Inventive Erratum
Recently, I discovered this item in the Columbia Republican for July 31, 1918. I share it not only because it very cleverly turns a typographic error into an opportunity to advocate for a favorite cause but also because it provides insight into the typesetting methods of a hundred years ago--indeed of forty years ago--that would allow a line or two of type to end up in the wrong column.
We know from the 1905 publication Illustrated Hudson, N.Y., that the Republican had "the largest and best equipped newspaper, job printing and bookbinding plant" in the area, featuring "the latest Mergenthaler Linotype" machines. The linotype machine, which was invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in the 1880s, produced lines of words (hence the name "line o' type) as single strips of metal called slugs. The slugs were then assembled to make up a page of the newspaper.
If you're interested in typesetting and newspaper composition before computers took over, you may want to watch this video, filmed on July 1, 1978: "Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu." It chronicles the last day linotype machines were used to produce the New York Times and in the process explains in detail how they worked.
COPYRIGHT 2018 CAROLE OSTERINK
On a personal note, during college, in the early 70s, I worked the graveyard shift at a newspaper still using linotypes. I was the "remelt man," picking up the used slugs, hoisting them into a huge boiling cauldron of lead, remaking them into ingots, which I delivered to the big, clanky linotype machines, where they were turned into type.... I feel as old as Gutenberg!
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