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Publishing/printing question

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dbooster

New Member
Reading both the intro to Lord of the Rings, and then the intro to Walden, I have become interested in the process behind how books were printed before the coming of computers. Obviously now, with computers, it's quite easy: a electronic file is passed to whomever requires it and is printed from that; but, how was this process achieved when the only copy of the text wasn't an electronic file, but a large collection of pages from a typewriter?

Such a thing may be trivial, but I find such things interest me. If anyone could either explain this or provide a link, I would greatly appreciate it.
 
dbooster said:
Reading both the intro to Lord of the Rings, and then the intro to Walden, I have become interested in the process behind how books were printed before the coming of computers. Obviously now, with computers, it's quite easy: a electronic file is passed to whomever requires it and is printed from that; but, how was this process achieved when the only copy of the text wasn't an electronic file, but a large collection of pages from a typewriter?

Such a thing may be trivial, but I find such things interest me. If anyone could either explain this or provide a link, I would greatly appreciate it.
Click to expand...

I think what you're asking is what happened between Gutenberg hand-set composition plates and electronic typesetting. The main thing was machine composition, namely Linotype, Monotype, or Ludlow machines, which used a machine to set the lines rather than do it by hand.

There were simultaneous changes in how artwork was handled and pages were laid out. The process of moving over to fully automated systems took a long time and only really happened in the last 10 years.

From machine typesetting, plates or cylinders were made. Each printing press has a different type of plate or cylinder, so the methods are not uniform. Also, there are loads of technologies specific to certain kinds of printing, e.g., color lithography.

My favorite resource for all this technological info is a funny old book called The Pocket Pal, which used to be published for professionals by the International Paper Company. It's pocketsized and has absolutely everything in it. Of course, the printing is immaculate.
 
You might also want to check out Warren Chappell's A Short History of the Printed Word. It may focus on the incunabula period of printing more than would meet your needs, but still ...
 
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