Printing Presses (and the woes of getting lost)

I'm in this English class -- Book History. That sounds really boring. But it's NOT. I have a great Prof, and he decided to take us on a field trip to a printing press.

I didn't know this, but there is, in Edmonton, a real printing press, where you have to hand set the words, and actually turn out the prints.



SO, yesterday night, I got in my truck, and proceded to drive down to 10309 97st. I looked at my map, but I wasn't totally sure where I should park, or what I was specifically looking for. Someone should have told me that it was next to Uncle Ed's Pawn Shop in the ghetto.....



To make a long story short, I had some problems turning left. And then, before I knew it, I was down the hill, and going across the low-level bridge. (ooops... the low-level bridge is nowhere near where I wanted to be) SO, I decided to turn around and go down 98th ave. Except there's that funny exit you have to make if you want to go west instead of east....


Yeah. I forgot that.


So here I am, at about 5:52 (I'm supposed to be there at 6:00), freaking out on my cell to Robbyn, and driving AWAY from downtown.



Anyway. I pulled a u-turn, went back the way I came, and ended up at the right spot, only a couple of minutes late.



I was excited for this "field trip", but I was not expecting it to be this cool. The lady who helped us, Theresa, (http://www.snapartists.com) told us the general gist of it, and then we got to try it.



We picked a tray of letters in a certain font, and had to set them. Now, this is harder than you think, because the letters are upside-down, and backwards. You actually have to think.



(If you look at the picture to the right, that's a composing stick. The top of the page starts at the bottom left hand corner.) You can only compose three or four lines at a time, depending on how big your font is.





It took an hour or more for each of us to write 2 or 3 lines, and get it all in order and ready to print.





I have to say that I have a much bigger appreciation for old books, and how hard it used to be to acquire them. I can't imagine printing books, upside-down, backwards, 3 lines at a time, and then turning the press by hand for 100 copies.

It was a very cool experience.



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pictures.from:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Movable_type