My dad was a linotype operator before WW2, his dad was blind and during the depression as the oldest he had to leave school at 15 to support the family (this was in NZ)<p>Skilled lino operators were the programmers of their days, in short supply, they were paid really well (for the time) and could quit, travel for a while and find a job almost anywhere.<p>When dad signed up for WW2 he was almost immediately seconded to a HQ company, men who could type were as scarce as hen's teeth, too valuable - he was shot at occasionally but they generally weren't sent right to the front line, mostly one row back - people had to be paid, orders had to be intelligible
07:54 - A pure-mechanical teletypewriter (Baudot/Hughes style, with a piano keyboard) is controlling the typesetting apparatus automatically, reading characters from a paper tape. The characters are encoded in ITA-2, a revised version of the original 1870 Baudot code. It's how a real /dev/tty looks like, and what we used before EBCDIC and ASCII. Digital communication in the Victorian era.<p>24:35 - PDP-11. a quick flash among a lot of other computers. Only a single row of the keys on the front panel was showed, but I can't be wrong - you know just from its color.
I worked with some former hot-metal compositors from a daily newspaper. They had taken their savings when they were made redundant and started up a computerized compositing firm just as desktop publishing was taking off. There was an art to composition and layout and these guys were experts. They made book for a while (pun intended).<p>Nowadays we have lost the artistry and elegance of knowledgable compositing and layout. Algorithms automate us 80% of the way there and we swim in a sea of crap with few people aware of it because it looks, well, okay if you prefer to excel at mediocrity.
This was a great watch. I fully understand why they aren't used any more, but what a mechanical delight! Watching people work at the smooth speed of practiced efficiency is a joy to see, too.<p>(Couldn't help but notice how black with lead everyone's fingers were as well.)<p>[edit] I am impressed with the printer's comments at 14:10 re: the inevitability of computers
Useful context about the film, from the New York Times's in-house historian: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/11/13/1978-farewell-etaoin-shrdlu/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2014/11/13/1978-farewe...</a>
I really like listening to the worker talk about computers at 14:28. He conveyed much of the same thoughts we still have about computers and automation.
My favourite quote:<p>"I hate to say it. It's inevitable that we're going to go onto computers. All the knowledge I've acquired over these 26 years is all kept in a little box now called a computer, and I think probably, most jobs are going to end up the same way.<p>Do you think computers are a good idea in general?<p>Oh, there's no doubt about it. They're going to benefit everybody eventually."
If you liked this, be sure to check out the 2012 documentary 'Linotype: The Film', featuring Carl Schlesinger and footage from 'Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu'. One of my all-time favorite documentaries!<p><a href="https://linotypefilm.com/" rel="nofollow">https://linotypefilm.com/</a>
In high school I was in a computer tech class. In the second semester each of us were assigned one of the labs in the school. I was sent to the journalism room where the school paper was made. It was a fascinating and formative experience.<p>It was my responsibility to generate the CMYK output and FTP it to the printers. It was an awesome responsibility to be the last pair of eyes on the pages before we released them to the world, regardless of the technology.<p>It was just a goofy student paper in a small Idaho town. I can only imagine how it would feel to be responsible for the front page of the New York Times!
Previous discussion:<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16904770" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16904770</a><p>The link submitted then (<a href="https://vimeo.com/127605643" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/127605643</a>) was to a slightly different version of the film on Vimeo as part of the "Linotype: The Film" collection:<p><a href="https://vimeo.com/134626010" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/134626010</a>
I'm old enough to have learned how to set type by hand, in a composing stick, in a high school shop class. We printed stationary, cards, etc, as part of the assignments. And I still remember the ordering of the letters in the "California Job Case." We took a field trip out to Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, to see their hot-type machines (and probably breathed in a lot of lead!)
I remember seeing linotypes in operation at a Hirschfeld Printing in Denver, which is now out of business. They were fascinating to watch. On the other hand, if you happened to choose, oh, ten-point Spartan, then discovered that it looked a bit small, you had to have the whole item reset. And wrapping lines around illustrations was not simple.<p>But they were great in their day.
Today I learned that this name was actually an inside joke/reference in Godel, Escher, Bach: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etaoin_shrdlu" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etaoin_shrdlu</a><p>I definitely didn't understand at the time I read, but it's so much easier to research stuff like this now.
Apparently the Saguache Crescent in Colorado is (as of this video in 2016) still using the linotype, the last known newspaper in the US to do so: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNa9XRoNRUM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNa9XRoNRUM</a>
Everytime I see Etaioin Shrdlu I remember of Nethack (there's a scroll in the game named like it - the effects are specific to every game since nethack randomizes everything, tho).<p>Btw I cannot recommend NetHack enough if you're into Roguelikes.
I'm in love with those terminals. Reminds me a bit of the Corona portable PC or the Epson QX-10, but more elegant and balanced.<p>And, also, available on multiple sizes. Those things must have been very expensive.
When I saw the title I thought the video was going to be about Terry Winograd's SHRDLU natural language understanding program <a href="https://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/shrdlu/" rel="nofollow">https://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/shrdlu/</a><p>Then I was wondering if there were any videos about the SHRDLU program. There is one very poor quality screen capture video on youtube showing SHRDLU in operation. I stumbled on another fairly short video (2:13) of Terry Winograd discussing his career as a technologist working in AI. I think it's an interesting alternate view of technology and its effect on people. The video is here <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW5la8ZZJCE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW5la8ZZJCE</a>