 20 and his bride was 19. There was no work in small town South Dakota in 1909…the newlyweds got on a train and went to Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada where he became a journeyman Linotype operator. The Linotype was a machine that revolutionized the print industry, no longer would type have to be set one letter at a time, one slug at a time and then each letter had to be returned to its proper drawer. No, the Linotype changed all that. The letters could be typed, like magic a matrix would fall down from a magazine into a row, the operator would put spaces between words, when the “line of type” (Linotype) was done, the operator would move a lever or pedal and the stack would go into a pressure mold where hot, molten metal was pressed onto the matrices and voilé, a line of type was cast. The area where the linotypes were was dark and hot and LOUD. The machines made a lot of noise but it was a very organized noise with whirs, ticks, whooshes, and bangs, and clacks and more…a veritable symphony of flowing words and thought. I loved it.
Somehow, I don’t remember how, the columns were changed into sticks, then galleys (pages), then type drums. Once a “page” was formed, they were “proofed” on galley proofs. Back in the day, the Huronite had quite a few proof readers because sometimes the Linotype operators or the reporters made mistakes, but seldom the proofreaders. The drums were put on several rollers and the paper would roll over them and somehow the ink, the drums, and the paper met, were sorted and cut or cut and sorted. For a little kid, this was high drama.
My grandfather retired from the Huronite and went to work for FH Brown Printing located under the National Bank at 3rd & Wisconsin. They had a Linotype. I often visited the print shop but it wasn’t the same as the Huronite…I missed it. So did he.