Nicholas Bodley wrote:

>
> On Tue, 06 Dec 2005 15:48:10 -0500, Peter T. Daniels
> <grammatim@...> wrote:
>
> > A matrix is very small -- just big enough to mold one piece of type. You
> > can file the end of the piece of type with a stroke of a file, if
> > necessary. Imagine how tiny the individual letters of the smallest size
> > that was made are! (Agate, maybe?) And the punch for every character
> > hand-cut! And then you have to set the type by plucking each letter from
> > the case, and adding it in the proper orientation to the growing line!
>
> I'm so glad to have taken a course in basic letterpress printing when I
> was about 12 or so, in a Springfield, Mass. public school. Peter Couri was
> the teacher. We had composing sticks (right-handed devices!), and I set
> and justified a few lines, printed them, and then re-sorted to a Calif.
> Job Case.

My senior year at Cornell, I lived in a Residential College that had a
handpress in the basement and a few enthusiasts, but it seemed like a
very dirty hobby (I stuck with music and bridge [never got good at it]
and needlework). Then, when I got to Chicago, the Oriental Institute had
_just_ gotten rid of the handpress that had been used for making museum
labels for forty years -- for a long time after, any new labels were in
Courier -- and the type (including an important assortment of exotics,
including Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, and Egyptian Hieroglyphs [a
licensed set of the Gardiner font]) was consigned to the Press's
Printing Department. A few years later they wanted to throw it away, but
by then the Provost was Bob Adams, the archeologist, former OI director
(and future Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution), and he forbade
them to. But that was about twenty years ago. (My first year, I worked
for the Director, and I could have learned to use the press and make
museum labels. And keepsakes they could sell in the gift shop ...)

> The press was one of the time-tested and honorable designs -- Round ink
> plate[n?] on top, spring-loaded ink rollers moving up and down on a pair
> of long arms; tilting bed accepted hand-fed sheets, and the Jaws of
> Potential Huge Lawsuits (USA) closed unless you moved the throwout lever.
> Big flywheel, variable-speed motor. Teacher had one shorter finger;
> helpful reminder. <sociopolitics?> These days, parents would try to
> bankupt the school district for having something so hazardous.
> </sociopolitics?>

It had a _MOTOR_???

> > My most treasured possession is "Johnson's Typologia" (1826),
>
> Very nice message, Peter.
>
> Will reply separately to another part of the message.

I could've mentioned that the other copies I've seen were in the $700
range, and this was $150. Likely because the engraved frontispiece is
missing from the second volume, though there is no notation to that
effect next to the price on the flyleaf.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...