alt Hacker NewsFarewell, Etaoin Shrdlu documents the last day of hot type at The New York Times before the digital changeover. It's one of my favourite documentaries, everything feels so vivid and alive:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/insider/100000004687429/farewe...
Replies
EMM_386 • today at 4:20 AM
I found this on Vimeo. Very interesting.
Yenrabbit • today at 3:49 AM
Wow, thanks for sharing; that's a cool old docu!
Since you mentioned Etaoin Shrdlu and hot type / linotype...
There are a lot of industries (at least historically) that have organized labor.
In the UK, there was the “Wapping Dispute” in 1986 when computer technology enabled journalists to type in their copy directly, doing away with the need for workers to set type using linotype printing.
Linotype was a big improvement on the older letter-by-letter typesetting and sped up composition of text 3 - 5 times compared to hand composition. Its introduction enabled a small number of machine operators to set type for multi-page newspapers, leading to an explosion of print editions in the 1900s.
But in 1986, 100 years after the invention of linotype machines, they were being replaced with computerized direct input typesetting. As a result of the new process, UK print unions held a year-long strike.
Result of the strike: failure. 6000 printers were fired, but there were jobs for 670 new workers who used word processing.
You probably can't force your job to remain (well, I guess some people have).