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Last day of hot metal typesetting at The New York Times (1978) [video]

2 pointsby tetraodonpufferover 8 years ago

1 comment

dbg31415over 8 years ago
This was really interesting. I sort of spaced out and left the auto-play videos on... watched like 2 hours about type setting machines and typography. Cool.<p>These machines were elegant dinosaurs. Really freakin&#x27; cool to think we had the capacity to build automation even without computers.<p>One segment talked about how to reduce the vibrations caused by motors and the solution was to make it heavier. Some of these machines weighed 20+ tons... they had huge weights built in to reduce vibrations.<p>&quot;Yeah I have a solution for that, let&#x27;s make it heavier,&quot; said no-one in the last 40 years.<p>Also, 1978 was before my birth... but... I assumed these sorts of machines were like from the 1920s... didn&#x27;t know they were used all the way until almost the 80s.<p>Can&#x27;t imagine any piece of software or system I build, or even work with, being around in 100 years... I bet there are still a few things I did 10 years ago around... but any major production code... maybe 2-5 years between overhauls?