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An old typesetter once told me about a joke they played on newbies. They told them to closely look for the "lead lice" in a freshly set frame of types. When the apprentices had their faces real close to it, they'd compress the whole shebang together and residual ink would be squirting out from between the individual types. Thus creating freckles or "lead lice".

Hopefully I got some of the jargon right. Typesetters use so many unconventional words and phrases, at least here in Germany.

An old typesetter once told me about a joke they played on newbies. They told them to closely look for the "lead lice" in a freshly set frame of types. When the apprentices had their faces real close to it, they'd compress the whole shebang together and residual ink would be squirting out from between the individual types. Thus creating freckles or "lead lice". Hopefully I got some of the jargon right. Typesetters use so many unconventional words and phrases, at least here in Germany.
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Legend says if you type ETAOIN SHRDLU on your keyboard, you can hear the sound of hot lead being cast and smell the very fires of hell that used to print the news every day.

That is pretty amazing. I wonder how long those were in use.

There's also https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MGjFKs9bnU detailing the last day of hot-lead type at the spew york times.

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Nice one. So many jews. O.o

This used to be a real handicraft. Tons of secrets lost forever. And the jargon! For example, a 'Hurenkind' (child of a whore) translates to a widow line, which is a layout error where the last line or word of aparagraph appears on a new page or column. Or the 'Schusterjunge' (cobblers boy) which is called an orphan in English and means the opposite, e.g. the first line of a paragraph is alone on the end of a page.

I'll make it a point to include jargon in my upcoming sub.

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With the disappearance of an industry, so goes it's terminology. Kind of sad, but what do you do?

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Oh, it's just the way things go. I just think there's usually some story and wisdom attached to jargon, which deserves to be conserved.

After watching the NYT video, it's a sobering thought that some of these people were convinced that they were at the apex of technology and how crude the tech seems nowadays.

1978 was net even 50 years ago, If we had another 50, it sure would be interesting to witness progress or decline. But alas, I think we don't have that long, not even close. The geophysical event will rub out most of our tech in minutes.