We rearranged offices a few months back, and outside my new quarters sits a Linotype.

It really doesn’t need to be there. It hasn’t run in several years and likely never will be again. Since the 1970s it has been used only to set letter press print jobs like envelopes and business cards, after the newspaper converted to offset printing. It has stood idle since its last operator had a stroke and was forced to retire about seven years ago.

I would just as soon have it gone. I even offered to pay a scrap metal dealer to come haul it off, but he never came back.

The local museum wants only a photo of it. They haven’t got the space to house it.

For those under about 50, you probably have little appreciation for this machine, introduced in the 1800s. It’s big and bulky and has more moving parts than Rube Goldberg could have come up with in his wildest dreams. It must weigh a ton.

When it was running it would literally spit smoke and emit an acrid smell as the gas-fired pot remelted the lead type. It was even used to help heat the building for many years. But I doubt it would come close to passing muster with the EPA today.

Compared to my modern computer, it is as anachronistic as a horse and buggy. In its day, however, it was quite the marvel. It allowed an entire line of type (hence the name) to be set by an operator, replacing the need to place one character at a time into a line by hand.

Larger newspapers once had rows and rows of them. I remember touring the Denton Record-Chronicle as an elementary student in the mid-1960s and seeing those contraptions in operation.

I was talking to a used equipment dealer a few years ago when we were trying to sell off some of the other old printing equipment we inherited when we bought the paper in 1995. Much of the rest of this veritable museum is gone now.

He told me of a fellow a few years ago who contacted him about selling off an old print shop, which included a couple of Linotypes. He assumed he could get a few thousand dollars since he had paid five figures for them. No, the dealer had to sadly inform him, they are not even worth enough to pay for the flat tire he’d get hauling them to the scrap metal yard.

Some of you may have a few old Compugraphic typesetting machines that suffered the same fate. And what should we do with these 10-20 year-old computers that are no longer useful? Boat anchors?

But back to the iron behemoth Mr. Mergenthaler invented.

In some ways it’s a good reminder that we have it so much easier today. Newspapering was actual physical labor back in the day. One page weighed several pounds. Printing an eight-page edition literally took all week, imprinting first one side of the four-page sheet, and then the other, and running the two pieces through the mechanical folder. Oh, and the proof readers had to be able to do their job reading the raised characters backward.

We have indeed come a long way. Our former owner still marvels at all the four-color photos we use, remembering the days when they were proud just to be able to get a single color on the front page for some accents.

I’m sure if we ever do figure out a method for disposing of the Linotypes, he will be sad to see them go.

So one of these days if the following ad appears in the “Equipment for Sale” section of the TPA Web site, you’ll know where it came from:

“Free to good home, one complete Linotype machine with second intact machine available for parts. Also lead smelter and Babcock letter press with folder. Were in good working order the last time they were used.”

Hopefully that scrap metal dealer will resurface soon — although cold weather is at hand and it does get a little chilly since I’ve moved to the back office.

And I hope you’ll be able to join us in Dallas Jan. 17-19 for the TPA Midwinter Conference, where we’ll discuss more modern aspects of our business.