Travel back in time to 1947 and watch this documentary on how books are made.
Fascinating.
The phrase “hot off the press” came from this molten lead process.
However, remember that it still begins with you, the author.
[If you are unable to view the video in your email, please visit the site where it is embedded.]
OSHA would have a fit! No eye protection, no hearing protection (print shops are LOUD), and the gals are wearing clothing wildly inappropriate to work around moving machinery. Not to mention fumes from molten lead…
I had the privilege of working in a pressroom, with a slightly more modern printing process (offset, which requires photographing the text, developing the negatives…noxious fumes…and transferring the images to printing plates) but with everything else pretty much as in the video. The pace was of necessity fast, the danger to fingers very, very clear.
I understand it’s much more automated now, and I thank God for progress.
***
Way back in the bad old days
when the printing world did linger
in the old time-honored ways
you could quickly lose a finger,
folded, spindled, mutilated
by clacking machines
that in quick seconds violated
your piano-playing dreams,
but in a way I kinda miss
the smell of ink and oil,
the paper-track’s metallic hiss
and the hard and weary toil
that helped me to understand
what it was to be a man.