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SAYING GOODBYE TO HOT METAL
 
Black and white and read all over – newspapers might not seem very different today compared with a century ago. But the way letters are assembled into words, lines and pages has been completely changed.

Fleet Street relied on linotype machines until the mid-1980s. As the operator keyed in the news story, these brass matrices fell into line and were then filled with molten metal to form a solid ‘line-o-type’ known as a ‘slug’.

In the 1960s the Mirror composing room had 45 linotype machines. Here technicians keyed in journalists’ stories and ‘set’ them as lines of metal type.

“In the old ‘hot metal’ process subeditors, art editors, process workers, compositors and foundry workers combined their efforts into producing pages where all the type, headlines and pictures fitted on a page. These moveable elements of solid metal were then locked inside a metal frame. These combined functions required many unique skills, careful schedules, strict timing, teamwork and few mistakes. I would wear a white apron with a moleskin-type blanket around my waist to just above the knees. This was to protect myself from molten metal splashes, cuts and grazes. When the Mirror stopped using this ‘hot metal’ process my job changed from one of considerable interest, requiring hand and craft skills to a rather boring and routine photographic process.”
 		   

source : Barry Waterton
 
   
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