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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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[–] • 1 pt

Oh yes. The film-exposure system was quite innovative, but terribly primitive. But it reduced the skill needed to actually make the type itself a little and removed some of the (costly) human from the equation.

Now we don't even have that. AI writes the story, sends it to an automated publishing system, and that posts it online.